By ROBERT JANELLE

Toll roads aren’t so common in Canada, and they’re non-existent in the nation’s capital. If local politicians have their way, that won’t change anytime soon.

In an e-mail, Rideau-Rockcliffe councillor Peter Clark—the only member of city council to return our request—said he wouldn’t expect people in Ottawa to react positively to new tolls on existing roads.

“It is not practicable, given that these amenities currently exist and any movement towards putting tolls in place would entail major investments and major citizen protests,” he said.

Nor is there any plan at the provincial level to add any kind of toll system to the provincial highways 417 or 174, says Ottawa Centre MPP Yasir Naqvi.

“At the moment, the province is not considering toll roads,” says Naqvi.”We’re looking for balance between more efficient highway structures and investments in public transit.”

Naqvi added that he’d prefer to approach the issue of congestion with measures like dedicated bus lanes or highways, or High Occupancy Vehicle lanes where only vehicles carrying two or more people are allowed.

“I prefer to find ways to encourage people to take public transit instead of driving,” he says.

Besides toll roads, another option cities might consider to both ease congestion and fund infrastructure and public transit: congestion fees.

The most famous example of a congestion charge in practice is London, U.K., where drivers must pay ₤10 to enter Central London from 7 a.m.–6 p.m. during weekdays.

Clark suggested such a fee could be workable, but he wouldn’t expect much support from Queen’s Park.

“Tolls on entry roads to the city might be useful, but the province might balk,” he said.

For his part, Naqvi says the city could put such a plan in place without provincial approval only if no provincial roads—the Queensway, for example—were involved.

That said, it’s unlikely congestion fees would find much support around the council table in Ottawa. Former Capital councillor Clive Doucet, who eventually ran for mayor in 2010, floated the idea back in 2006 and was rebuked by fellow councillors.

Three councillors, all of whom still sit on city council, registered their disagreement in an Ottawa Citizen article at the time.

• “There are so many down sides to this, I find it shocking that one of my colleagues would propose it. —Gloucester-Southgate councillor Diane Deans
• It would kill the core of the city, deter businesses from locating in the core, effect businesses in his ward, and have many, many other negative impacts. It’s an astonishingly wrong-headed idea. —Gloucester-Southgate councillor Diane Deans
• It’s ill-conceived, and it’s doomed to fail. —Alta Vista councillor Peter Hume
• You can’t start penalizing people for getting to work or going to the doctor’s office or shopping. It just doesn’t make any sense. I understand what Clive is trying to do, but he has to realize people can’t bike or walk to work from rural areas. – Osgoode councillor Doug Thompson

During the last municipal election, Ecology Ottawa asked mayoral candidates about congestion fees. Mayor Jim Watson did not support them at the time.

“I do not support a downtown congestion fee. This may be an option on the future, but we also need to focus on other priorities in the city such as improving cycling infrastructure and public transportation operations,” he told the group in response to their survey.

Naqvi takes a similar view. He says he’d prefer to see public transit improved in Ottawa before other congestion measures like tolls or congestion fees are enacted.

“If you don’t have good public transit, it’s not going to work,” he says.

Ecology Ottawa policy coordinator Trevor Haché, a former federal NDP candidate in Ottawa-Vanier, says he doesn’t agree with that line of thinking.

“If politicians are saying we’re not going to do this until we have a world-class public transit system, we’re going to be waiting too long,” he says.

Haché says the city should investigate user fees for roads sooner rather than later.

“We believe that the full cost of using roads is not fully being paid for by the people that use them,” he says. “The cost of building and maintaining roads is astronomical.”

Haché noted that toll roads are quite common in the United States, and people adapt to them. London’s congestion charge has been quite successful, he says, despite the controversy when it was first enacted in 2003.

By TESS KALINOWSKI

… Most of the discussions on stemming gridlock centre around punitive incentives: taxes, road tolls and other user fees. But there is relatively little talk about incentives that would curb driver behaviour and in turn slow the creeping calamity on the GTA’s roads.

Michael Fenn advises those in charge of the transport sector to think like retailers. Market it like a product, sell convenience and availability, and create something the consumer wants to be a part of.

In essence, know thy customer, he told about 100 road pricing experts gathered at the Transport Futures “Mobility Pricing Stakeholder Forum” on Tuesday.

But he acknowledges that providing incentives to take transit or avoid driving in rush hour is a complicated business.

“Remember, sprawl is one person’s slice of the North American dream,” said Fenn. “If we have policies that ignore 3 million people in the region that have chosen the North American lifestyle, they’re not going to be well accepted.”

“We need to approach (transportation) as consumer products,” he said, adding that the industry also needs to recognize there’s more than one customer…

Road-pricing schemes will inevitably have to be foisted on a reluctant public, according to Jens Schade, a Dresden University of Technology researcher, who attended the same Toronto road pricing conference.

His study of the psychology behind driver behaviour shows that even if commuters stand to gain something by paying a tax or toll, they will always feel the loss more intensely.

That’s why people almost always prefer hidden taxes such as a gas tax.

But research shows that the acceptance of road pricing can be dramatically improved once drivers feel the benefit of improved transit or traffic flow.

In Stockholm, support for congestion charges increased to over 50 per cent from less than 30 per cent once the city implemented a six-month pilot. Once it became permanent, the congestion charge was supported by 70 per cent of the public.

“The benefits have to be experienced immediately,” said Schade, noting that it’s sometimes difficult to make those links with a less transparent cost such as a gas tax.

