A massive thank you to 100 delegates who attended — and celebrated — the Transport Futures 5th Anniversary Mobility Pricing Summit on November 18! The timing of the Summit couldn’t have been better with Metrolinx’s Investment Strategy being reviewed by the provincial government’s Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel.  Since parking levies, gas taxes and HOT Lanes were on the final list of Metrolinx recommendations, Summit speakers focused on how these and other mobility pricing measures help achieve equity, efficiency and accountability as public transit and road infrastructure investments are made. 

Ralph Bond, BA Group
Nancy Olewiler, TransLink and Simon Fraser University
Charie Howard, Puget Sound Regional Council
Darren Karasiuk, Environics Research Group
David King, Arizona State University
Brendon Hemily, Hemily & Associates
John Howe, Consultant
Vijay Gill, CPCS
Gunnar Soderholm
Gunnar Söderholm, City of Stockholm

Here is a smattering of how delegates assessed our dynamic agenda:

  • “Congrats on assembling such a great program of local, Canadian and international speakers.”
  • “Speakers gave me an understanding of what works and what doesn’t and how to make things happen outside and within the GTHA.”
  • “I’m a first time attendee and it was great!”
  • “The value I sought, and received, was inspiration.  The speakers were excellent, well-chosen and reported interesting research.”
  • “Having already been in favour of mobility pricing the Summit gave me more detailed info on how to best implement mobility pricing.”
  • “As always, the speakers were excellent, they are obvious experts in their fields and provided me with new and valuable information about mobility pricing.”
  • “Nice to hear about some new ideas re: research needs related to parking and freight.”
  • “I wasn’t aware of the challenges around road pricing freight vehicles, so I learned a lot about that… I enjoyed the music played between sessions — the quiz was also very fun and creative.”
  • “A great event and will definitely plan to attend next year.”

Although Ontario and Canada have not kept pace with the technical and public acceptance gains made in other global cities and countries, those who attended the Summit were inspired to move more quickly on mobility pricing and infrastructure funding.

On November 19, Transport Futures founder Martin Collier joined speakers Gunnar Söderholm, Charlie Howard, Brendon Hemily and Vijay Gill for a panel discussion with Steve Paikin, host of TVO’s The Agenda.  The 50-minute conversation covered several big issues:  congestion, mobility pricing (tolls, parking fees, gas taxes), state of transit and road infrastructure, governance and more — all with the international perspective that is well known to Transport Futures delegates. 

The Mobility Pricing Summit was generously sponsored by the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario (Platinum), 407 ETR (Gold), the Ontario Good Roads Association and BA Group (Silver) and e-RegisterNow (supporter).