District wants ICBC to collect and share local vehicle data

District of Squamish wants to know what vehicle you drive, the type of fuel used, and the number of kilometers driven every year.

In a resolution to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) last year, the district asked the latter to get ICBC to collect data on vehicles, and share it with local governments.

In the resolution, the district said BC’s transportation sector accounted for about 37 per cent of total greenhouse gas emission, but municipalities struggled to find accurate data on emissions in their region.

Without this data, the local governments were unable to develop action plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The district called upon the UBCM to request the BC government to “require ICBC to collect mileage data when drivers renew their vehicle insurance and then share the data of kilometres driven and fuel and vehicle type annually with local governments”.

The province recently responded to the district’s request, saying that the province and ICBC did support measures that promote GHG reduction.

However, the province added that ICBC does not require customers to disclose their odometer reading when they renew their insurance, but offers a discount to those who drive less than 5,000 kilometres.

The province told the district the data customers suppled for this discount was voluntary and the quantity of this data was limited.

However, the province said the proportion of vehicles that qualified for the reduced rating in the area might be useful data.

In its response, BC also told district that ICBC recently launched a new website that included vehicle population data which could be sorted by municipality, vehicle type or area based on the first three characters of the postal code.