Schade also warned against relying too heavily on time savings to sell road pricing: “Efficiency, for the public, is nothing. It’s too abstract.”…

FULL ARTICLE

By ROYSON JAMES

What do the terms cordon pricing, congestion charges, mobility pricing and traffic demand management have in common?

They are the modern euphemisms for road tolls and car taxes — part of a carefully constructed range of terms being designed to take the edge off toxic ideas to fund transportation improvements in the face of government deficits.

The terms were in full use Tuesday at Transport Futures, the sixth mobility pricing forum organized by Martin Collier since 2008. Transportation experts, consultants, planners and one or two politicians gathered at the Metropolitan Hotel. They shared the experience of European and American cities, and the lessons learned. And they exploded a few myths about the next great urban battle — congestion and managing the demand for scarce road space.

More than once a speaker hinted or said outright that, transparency notwithstanding, citizens can better deal with and accept hidden taxes over visible ones. As such, gas taxes are better accepted than road tolls.

That partially explains why citizens accepted the manufacturing retail tax and railed against the Goods and Services Tax and the HST. It explains why citizens resent and speak out against property taxes — which pay for more services that directly benefit their daily lives — but give a near free pass to income taxes. One is forever being waved in their faces; the other blends into the taxing landscape.

Traffic psychologist — yes, there is such a field of study — Jens Schade from Germany told attendees that it’s a fool’s errand to expect citizens to embrace tolls, fees and other road charges. But experience shows that opposition decreases once the measures are in…

That’s good news for this region. For while most residents want transit improvements and a good many may even advocate for congestion charges on drivers other than themselves — especially those coming into the city from outside the city borders — the majority do not want to pay road charges.

“That’s because we already pay for the road in gas taxes and licence fees,” you say.

Wait. There is another side to that commonly held position.

A 2008 Transport Canada study, “Estimates of the Full Cost of Transportation in Canada,” says the country’s annual capital cost for roads is $28.7 billion, with a further $4.9 billion in operating costs and $6.8 billion for land. Total, $40.4 billion. This does not include social and health costs such as accidents and pollution.

All the gas taxes, fuel fees, licence fees and vehicle charges cover barely one-third of the $40.4 billion.

So, in reality, roads are subsidized. They don’t pay for themselves. The driver isn’t being jobbed. And while gas tax revenues do go into general revenues for the federal and provincial governments — and should be sent to municipalities to manage the transportation network — drivers are not correct in claiming they already pay for the roads.

If there is a need for more funds to ease us out of congestion, drivers, like everyone else, may have to shoulder some of the costs.

It’s a message that’s being repeated in many quarters, some of them unexpected champions.

For example, the Toronto Board of Trade, the Canadian Automobile Association and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (though they have a nuanced view) see value in road charges.

But before the idea becomes less politically radioactive, an even larger and more vocal chorus must demand the funds as a source of improvements to the region’s transportation network.

FULL ARTICLE

By ANDRE MAYER

Many drivers see road tolls as a nuisance, but they’re not just a way to raise money — transportation experts say they’re a valuable way to regulate the transportation grid and streamline traffic.

Countries like Sweden and Great Britain have used tolls to ease congestion, curb carbon emissions, fund public transit and generally create a more comfortable and expedient commute for all travellers.

In Canada, however, tolls are a relative rarity — across the entire country, there are only 18 pay-as-you-go routes. What’s more, only two of them are roads (the 407 in Ontario and the Cobequid Pass in Nova Scotia), and 12 are bridges or tunnels on the Canada-U.S. border, like the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit from Windsor, Ont.

Given crumbling bridges in places like Montreal and crushing commute times in Toronto, experts wonder why Canadian municipalities aren’t using tolls more often…

The 407 charges what’s called a “free-flow” toll – in other words, drivers don’t need to stop to pay. When motorists get on and off the highway, they pass under a gantry mounted with equipment that automatically records the beginning and end of their trip. Their ride is validated in one of two ways: by a video camera, which scans the car’s licence plate; or through a signal to a transponder mounted inside the vehicle. (Riders can rent the transponder for $21.50 per year.) The driver then gets a bill in the mail.

“The people that use [the 407] know that every day they’re going to get to work at the exact same time that they did the day before,” says Martin Collier, a road pricing consultant based in Guelph, Ont. and director of the learning series Transport Futures.

“[The highway’s owners] get a bad rap because they only comprise 100 of 300,000 kilometres in the province of Ontario. But for their customers – about one million of them – they’re giving them the best ride in all of Ontario.”

Another road-pricing model that has been trialed by governments in Holland and U.S. states such as Oregon and Texas is vehicle miles traveled (VMT), which charges motorists based on mileage rather than for driving in a specific geographic area. In this scenario, each car is outfitted with a meter, and the driver’s journey is tracked using GPS technology.

Collier likes VMT, but advocates something called “dynamic road pricing,” which has also been tested in Holland.

As with the VMT model, drivers are tracked by GPS, but the toll reflects more than just distance. It takes into account every choice a motorist makes in a given journey – rewarding them, for example, for driving a more fuel-efficient vehicle or using a longer but less clogged route.

Maintenance costs

Besides helping to manage the traffic flow, tolls have the obvious benefit of helping to generate funds.

Municipalities build and maintain most of the road infrastructure in Canada, and a 2007 survey by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities indicates that communities need an additional $21.7 billion to maintain and upgrade existing transportation infrastructure assets.

