Article content continued

During a presentation last month, Firth outlined some of the things he learned through watching the implementation of congesting pricing in both cities.

“The politics behind this is really, really, really hard,” he said. “I personally think the best argument is about efficiency. … It’s about saying ‘If you like driving a car in the city, if you think cars are an important part of the transportation makeup, then you need to be campaigning for congestions pricing.'”

Firth spoke Friday with Postmedia in his first interview since taking on his new job.

Q: One key question Metro Vancouver residents will want to ask is how much will a new mobility pricing system cost for average commuters?

A: We’re putting the cart before the horse. This is what we’re going to spend the next 10 months or so looking at. What we really need to look at is what is mobility costing today for different people? We’re paying in all kinds of ways — people who are driving today are paying through gas taxes, depreciation insurance, the cost of their time sitting stuck in traffic. … There’s all kinds of costs we’re already putting on our mobility, so we need to start by looking at what are those, and how are those being borne by different kinds of people throughout our region?

We’re all paying for our mobility now, but we’re doing it in ways that just aren’t transparent to us.

Q: At this week’s announcement for the commission, you told the media you are “trying to find a proposal that creates as many winners as possible.” Is it inevitable that a new mobility pricing system will create some losers, as well as winners?