A new funding deal will keep Metro Vancouver’s transportation agency in business until the end of 2027, but transit advocates say a permanent solution is still urgently needed.

The three-year, C$312-million agreement between TransLink and the British Columbia government will provide much-needed breathing room, the Vancouver Sun reports, with annual installments of about $100 million taking a chunk out of the $600-million shortfall TransLink was facing by 2026.

For its part, TransLink will be upping transit fares by a total of 7% and adding a surcharge of $1.50 for transit trips from the Vancouver airport.

“A 0.5% increase to TransLink’s property tax charge, equal to about $20 for a median Metro household,” is also in the cards, the Sun reports.

Finally, pending final approval, the deal will see the off-street parking sales tax raised from 24 to 29%, an increase that would generate “approximately $20 million in new revenue per year,” TransLink says.

But a permanent and stable source of funding will be needed well before the end of 2027, and the province has, in fact, “committed to introducing a new revenue source” sometime in that year, said TransLink CEO Kevin Quinn.

That “revenue source”—worth $112 million per year, according to TransLink—has not been formally identified, but journalist and author Rob Shaw thinks it may be a vehicle levy.

“There have been three major new transit funding sources floated by mayors in the past decade—two of which are officially off the table,” Shaw writes in a recent op ed for Business in Vancouver.

“Mayors have for years wanted a slice of the $3-billion carbon tax to be dedicated to TransLink,” but B.C. eliminated that tax this month, and mobility pricing has also proven a third rail for Premier David Eby, Shaw writes.

“That leaves vehicle levies as the last option on the table for new transit revenue.”

A vehicle levy would be particularly useful as it would capture electric vehicle drivers who do not pay a fuel tax—a traditional, but shrinking source of transit revenue, says Shaw.

B.C.’s car insurance program would be the “most logical place to administer” the levy, Shaw writes, adding, “the government has a year or so to iron out the details—and prime the public for the change—before it will have to prepare legislation in advance of 2027.”

Movement, a local non-profit that represents transit users, welcomed TransLink’s commitments to address overcrowding and to increase service to industrial areas. Movement also praised the transit agency’s commitment to improve the beleaguered HandyDART system that serves people with disabilities who need assistance to ride transit.

Movement also offered advice on funding: “There’s a cheap trick to making transit more cost-efficient: bus lanes, and other forms of priority,” it wrote. “Streets are generally owned by municipalities, and they have an opportunity to save TransLink serious money by painting bus lanes and doing other tweaks to make transit faster.”

The federal government could help with operational funding. “They’ve been insistent that they will not help fund the operations of transit, but we’re hoping that a newly elected government will change course,” Movement writes.

“We don’t just have transit overcrowding in Vancouver. It’s now in Castlegar, Halifax, Kelowna, and Brampton. It’s everywhere, and the feds should step in.”