… Transfer payments from the provinces have tapered off in recent years, and property taxes — a city’s only real source of revenue — are already stretched to the limit. The alternative to raising property taxes to cover that bill is to find user-pay sources of revenue.

According to the Leger poll, 47 percent of Canadians would pay a road toll if the proceeds went to funding public transit, which suggests that Canadian municipalities need to think more like some of their international counterparts.

“In Stockholm and London, they got acceptance for the [congestion charge] partly because they said the money that was generated from the congestion charge would be earmarked for the transit system, but we have no mechanisms for that here,” says Collier.

Vancouver transportation authority TransLink and builder Golden Crossing mark the completion of the deck on the Golden Ears Bridge in Langley, B.C. in 2009. Vancouver transportation authority TransLink and builder Golden Crossing mark the completion of the deck on the Golden Ears Bridge in Langley, B.C. in 2009. Golden Crossing Constructors Joint Venture

“A lot of funding for the [Toronto Transit Commission], for example, comes from upper government, property taxes, et cetera – a lot of things that really have nothing to do with the transportation system.”…

TransLink funds its operations through transit fares, part of the provincial gas tax, as well as a share of property taxes collected in each of the region’s 21 municipalities. TransLink has the power to raise money not only for road infrastructure but for transit, which enables it to look at the bigger transportation picture.

“It’s an integrated system they’re trying to put together,” Collier says. “Transit, roads, biking, walking — it’s a holistic viewpoint.”…

FULL ARTICLE

By ROYSON JAMES

Yakety-yak, we love to chat — especially when the subject is how to get around the city region without bursting a blood vessel from road rage or falling comatose waiting on a bus.

As such, much heat will be generated this fall as Toronto’s transportation future goes under the microscope. Again.

Talk’s good, and cheap. At some point this region must ascend that funding mountain that has exhausted so many conductors leading the political train towards commuting heaven.

Talk’s good. It can evolve into consensus, something missing from the myriad of ideas floating around transportation think tanks, gridlock gabfests, mobility debates and commuting summits.

Talk long enough about fixing the city region’s growing transportation challenges — slow commute, congestion, gridlock, whatever you call it — and two things happen: citizens tune out and conclude it’s all talk and no action; or they revolt, shout “enough” and demand solutions.

There’s a worse reaction: nonchalance and quiet acceptance of the status quo. Planned transportation discussions in the Toronto region over the next two months might just ignite a citizen movement:

• Delegates from the Canadian Urban Transportation Association are in town this week, painting a broad backdrop to discussions.

• The Star’s Tess Kalinowski set Twitter and email inboxes buzzing since Saturday with an excellent three-part series called “Road to Ruin.”

• Wednesday night, the University of Toronto brings together a number of experts and advocates seeking a way out of the perennial skidding that has replaced steady progress.

• All day Thursday at Wychwood Barns, Councillor Joe Mihevc hosts discussions aimed at mapping out the GTA’s transportation future.

• Nov. 22, Martin Collier holds his Transport Futures forum at the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto. He’ll convene international experts who have researched and implemented and championed road pricing measures to decrease gridlock, reduce environmental impacts and ease budgets. That kind of talk is anathema to the current city hall administration.

• Before Christmas, former city councillor Gordon Chong is to complete a report on funding the Sheppard subway extension without the majority of the money coming from property taxes and government grants. Mayor Rob Ford hired Chong to do the report after promising voters to build the $4 billion line using private sector money. Any bets?

The flurry of chatter is good for transit only if it begins to build a climate in which citizens share a baseline of information and understand the options facing the region. Already, misconceptions abound.

Some believe that a huge network of highways will disperse the cars and deliver clear highway travel to work all across the region. The evidence shows the opposite happens. Automobiles seem to expand to fill road capacity and the future becomes as congested as the past.

Most citizens underestimate how much time and energy it takes to implement one transportation option, much less a network of routes and modes of travel that is needed to address the variety of work-live situations across the GTA. Under normal circumstances, whatever we are talking about now will be delivered in two or three decades.

For instance, that subway extension to York University had to survive five premiers since its introduction in the 1980s. And it took the Pan Am Games to give it an urgency and drop-dead deadline of 2015.

Nothing about our transportation future is easy. It requires an engaged citizenry, relentless advocates who educate and promote, and opinion leaders reaching their target audience. And, maybe, within three or four decades, the Toronto region will begin to see the skeleton foundation of a viable network.

All that, and we haven’t even touched the elephant in the room: how to pay for it all.

FULL ARTICLE

By DAVID STAPLES

Tolls on roads and bridges haven’t been part of the Edmonton conversation on how we fund such things as the multibillion dollar Anthony Henday ring road or the new $132-million Walterdale Bridge.

But they should be.

The city has many transportation needs. Overpasses need to be built. The final northeast leg of the Henday must be completed. Roads need widening, potholes need filling and snow needs plowing. All this is massively expensive and competes with other transportation needs, such as expanding the LRT system.

We’re going to have to figure out some way to pay for all this, but jacking up property or fuel taxes is never popular. As Prof. Robin Lindsey of the University of British Columbia said in his 2007 paper on road tolls for the C.D. Howe Institute: “All this comes to a head as existing funding mechanisms such as the fuel tax are unlikely to yield enough revenues to pay for future maintenance, rehabilitation, and new construction – at least without large and politically unpopular increases in tax rates.”

