Lower Mainland gas prices highest in North America: study

Gas prices in the Lower Mainland are currently over $1.43 per litre. August 13, 2013. (CTV)

Lower Mainland drivers face the highest gas prices in North America, according to a study by GasBuddy.com.

Among a list of 5,597 communities in Canada and the United States, the 10 most expensive places to fill up the tank were all in the Vancouver area, topped by Delta, Surrey and Pitt Meadows, with Vancouver sitting in the seventh spot. The data came from driver-reported prices collected Thursday, August 8.

Jason Toews of GasBuddy.com said high taxes are to blame for the region’s gas prices, but added the cost of doing business in Vancouver is a factor as well.

“We always see higher prices in Vancouver and the rest of B.C. than the rest of the country,” Toews said. “We just have to learn to live with it.”

The Lower Mainland had the highest gas taxes in the country until Montreal inched ahead earlier this year.

Jordan Bateman of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said gas consumers are hit by taxes from three different levels of government. He said drivers typically pay 49 cents of tax per litre, including 17 cents for Translink, 6.7 cents for the provincial gas tax, 8.5 cents for the regular provincial tax, 10 cents for the federal gas tax, plus five per cent GST tacked on top of all that.

Bateman said that as a Langley resident, he and many of his neighbours sometimes get gas in Abbotsford, which isn’t a part of TransLink’s jurisdiction, or even head south across the border.

He said Abbotsford’s gas sales are rising at three times the pace of its population growth thanks to gas-seekers crossing the municipal boundary, while the border town of Blaine, Washington has seen the highest number of border crossings since the mid-90s. He said gas shoppers might be a big part of what he calls the “Blaine drain.”

On Tuesday, the cheapest gas in Blaine was at $3.95 per gallon, equivalent to $1.04 per litre, while the lowest prices in the Lower Mainland were at $1.36 in Surrey and Langley, and started at $1.43 in Vancouver. For a 50-litre fill-up, that’s close to $20 saved at an American gas station.

“Mobility is such as huge part of British Columbians’ way of life,” said Bateman. While Vancouverites have the alternative of public transit, he pointed out that TransLink’s gas taxes are the same in more rural parts of the region, such as Langley, where public transit isn’t always an option.

Transit funding is a big reason for keeping gas taxes high, said SFU transportation expert and former TransLink board member Gordon Price. Fuel sales are declining in the Lower Mainland, forcing TransLink to choose between raising gas taxes or looking for other revenue sources in order to maintain revenues.

He also suggested another way of looking at our gas prices.

“It’s not that they’re that high here, but it’s in the other places they’re so low,” he said, suggesting that high gas taxes might simply reflect the various costs of car traffic, ranging from road works to health and environmental costs.

Toews said drivers can rest assured gas prices should head down again after the Labour Day weekend, as prices are often highest in the summer.

He suggests shopping around to find the gas stations with the lowest prices. The GasBuddy app, which helps drivers find cheaper pumps, has already been downloaded more than 31 million times.