Tag: traffic

Jennifer Keesmaat on why Toronto should be making drivers pay

When I was city planner, I tried to implement congestion pricing, as New York has now done. It’s not too late

This article was written by Jennifer Keesmaat and was published in the Toronto Star on January 11, 2025.

Cars pass under a sign warning about new tolls on the George Washington Bridge, as congestion pricing takes effect in New York City this month.

New York City has just done what too many growing cities are afraid to do, including our own: confront gridlock headon with a proven solution. While in New York it has faced controversy and legal challenges, the adoption of congestion pricing is a critical step toward transforming the city into a walkable, quieter and less congested place.

Cities like London and Singapore already have decades of history with this approach and have demonstrated the clear benefits, showing that when policies discourage unnecessary car use, residents adapt and the entire urban ecosystem improves. Reduced traffic, shorter commute times, cleaner air and a quieter, safer and more efficient city are not hypothetical outcomes — they are proven realities.

London implemented congestion pricing in 2003. Initially, the fee was the equivalent of about $9, but today London levies a nearly $27 daily charge if driving within the congestion charge zone between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. weekdays and noon till 6 p.m. on weekends and bank holidays.

Within a year, traffic volumes in central London dropped by 15 per cent, with journey times improving by 30 per cent. Over time, emissions decreased significantly — nitrogen oxide levels fell by nearly 20 per cent in the congestion zone.

Singapore, which launched its system in 1998, saw peakhour car usage drop by more than 10 per cent, resulting in smoother commutes and vastly improved air quality — even as the citystate continued to grow.

One of the most striking lessons from these cities is how public opinion shifts. Initial resistance in London was high, with only 40 per cent of residents in favour. Yet once the program was implemented, support grew as the benefits became clear. Within a year, nearly 60 per cent of Londoners supported the policy.

Congestion pricing is the only proven method to manage induced demand — a phenomenon where increasing road capacity creates more traffic. Without congestion pricing, we plan for failure: more traffic, pollution, conflict and declining public spaces. When driving is inexpensive and convenient compared to the limited road space in a city, it creates a vicious cycle of car dependence and gridlock, ultimately degrading the quality of urban life.

Cleaner air is one of the most profound but often overlooked benefits of congestion pricing. In London, particulate matter levels in congested zones dropped nearly 30 per cent after implementation.

Cleaner air means fewer asthma cases, reduced hospitalizations and better longterm respiratory health, especially for children and seniors, who are most vulnerable to air pollution.

New York City’s move promises similar benefits.

New York’s toll program varies by vehicle and time of day. As an example, the peak rate fee (from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays) for passenger and small commercial vehicles is the equivalent of about $13 (Canadian). The off peak rate is just over $3.

As chief planner for the City of Toronto, I spearheaded a 2016 initiative to introduce congestion pricing in the downtown core. The plan involved adding tolls to cars and trucks driving downtown on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway.

The modelling was crystal clear: congestion pricing would reduce traffic, generate muchneeded revenue for transit, and make our streets safer and more efficient.

Despite strong backing from transportation engineers and transit experts, the proposal was blocked at the provincial level — opposition that today remains a barrier to implementing congestion pricing in Toronto. Fast forward to today and our streets are often gridlocked — just as our transportation planning model predicted for a growing city like ours.

The decision not to act, combined with regional planning policies focused on suburban sprawl, has had predictable consequences. Traffic congestion now costs the city billions annually and vehicle emissions remain one of its largest contributors to climate change.

By avoiding congestion pricing, we’ve ensured the very outcomes we sought to avoid: more traffic, more pollution and greater frustration.

New York will face challenges during its transition. Resistance is normal, but the benefits of congestion pricing are undeniable and support for the policy will grow. Within a year of implementation, public approval will likely mirror the upward trend seen in other cities as residents experience the advantages firsthand.

The question isn’t whether congestion pricing works. It does. The question is whether we have the courage to plan for the cities we want to live in, instead of the ones we are stuck with. New York has made its choice, and the benefits will follow. Toronto should take note.

Could a congestion charge work here?

Experts say toll system can reduce gridlock if city can offer viable transportation alternatives

This article was written by Estella Ren and was published in the Toronto Star on January 9, 2025.

Drivers cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan this week after New York became the first U.S. city to adopt a congestion pricing system.

A congestion charge, a longdebated idea in North America, has finally come into effect in New York City and is being praised by experts who say Toronto could benefit from a similar approach.