For decades, roads have quite rightly been seen as a public good. It’s hard to imagine someone who doesn’t benefit from them. Even if you walk everywhere you go, you still buy your fruits and vegetables in a store that trucks the produce into the city. You will also be thankful for roads if you ever need an ambulance or a fire truck.

But it’s also the case that some of us benefit from our roads far more than others do…

The provincial and federal governments each give transportation grants as well as five cents per litre of their gas taxes to municipalities to build roads and other transportation infrastructure. But the amount the province and the feds rake in with driving-related fees and taxes is coming up increasingly short when it comes to paying for road building and maintenance, Lindsey says. “It has declined quite a bit, and almost without exception there is no earmarking of the (vehicle-related tax) money,” Lindsey says.

Most funding for new roads comes out of general revenues and property taxes.

In light of all this, some Canadian policy-makers have been building the case for a different model for financing roads: that those who use the roads most, and wear them out the fastest, should pay directly through a toll.

Most often, toll roads or toll zones are pushed in cities where there’s heavy congestion, such as Toronto or London…

But even in a less congested city such as Edmonton, there’s some weight to the notion that those who use a government service should contribute a user fee, Lindsey says. “It is consistent with a lot of people’s views on political economy that the people who use it are the ones who should pay for it. It’s the beneficiary principle.”

One of the main practical objections to tolls is that they slow down traffic, as cars line up at toll booths. However, this isn’t the case with modern tolling technology, Lindsey says…

For tolling to be accepted, the public must know exactly what the toll is paying for, Lindsey says. “It’s important to present things honestly and provide complete information. What’s generally been found around the world is people are initially hostile to tolling. Maybe two-thirds of them will just say, ‘No, we won’t countenance it.’ And then if they’re given more information they may come around. If they start to pay tolls and see the benefits, you can get a majority in favour.”…

For people to be convinced that tolls work efficiently on all counts, a pilot project is the way to go, perhaps a faster-moving lane on the Henday for toll-payers and for multioccupant vehicles, Lindsey says.

“People are mistrustful of the models. – They say, ‘Well, show me.’ You can’t show people unless you have the system operating. That’s where demonstration projects are useful.

“You take a small gamble, but a brave politician you hope is willing to do that. And then you bend over backward to make the experiment work well, and then you have a foot in the door and take the next step. You move from individual (toll roads or bridges) to the whole network.”…

FULL ARTICLE

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

By OTTAVIO GALELLA

MONTREAL – The federal government’s decision to build a new Champlain Bridge that would be financed through user tolls has brought about criticism from many observers – including the respected Gazette columnist Henry Aubin – who favour financing through a special metropolitan-fuel tax instead.

But tolls are, I believe, the wiser policy option.

Unlike the United States, Canada does not have a culture of dedicating fuel taxes for highways and public transit, except in special cases. What’s more, proposed increases in existing fuel taxes south of the border have been stalled for a long time as new kinds of tolls are being tested. In a few states, like New York, revenues from tolls exceed those from fuel taxes.

A growing number of jurisdictions have begun configuring tolls in order to influence when people drive their vehicles. Tolls are no longer merely being seen as a way to finance construction and maintenance.

They can influence driving habits when the price is set highest at peak periods of morning and evening travel, and lowest during other parts of the day. This variable-pricing model is known as congestion tolling. It has the effect of spreading out traffic flow to less-expensive time periods, and encouraging the use of public transit or carpooling. With proven electronic technology, there is no need for old-fashioned tollbooths, so traffic doesn’t have to slow down or come to a stop.

Congestion tolls can be applied to roads or bridges, or to express-toll lanes on highways. They can also be set up around a central-city core, as is the case now in London. Or they can be applied to all roads within a specific geographical area, through per-kilometre charges, a system being tested in the states of Oregon and Washington.

Congestion tolls have broad societal benefits. Because they reduce gridlock, they prevent lost economic productivity due to traffic congestion, which costs billions of dollars every year to the economies of big cities. At the same time, they are beneficial from an environmental standpoint. Reducing congestion means reducing the amount of time that vehicles spend idling in gridlock – and that, in turn, means fewer greenhouse-gas emissions…

In Montreal, congestion tolling should be used on all of Montreal Island’s 16 bridges, which carry 1.2 million vehicles per day and are chronically congested at peak periods.

Montreal’s bridges constitute the weakest links in a highway system that would benefit greatly from a fundamentally different approach to traffic management.

Evening and weekend travel could be exempted from tolling. Revenues in excess of the money needed for preventive and regular maintenance could be funnelled into regional public transportation.

The reduction of vehicular-traffic volumes at peak periods could allow for expansion of bus and taxi lanes, and of other modes of transportation. More park-and-ride facilities would appear along bridge corridors.

In my opinion, congestion tolling offers advantages for mobility that cannot be matched by fuel taxes.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

FULL ARTICLE

By THE CANADIAN PRESS

MONTREAL – Canadians are divided on whether tolls should be used to help pay for major infrastructure projects like new highways and bridges, a new survey suggests.

The Canadian Press/Harris Decima poll released Thursday indicates opinion is split right down the middle on the issue — with 48 per cent supporting tolls and 46 per cent opposing them…

With much of the country’s infrastructure seriously underfunded, and governments running deficits, policy-makers are being increasingly tempted by tolls as a way to pay for roads and bridges…

“The strength of the opinion for most people is not strong opinion — it’s a weaker opinion,” said Doug Anderson, senior vice-president of Harris Decima.

