Metro Vancouver mayors have enlisted influential new allies representing business, environment and labour to help press their case for new TransLink funding sources to enable an ambitious transit system expansion.

Environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki, B.C. Chamber of Commerce president John Winter and B.C. Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair signed an accord Tuesday with the Mayors Council on Regional Transportation that urges the province and Ottawa to join local cities to negotiate new sustainable funding for TransLink.

“We need new thinking about how we pay for the system we all know we need,” Suzuki said. “It’s high time all levels of government worked together to build healthy communities and a healthier planet.”

The mayors’ council has embraced TransLink CEO Tom Prendergast’s push for $450 million a year in new funding for the transportation authority.

Less than that amount won’t deliver even the promised new Evergreen Line let alone other rapid transit extensions, nor expand the system sufficiently to make a serious dent in Metro Vancouver’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Nor will it deliver any significant congestion relief as the region’s population grows by another million people in the next two decades.

“Unless we get all our ducks in a row and start putting the infrastructure in place for a sustainable transportation system, the region’s livability is going to be jeopardized,” said Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, who chairs the mayors’ council.

She said it’s time to end the “scattergun approach” of how TransLink has been financed until now.

“This is pretty significant—environmental, business and labour leaders coming together, united in wanting to make a significant shift from where we’ve been before.”

The provincial government has until now told TransLink it has sufficient funding sources.

But Prendergast says maxing out the existing available sources—including a controversial new vehicle levy and a three-cent jump in fuel tax—will deliver no more than $275 million. That would maintain the system as it is, but allow no more than modest improvements.

And it would require significant property tax hikes, which the mayors are dead set against.

Victoria has been under pressure to allow new funding sources, such as a charge on container shipments, a share of its existing Property Transfer Tax or perhaps a future slice of B.C.’s carbon tax revenues.

Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart said Tuesday’s accord demonstrates widespread support for a solution.

“Right now we’ve got an unsustainable system,” he said. “The solution is going to require everybody at the table, and that includes both senior levels of government.”

The mayors’ council will vote in late summer or early fall on a new 10-year plan to be tabled by the TransLink board by July 31.

The mayors have no power to change the package that gets presented. They can only vote the proposed funding increases up or down as a block.

If they reject supplementary funding, a base plan prevails based on TransLink’s current budget, which would trigger deep cuts in bus service in the order of 40 per cent.

“Failure isn’t really an option,” Stewart said. “We can’t go backward to an unsustainable transit system and to the kind of cuts that would involve.”

If the province ignores the group’s calls, said Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini, the region will remain “mired in transportation stalemate.”

The province committed $14 billion in its 2008 Provincial Transit Plan for upgrades—much of that earmarked for the Lower Mainland—but TransLink says it cannot afford to build the new transit line extensions or buy new buses without operating money to run them.

Watts said she will meet with transportation minister Shirley Bond next week to discuss TransLink funding.