I think the structure of the gas tax fund is very elegant. For municipalities it has provided a level of certainty that allows us to plan in advance. The gas tax coming into the Vancouver region—not the city of Vancouver, because as I said the 23 municipalities in the region funnel the gas tax through to TransLink—amounts to about $122 million to $125 million per year, which is a very important investment.
For the city of Vancouver alone, which constitutes only 25% of our region, to replace our infrastructure it would cost us $20 billion at this point in time. We spend anywhere from $250 million to $300 million a year to rehabilitate our infrastructure. Somebody mentioned that about two-thirds of that is renewal and rehabilitation, and about one-third is new to accommodate growth.
It's just really about the demand. Having the gas tax allows us to plan for that, and in the case of transit, to know it's coming and to work it into our plan.
Targeted funds actually help, and if they're clear and we know what they're targeted for and they're sustained and we know what share could come to us, that actually helps, too.
It's just the different layers of complexity, as we've talked about. For us, in terms of simplifying things, the more they're sustained over time and any specific region has an idea of what they might be eligible for, and then the rules about P3s or not, or how those decisions get made, every layer of those kinds of decisions makes it more complicated. If it's combined with that at the provincial level, it's just very difficult to try to drive a project through. The more the provinces and the federal government are coherent around that and the simpler it is for us to have predictability, I think it has a great result.