“I’d say a lengthy public debate would see opinions firm up and that could go either way.”…

West of Quebec, support for tolls ranged from a low of 42 per cent in Ontario to 51 per cent in British Columbia.

In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, support stood at 49 per cent, while Alberta came in at 45 per cent.

By LES PERREAUX and RHEAL SEGUIN

A federal plan to rebuild and charge tolls on a key bridge to Montreal is renewing a wider debate over turning the region’s network of bridges into Canada’s first pay-as-you-drive metropolitan system.

Transportation Minister Denis Lebel said the federal government will launch a public-private partnership to build a new Champlain Bridge over the next 10 years at a cost of up to $5-billion, but “at little or no cost to the taxpayer.”
More related to this story

Several municipal leaders in the Montreal region lined up behind the idea to pay for the bridge with tolls, some saying they should be charged on most, if not all, of the bridges leading to the Island of Montreal.

Tolls have long met strong resistance in Canada’s biggest cities. Ontario has a 108-kilometre toll freeway bypassing Toronto, but the city’s mayor, Rob Ford, campaigned against adding any new tolls in his successful election bid. Vancouver has a toll bridge, but suggestions of a wider network routinely die amid howls of suburban protest. Montreal had bridges with tolls for most of the 20th century. In 1990, the Champlain Bridge was the last to get rid of them.

Paul Leduc, the mayor of Brossard, a suburb right at the foot of the Champlain Bridge, says his community has long supported the principle that users should pay. The mayors of Montreal and Longueuil on the South Shore say more tolls are key to the future of the city’s regional transportation system, and should be used on more, if not all, of the metropolitan area’s bridges.

“In the 21st century, you have to find innovative ways to fund infrastructure. Tolls are one of the ways, and it’s up to us to explain it to taxpayers,” added Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay. “The right decision has been made here. There will be a bridge, there will be public transport on it, and there will be tolls.”

Longueuil Mayor Christine St-Hillaire added that “everybody should pay. Tolls shouldn’t be imposed just on the South Shore, it should be a metropolitan toll, not a toll on one community.”

Only the Quebec government appeared to hesitate. Transport Minister Pierre Moreau, conspicuously absent from Wednesday’s announcement, initially said he was against tolls, arguing they would unfairly penalize suburban commuters.

“It’s not a privilege for people in Brossard, who work in Montreal, to have to go to Montreal. And, meanwhile, someone in Longueuil could use the Jacques-Cartier and not have to pay. I certainly can’t ask local commuters to take a helicopter to go to the Jacques-Cartier or another bridge where there are no tolls,” said Mr. Moreau, who represents a South Shore riding.

FULL ARTICLE

By MARCIA CHEN

Party leaders campaigning in Ontario are not giving the issue of GTA traffic and congestion its due, according to a new poll.

An Environics survey for the Toronto Board of Trade found 70 per cent of those with an opinion on the election said current party platforms are not putting enough focus on gridlock

The poll also revealed 76 per cent believe traffic congestion has become worse over the past two years, and 61 per cent agreed it’s a crisis.

“Today’s poll results underscore [a] sense of urgency,” said board president Carol Wilding. “Goods and people need to move more quickly across the Toronto region to better support the regional economy.”

The board wants more importance placed on the Toronto region, which it says accounts for more than 40 per cent of Ontario’s population and generates 50 per cent of its economic activity.

In a companion report called It’s About Time, the board estimates gridlock costs the city’s economy $6 billion a year and says with people streaming into the GTA every year, that will likely grow to $15 billion by 2013 without more transportation options.

Specifically, the document calls for financing from all levels of government by next spring and a $50-billion regional strategy.

The Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties have promised $35 billion in infrastructure over the next three years, but would not specify exactly how much would go into transportation. The NDP says it would match cities’ transit operating costs dollar for dollar in exchange for a promise to freeze fares for four years.

Environics polled 500 GTA residents last Wednesday and Thursday. Results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

By ANTONELLA ARTUSO

An Ontario Conservative government would not put tolls on GTA highways in response to gridlock, PC Leader Tim Hudak says.

Instead, Hudak said he has set aside infrastructure funding to update transit and roads.

Families are spending too much time commuting and not enough with each other, he said…

Premier Dalton McGuinty has promised all-day GO Transit service in both directions in addition to infrastructure funding.

And NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has offered to take on half the operating cost of transit systems if they freeze their fares for four years.

Horwath also said no to toll roads.

FULL ARTICLE

By DAVID FLEISCHER

Commuters in the 905 area are being wooed by promises of big improvements to GO service, but are you ready to take advantage of them?

The Liberals took time this week to promise a rollout of all-day, two-way GO train service beginning in 2012. Premier Dalton McGuinty touted it at a Toronto Board of Trade meeting.

The promise, unveiled in the Liberal platform last week, would cost about $6.8 billion, including infrastructure improvements, while generating 68,000 jobs, Newmarket-Aurora candidate Christina Bisanz said at Aurora’s GO station.
People really see the value, she said, adding the plan will help reduce congestion on the roads and the estimation is GO would go from 47 million riders to more than 80 million riders in a 10-year period.

“I think we have to recognize the workforce is changing. People work at different times. It’s not all about nine-to-five, Monday to Friday,” she said…

… “It’s a good idea, but you have to do more,” Healthy Transport Consulting director Marty Collier said.

