For whom the road tolls
By EDWARD KEENAN
... Few issues in the building of this city that loom larger than transportation — from environmental concerns to commute times, almost nothing has a bigger impact on both the big picture and our daily lives.
What’s really interesting is that I’ve already seen something like the bold proposal I’d love to hear from a candidate. It would take a made-in-Toronto innovation and the most advanced thinking about how to solve gridlock and entirely transform how we get around. I read about it, of course, in an American magazine.
In the June issue of Wired, journalist Felix Salmon profiled New Yorker Charles Komanoff, who has made thousands of calculations about the costs to commuters and to society of various ways of getting around to create a sophisticated model for pricing various forms of transportation: toll-style congestion charges on driving for various roads at various times of day, varying rates for subway use and cab use, charges for parking and so on. Interestingly, his plan calls for buses to be free because his math says the time it takes to collect fares isn’t worth the charge.
This kind of congestion charging, which discards the myth that driving on city streets and highways has no cost to society and should be “free,” would generate the revenue needed to both maintain the roads and to build an evermore ambitious transit and cycling network. It would look at all forms of getting around — transit, driving, cycling, walking — as part of a coordinated system and price each option accordingly, and pay for each option accordingly, too.