Terrific looking wheels!
I really like driving outside of urbanized areas especially in BC on roads with curves, views, and changes in elevation; it's fun. A boring straight 4 lane road as you'd see on the prairies is just a means to an end, never mind rush hour traffic.
With EV's and other technologies you're all correct, they'll have to come up with another usage-based way of getting revenue to pay for the road system. A simple one would be having to report your mileage to ICBC when you renew your insurance, transfer a vehicle's ownership, etc and paying a set amount per kilometer. This still doesn't mitigate traffic congestion (or the transportation system's reliability and safety) though like public transit does. When all forms of transportation are subsidized, it feels a little onerous subsidizing the people living in Chilliwack and commuting into Richmond 5 days a week. The world's not perfect.
Another angle on this is the provincial budget (pg 23 and 36).
http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2013/sp/pdf/ministry/tran.pdf
By pg 36 the subsidy is 40% on an operating basis.
The provincial fuel tax is 6.75 cents/L and stripping out amortization (saving to repair/replace the transportation system) makes the cashflow almost balance.
By pg 23 the subsidy is 52% based on an operating and capital investment basis. Note these revenues also include BC Rail revenue, federal public transit grants, and a federal subsidy of BC Ferries (ie the subsidy is actually higher than 52%). It's also notable that the revenue at $250,669 is less than Hwy Operation Expenses of $461,881; revenues don't cover Hwy Operations by themselves at the provincial level.
Also re ICBC, it's not even in the billions -
Quote:
The majority of the Ministry’s revenue comes from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia ($226 million in 2013/14...
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