Given current transportation options it’s going to take more than new service to get drivers out of their cars. Part of that, he said, is having some form of road pricing so drivers are paying the actual costs of using roads.

“Until we price roads, you’re not going to get the demand (for off peak hour trains),” he said. “We have to level the playing field (between transit and driving) and give drivers an incentive to take GO Transit.

Metrolinx is set to unveil an investment strategy for funding transit expansion in 2013. Potential ideas floated so far include a local sales tax and some form of road pricing or tolls.

By BO NORMANDER

As the Danes prepare for the National Parliament elections on Thursday, most polls show that the centre-left parties are looking to return to power after ten years with a liberal-conservative government. The economy has been the dominant issue in this election, leaving little time for issues of climate change, energy and the environment. However, a new scheme for a congestion charge in Copenhagen has surprisingly dominated the debate.

Since Denmark’s prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Liberal Party), called a general election for September 15th, the difficult state of the Danish economy has been the main issue. Both the centre-left (the ‘red’ block), led by prime minister candidate Helle Thorning-Schmidt from the Social Democrats, and the liberal-conservative (the ‘blue’ block), led by Lars Løkke Rasmussen, have launched a number of policy initiatives to help the Danish economy regain growth.

In this debate there are no discussions on the apparent links between the economic crisis and the crisis of climate change and environmental degradation by any of the blocks. Despite a recent poll showing that 57 % of the Danes consider climate as one of the Top 5 issues in the election and 67 % want more ambitious targets on climate and energy, these issues have basically been ruled out. The Danish prime minister’s poor handling of the Copenhagen climate-change summit (COP15) in December 2009 has left a long-lasting vacuum that the political mainstream seems not willing to recover from and has even left the opposition party leaders unenthusiastic to bring up the issue.

From this perspective, it has been a surprise to most commentators that the issue of a congestion charge has drawn all the attention for the last 3 weeks since the Social Democrats and the Socialist People’s Party launched their initial proposal. The socialist Red-Green Alliance and the centre-left Social-Liberal party also support the idea, while the right-wing parties are against. Hence, a classic left-right battle has arisen leading to a furious and continuous debate on who will suffer and who will win from this transport measure.

Following the examples of Stockholm, London and Oslo, the congestion charges should help combat the increasing problems with traffic jams and air pollution in Copenhagen and other larger cities. The parties supporting the policy suggest a maximum charge of 25 kroner (approx. Euro 3.50) for each car crossing the border of the congestion zone within the city of Copenhagen (see below). The charge will be lower outside rush hours and free at night and during the weekends. The revenue from the charge should be invested in improved infrastructure and cheaper bus and train tickets. A study by Tetraplan consultants shows that a congestion charge can reduce road traffic by 23 %, air pollution by 5 to 10 % and CO2 emissions by 10 to 15 %.

In contrast, the liberal-conservative parties argue that a congestion charge is an inefficient and unfair way of regulating traffic. They suggest that the charge will particularly hit low-income families hard as they are dependent on a car to go to work and pick-up their children after school. Also, saying that business will suffer from the regulation of traffic. On the other hand, the priority for the blue block parties is to expand the city’s infrastructure; that includes the construction of a car tunnel under Copenhagen’s harbour, linking the North and South.

A total of nine parties are running for the 179 seats of the Danish Parliament and all parties (except for the Christian Democrats) are likely to be represented by passing the minimum threshold of 2 % of the votes. Despite the polls showing that the centre-left parties can form a majority, the margins are so small that anything can happen. The polling ends on Thursday at 8 pm and soon thereafter the first results will be available from Danish media.

By WAYNE ROBERTS

Some political junkies think medicare, social security for seniors and similar heart-and-mind issues are the “third rail” of politics – akin to the third rail on subway tracks – because any politician who touches them will be electrocuted.

But the real third rail in North American politics is free roads.

Every once in a while, an environmentalist without street smarts forgets this (brain clouded by too much car exhaust while biking, perhaps) and gets fried PDQ.

That’s what happened to Gord Miller, Ontario’s environment watchdog, when his annual report suggested road tolls as a way to reduce carbon emissions as well as cut through Toronto traffic jams, which create smog without any benefit of movement.

Needless to say, most politicians howl at the idea that drivers should pay for road use, while self-sabotaging green types talk up tolls as a way to pay for public transit – the very fate that drivers most dread and will cuss in traffic for hours to avoid.

Traffic jams don’t just happen on the road; they express the road map of transit planners’ minds.

Toronto’s notorious congestion – estimated to cost the economy up to $6 billion a year in lost productivity as truckers and others sit in traffic – testifies to the power of linear thinking and one-track minds on the left and right, green and brown.

The problem starts, says Martin Collier of Transport Futures, with the term “road tolls” rather than his preferred “road pricing.” There are countless ways to price roads, he argues, tolls being but one and far from the most useful.

Roads can be free for users, as they are now, though Toronto spends $100 million a year repairing them. Or they can be priced in tolls by the hour used (less for non-rush-hour times, for example); by the number of passengers (those with two or more passengers get the fast lane, for instance); at parking lots (perhaps a $1 levy added to parking fees); in gas taxes at the pump; or by car insurance (higher rates for people who drive to work) – to name only a few options.

One way or another, the full cost of roads – their construction, upkeep and eco impacts – have to be paid for. There’s no such thing as a free road.

