By GORDON PRICE

You're the minister of transport in Ottawa and you've got a choice. On one hand, you could transfer five cents of the federal gas tax to Translink, the local transportation agency out there on the West Coast. Or you could cut taxes. (If Translink wants the money, it can put its hand in the taxpayer's pocket and take the money back out.) Okay, now that you've decided (or at least Paul Martin has decided for you), what would be your strategy to deal with the urban transportation problems in this country's sprawling regions? Cities are the economic engines of national economies and everywhere they're getting stuck in traffic.

The magnitude of the problem is hard to comprehend. If you lined up all the new cars in the Vancouver region in one year, the line would run, bumper to bumper, from Burrard Street to Abbotsford. Every day another 65 cars and no more space to drive them on.

Sure, the Vancouver region has a Strategic Transportation Plan. It has lots of plans, but no more money. It's an amazing mess: the urban Left has basically confirmed to the suburban Right that you can't tax the car. The NDP provincial politicians have said, loudly, there's no way they are going to help collect a vehicle levy and the provincial Liberals are simply saying, "We told you so -- now it's your mess. Take a referendum."

Urban transportation may be a political tar baby, but, federally, you've still got to do something. Trucks carrying goods need to get to ports, tourists need to get to the airport and tens of thousands of workers at these ports need to get home and back. And Vancouver might have an Olympics coming up. You've promised Toronto $500 million and a fast train to the airport. What about Vancouver?

Conveniently, YVR has its own cash flow, and that Airport Improvement Fee is running out of things to pay for. The region says it wants rapid transit to Richmond and the private sector is interested in funding it. An exclusive train to the airport is personally attractive: It gets decision-makers such as yourself back and forth in a style you rather like. You've ridden on the Heathrow Express and New York is building a rail connection to Kennedy Int'l. It's the thing to do.

You don't have to open the chequebook to Translink for ongoing expenses. They'll have to find the money to run the rest of the transit system, or cut it back. But that could be a bit of a problem.

What if the rest of the transit system is falling apart, just as you're starting to dig tunnels and lay rail for expensive rapid transit targetted to a minority of users, the business people and tourists who might pay $23 for an express ride into the city from private lounges to luxury hotels? It won't look good, not for a town aiming for the Winter Olympics in 2010 that will have to sell its environmental reputation as part of the deal.

The eyes of the world will be looking for the evidence of climate change on the slopes of Whistler, and wondering what the people of Vancouver are doing in response.

It won't be a big seller to tell them Vancouver is abandoning a zero-emission electric trolley system, allowing the trolley buses to run down until they're no use, and then replacing them with diesel buses. It's not the sort of message you'd like to be sending in a town with some of the world's most savvy environmental advocates.

So perhaps a rail line to Richmond isn't the first, best place to spend the money. Locally, they've just put in the 98 B-line and spent a lot of money and political capital to do so. And the Olympics don't actually need a high-capacity transit system from the airport to downtown. In fact, the logistical problem is getting athletes and others back and forth to Whistler, most likely by bus.

Well, exactly -- buses.

Why not commit to purchase a fleet of fuel-cell buses with technology from Ballard? They offer perfect places for the Canada logo and are perfect for serving the region after the games are over. It's a win-win-win. You'll get the credit, the Olympics gets something it needs and the region as a whole gets a legacy. And no nasty fight over another Skytrain.

So what would you do?