All You Can Drive
Ryan McGreal writes in this editorial that "market-based highway tolls would get us out of our traffic jams and into an optimistic future of high quality regional transit, stronger job growth and better economic prospects."
What would be the demand for an all-you-can-eat buffet ... if it were free?
Imagine line-ups running out the front door and down the street, hungry people waiting in frustration for the line to inch forward. Eventually you get in and manage to push your way to a table.
After more standing in line to get to the buffet itself - a long table ravaged by the unrelenting rush of hungry patrons - you try to enjoy your meal amidst the frenzy of grumpy, jostling diners that surrounds you.
Off to your right, someone finally loses their temper and starts yelling. A shoving match breaks out. Overturned chairs clatter to the floor and dishes smash. Restaurant staff cordon off part of the dining area to clean up the mess as the antagonists are ushered out the door.
As the line-ups keep getting worse, demand builds to expand the restaurant's capacity by taking over the adjacent buildings, hiring more staff and increasing the volume of food production. More entrances are added and the lobbies are widened.
Eventually, it becomes necessary to build a whole new buffet to service the demand. The new buffet is twice as big as the old one. For a while, it's possible to get in, enjoy a decent meal and get out again without a lot of congestion.
Over time, more and more people start moving near the new buffet. Eventually it becomes just as congested as the old one. Pressure mounts to widen this buffet as well and, ultimately, to build yet another buffet farther out.
Insatiable Demand
Try to imagine how we might pay for this arrangement. Actually charging diners to eat is out of the question - political suicide for any government that dares to propose it - so it requires public funding to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
All citizens must pay for the buffets whether or not they decide to eat there. Of course, most citizens do eat there. What kind of sucker would pay for food when you can get it for "free"?
You don't need to be an economist to draw the obvious conclusions from this thought experiment: the market "demand" for a free buffet is insatiable. If people don't have to pay for it themselves, they have no incentive to conserve. Because it's "free", alternative food arrangements have no chance to compete.
Obviously, such a scenario couldn't possibly work in practice. People need to eat, but no one in their right mind would recommend a free buffet as the way to feed everyone.
The Buffet is Real
Yet we have no problem defending this very same arrangement on our highways. Everyone has to get to work, after all. If we didn't have "free" highways, how would people get around?
We see all the hallmarks of our hypothetical free all-you-can-eat buffet in our actual all-you-can-drive buffet: the insatiable demand, the unmanageable congestion, the frustration and stress - and the perverse public demand to maintain it at all costs.
As I write this, an online Spectator poll asks: "Would you support polls on existing roads?" Granted that it's a straw poll, the result - 86.05% of respondents said "No" - is instructive.
I'm surprised the Ontario government is even floating this idea. One of the reasons Metrolinx, the provincial body coordinating rapid transit across the GTA and Hamilton, doesn't have a long-term funding model in place is that the idea of highway tolls was considered too politically radioactive to contemplate.
Easy Fix
The problem of congestion and induced demand on "free" highways is very difficult to address politically, but quite straightforward in technical terms. The government needs only charge a toll that varies by time of day to ensure enough spare capacity that traffic can move freely.
The revenue can fund improvements to GO Train service so that it becomes a viable - i.e. fast, convenient, and flexible - alternative to driving.
Everyone wins. Drivers no longer have to sit in traffic. People who would rather take the train now have that option. Air quality improves. Cities intensify (a provincial planning goal) as the false economy of cheap houses in highway-serviced suburbs gives way to high quality neighbourhoods served by local amenities and transit.
An OECD report released just a few weeks ago concluded that the GTA's infamous highway congestion is a significant drag on our economy. We lose billions of dollars a year in productivity because people and goods are stuck in traffic.
Market-based highway tolls would get us out of our traffic jams and into an optimistic future of high quality regional transit, stronger job growth and better economic prospects.
If we actually go through with this, once we see how well it works we will scratch our heads and wonder why we didn't do it decades ago. That's not going to happen until we recognize the folly of today's "free" all-you-can-drive buffet.