We now pay almost exclusively via tax dollars, pollution and the currency of lost time. In economics, traffic jams are just the predictable pattern of long lineups whenever prices are discounted below real costs…

… Scream though many will, there is no long-term evasion of road pricing. The issue is whether that money will be invested in trip avoidance or trip creation.

FULL ARTICLE

By BOB HEPBURN, Editorial Board

It’s rare that I agree with Rob Ford, but the Toronto mayor is right when he says toll roads are a bad idea.

“It’s nonsense,” says Ford about slapping tolls — maybe up to $5 a trip — on Toronto roads such as the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. “I don’t support road tolls and there’s no road tolls going in,” he added.

Ford was reacting to comments last week by transit expert Gordon Chong, who said the city has no option but to look at road tolls, congestion fees and other sources of new money to pay for the $4.2 billion Sheppard subway extension.

Chong’s comments apparently caught Ford by surprise, namely because the mayor, whose views on road tolls are well known, had hand-picked Chong to be in charge of finding money to fund his controversial election promise to extend the Sheppard line.

Ford reacted quickly, but he’ll need to speak up more often and just as forcefully.

That’s because talk of toll roads isn’t going away.

Indeed, Toronto is fast approaching a showdown on tolls, the newest chapter in the city’s long-running “war on cars.”

Chong is just the latest in a long list of increasingly vocal “experts” who argue that the “best” way to fight traffic congestion, ease air pollution, improve our overall economy and fund public transit is to hit drivers with more and more taxes.

Ford’s right, though, when he says: “Nonsense!”

In fact, toll roads and congestion fees on cars entering downtown Toronto in peak hours aren’t the better way. Rather, they’re nothing but straight cash grabs on motorists, most of whom have no realistic option except to drive to work or go shopping.

No one disputes that our roads are overcrowded or that TTC service is often a joke.

But is slapping a punitive tax on drivers, who already pay hefty taxes whenever they fill up their cars or trucks or pay their annual licence fees, the best way to solve these problems?

Highly unlikely, says the Canadian Automobile Association, which has 2 million members in Ontario.

“We are passionate about this issue,” says Teresa Di Felice, director of government and community relations for CAA South Central Ontario, “but to simply say the CAA opposes tolls is misleading.”

Di Felice says the CCA wants to be part of a meaningful discussion in the city on all the ramifications and options dealing with transportation.

She and Faye Lyons, a CAA spokesperson, talk of “transportation options” beyond just tolls and higher gas taxes. One such option is to design highways where drivers can opt to use a lane with a toll or stick to a more crowded free lane.

Proponents of tolls roads love to talk about the “extra money” that will flow to highway projects and public transit.

But do you really believe that money will go to fixing the roads or building new subways or adding more buses?

Nearly $7 billion a year is already collected in provincial and federal gas taxes in Ontario, and the HST is generating another $15 billion from gas sales alone. Billions of those dollars are being used for non-transit purposes, such as paying down the government deficit.

If you think the “extra money” won’t also be siphoned off in the same way, then you haven’t learn from history.

At the same time, the champions of “congestion fees” like to cite the example of London, England, which imposed such a plan on drivers in 2003. Sure, traffic in central London dropped up to 20 per cent in the first few years. What the proponents fail to mention, though, is that traffic is now back to 2003 levels despite an increase in the “fee.”

That’s success?

As the CAA says, what Toronto needs is a serious, adult conversation on how to deal with traffic congestion and a lousy transit system.

The debate, though, can’t be led solely by the experts who are focused just on penalizing drivers with road tolls and who make false promises on how the money will be spent.

Which is why I support Ford — if only on this issue.

Letters to Editor:

• Opposition to road tolls is misguided
• Let’s stop cheating ourselves

Re: Road toll ‘reality check’ stirs up Toronto council, May 28

When straight-talking folks like Gordon Chong suggest road tolls as a revenue generator only for transit, the reaction from politicians is to be expected. They know that motorists will balk at paying a new user fee without a personal return on their investment.

Since 2008, our group has been exploring tolls and other mobility pricing measures that fund transportation infrastructure, tackle gridlock, shift demand to sustainable infrastructure, increase road safety and decrease environmental impacts. We are facilitating a rational conversation — indeed an education — about tolling benefits that accrue to motorists (e.g. trip reliability, more family time, gas savings, less vehicle wear and tear).

Although city councillors have been invited to learn from international experts at five of our conferences, only one has attended.

Given the transportation challenges we face, tolling will ultimately be part of the solution. But Mayor Rob Ford and city council must join with other GTA leaders and the province to implement mobility pricing policy across the region, preferably through Metrolinx.

Toronto cannot succeed on its own.

Martin Collier, Founder, Transport Futures, Toronto

By VINCE VERSACE

Inclusion of technological pricing innovations and mechanisms would strengthen Ontario’s recently released draft transit-supportive guidelines, says the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario (RCCAO).

“The guidelines have various good strategies — we were a little disappointed that no road-pricing strategies are mentioned, but in the future they will be critical,” said Andy Manahan, executive director of RCCAO.

Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation (MTO) draft Transit-Supportive Guidelines set out a range of strategies designed to boost transit ridership, which in turn will support provincial and municipal policies related to transportation, land use and the environment.

Manahan said that the draft guidelines are a “progressive document but with an unfortunate omission,” which is the lack of noted road pricing strategies.

“MTO’s updated guidelines provide strategies that support transit operationally, financially and culturally,” added Manahan. “If this is to occur in the next 20 years, road pricing and other measures that level the playing field between single-occupancy vehicles and transit will be needed sooner than later.”

MTO is updating and expanding the guidelines, first published jointly with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in 1992.

The draft guidelines include over 50 guidelines and almost 450 strategies to assist urban planners, transit planners, developers and others create an environment that is supportive of transit and increases transit ridership.

“The 2011 guidelines also include, for the first time, strategies for growing ridership through a range of tools, management approaches and technologies,” the guideline states.

Among the guidelines themes are:

• Encouraging compact patterns of development at densities capable of supporting transit service.

• Encouraging infill development and enhance street and open space networks to increase the overall density and mix of uses around transit services.

• Locating transit stops and stations where they are easily accessible to the largest number of people and can contribute to the efficient delivery of transit services

• Considering the layout, design and orientation of buildings and parking to help support transit ridership by integrating transit facilities into surrounding areas

RCCAO noted that there is no mention of tolled highway corridors, high occupancy toll lanes, priced zones or fully priced road networks as possible strategies to help improve transit and reduce congestion.

For instance, priced zones can be established around congested urban areas to “to improve multi-modal traffic flow and raise revenues for transit and other transport infrastructure,” the association stated.

RCCAO explained that road pricing strategies can influence motorists to take transit, improves transit service because there is less congestion (resulting in shorter trip times for all transportation modes) and can raise revenue for new or redesigned infrastructure that the draft guidelines encourage such as transit, complete streets, urban design and parking facilities.

Also, the “financial payback time (four years)” for a road pricing system is quicker compared to road and rail investments which typically deliver a return between 15 and 25 years.

By FRANK LUBA and SEAN SULLIVAN

Transport economist Robin Lindsey proposes a simple solution to the Lower Mainland’s transportation funding woes: charge tolls on all tunnels and bridges.

Lindsey, a professor of operations and logistics at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, cites a number of arguments for an approach he admits might not be popular.

There’s a user-pay principle involved, he says.

“The people that use a facility are the ones that should pay for it. That argument doesn’t go over too well for education and health, but it does go over well for most other goods and services.

“The argument is that if you’re retired and you walk everywhere, why should you pay for the Port Mann Bridge, the improvements on the Golden Bears?”

Lindsey said tolls on all bridges and tunnels, which could be managed with cameras as in Stockholm, would not only reduce congestion but also emissions.

“Accidents would come down roughly in proportion to the traffic reduction,” he predicts, cautioning that before doing anything he would conduct a thorough, interdisciplinary study.

“Selling it to the public would be another matter,” he concedes.

“Another advantage of tolling everyone is that it looks equitable. Everyone is being treated the same.”

User fees on roads, sewers and stormwater facilities are necessary to impress on people that they are dealing with scarce resources says Harry Kitchen. The municipal expert sees user fees as a logical response to the infrastructure deficit that is plaguing cities and advises senior levels of government to require them before bailing out cities.

Kitchen is renowned in some quarters and reviled in others for recommending in 2008 that Ontario slap tolls on its major highways and expressways, including the Linc and the Red Hill Valley Parkway. Notably unrepentant, he spoke to the Transport Futures 2011 Mobility Pricing Conference in Toronto last week.

“You need user fees so that the user realizes that the resource in question is scarce,” he argued. “In that way, it’s not overused.”

As recently reported in CATCH, Hamilton has about $15 billion in infrastructure with roads comprising the biggest portion. The cash-strapped city is currently managing to replace only one per cent of its roads each year, generating squabbles between urban and suburban councillors over whose roads should have priority.

Kitchen noted that there was “a growing tendency” for people to at least think about road-tolling, especially the younger crowd. Older people, long habituated to use of cars, are more resistant, he observed. But road tolling is coming, he and other speakers at the conference agreed. It’s a question of when.

The January 17 issue of Macleans, Canada’s conservative-leaning national magazine, carried a six-page article making the case for road tolling. According to writer Andrew Coyne,“…whether we are talking about cars, or buses, or tennis rackets…people make better decisions when they know what things cost. Right now the true cost of using roads is hidden, leading people to drive more and in different ways than they would if they were better informed.”

Coyne pointed to the success of Highway 407, Ontario’s only tolled highway. He speculated that had Highway 401 been tolled when it was first built, it may not have been necessary to build Highway 407.

In his conference talk, Kitchen was dismayed that about 13 per cent of municipal spending in Canada is for roads, but less than 4 per cent goes to public transit.
Hamilton city council was recently told that transit reductions since 1989 included a loss of almost 770 hours of bus service per week. That was part of a debate that saw councillors again refuse to approve an extra $3 million to improve HSR service.

Kitchen said that if roads were “properly priced,” it would be possible, for example, to also have zone charges for transit – and impose extra charges for journeys along certain high-traffic routes and lesser chargers for low-traffic routes.

He also focused on water and sewer systems as examples of other public services that are irrationally priced. Noting that only about 60 per cent of Canadian homes have water meters, he concluded unfair pricing is often the result.

Kitchen issued a warning about the so-called “infrastructure deficit.” He said senior governments should not rush to give grants to municipalities for infrastructure until they implement ways to recover costs.

The result of not doing so is, for example, is over-built water systems “where municipalities receive $.75 for every dollar spent.”

“Asset recovery costs” need to be built into pricing for infrastructure, Kitchen said. “Until we start to properly price for a service, that service will be overused and oversized assets will be the result.”