On Sunday, New York was the first U.S. city to adopt the system after years of studies and delays, joining the likes of London, Stockholm and Singapore which have seen lasting traffic reductions since implementing congestion charges.

The toll system, which is applied to the most congested parts of a city, is meant to reduce gridlock and pollution and raise revenue for public transit.

Toronto council once endorsed tolls on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway in 2016 to help improve gridlock in a city that has some of the worst traffic in the world. But the plan was scuttled by the Liberal government at the time. In the past September, the city’s transportation department once again said a congestion charge on motorists is not an option on the table.

Despite the Ontario government’s efforts to double down on car mobility, Canadian transportation experts say a congestion charge in Toronto could be a more efficient way to alleviate traffic jams.

“I do think Toronto is at the point where the congestion is so bad. And, the drag on our economy and our quality of life is getting to the point where this does have to be on the table, and has to be studied very carefully,” said Matti Siemiatycki, a geography and planning professor at the University of Toronto.

During peak traffic hours — between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays and on weekends between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. — drivers of cars, SUVs, small vans and pickup trucks with an EZPass need to pay $9 (U.S.) once per day to enter Manhattan south of Central Park. During off hours, the toll is $2.25 for most vehicles.

Drivers without an EZPass will receive bills by mail and pay more: $13.50 for peak hours and $3.30 overnight.

When charging a price on the road, based on the laws of supply and demand, people will drive less and opt for alternative ways to travel to the city, Siemiatycki said.

Congestion has a price tag too, even though it is often not thought of in this way: people either pay in money, or in time and lost in economic productivity, he added. The latter was estimated at $11 billion annually in the GTA by a study in 2013.

Siemiatycki pointed to Highway 407 as an example of how road tolls work in Toronto and said no matter how much people dislike the cost, it ensures people get across the city in “a reliable fashion.”

“This New York experiment, or an example, is so important because it has the potential to show what’s possible across North America,” he said.

While Jeff Casello applauded the congestion charge in New York as “a fantastic policy,” the urban planning professor at the University of Waterloo said he is concerned about implementing a similar charge in Toronto when there “isn’t any viable alternatives” for transportation.

“Imagine that there was a massive park and ride where you could park your car in a parkandride facility at Pearson Airport, for example, and then take the UP Express downtown. That’s what we ought to be encouraging,” he said.

Siemiatycki, who echoed the sentiment, said if the system is implemented, the city needs to have equity at its core and make sure the public transportation is in place.

“The other point that often doesn’t get talked about is, at the moment, it’s almost virtually impossible to run an effective public transit system on those highways because they’re so congested,” he said.

The key to the congestion pricing system in New York and London is their ability to collect the revenue to improve public transit, while the tolls of Highway 407 are not used for that benefit, said Bruce Hellinga, a transportation engineering professor at the University of Waterloo.

Toronto’s city council has considered the road levy as a potential revenue tool in to relieve the city’s financial pressures. However, the city determined that road pricing policy involves high costs as it will require the city to partner with a technology company to implement the licence plate capture system.

Dakota Brasier, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Transportation, said in a statement that they will remain focused on building the critical infrastructure including allocating nearly $100 billion toward new roads and transit.

“Unlike the Liberals, we will never add a tax or toll to any road in Ontario,” he said.

Siemiatycki also acknowledged that road pricing is an unpopular idea in suburban areas while taking off road tolls, expanding highway networks and cutting bike lanes have “an effective political wedge.”

“We do have to acknowledge that the approach that they’re following is popular. The problem is it hasn’t been effective. I mean congestion has gotten worse during their six years in office,” Siemiatycki said.

“It might be good policy, but it’s not good politics,” he said.

I’ll pay to drive with NYC’s new congestion charge – but I consider it a bargain

This opinion was written by Michael Learmonth and was published by the Globe & Mail on January 4, 2025.

Guess how much it costs today to drive a car, SUV or truck into Manhattan, centre of the Western world, and home to Times Square, Wall Street, the World Trade Center, Broadway, Chinatown and SoHo? That would be zero dollars. That’s right, completely free to drive a personal vehicle into one of the most congested and populated places in America.

As of Sunday, that could change. I say “could” because the city’s congestion pricing plan has been on the drawing board for decades, and despite passing various legal hurdles, could still run into problems. A myriad of lawsuits, most prominently from the State of New Jersey, the Staten Island borough president and the United Federation of Teachers, have sought to halt the plan. Then there’s president-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to end it as soon as he takes office later this month.

The fee, which was lowered to US$9 from US$15 at the 11th hour by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, is an incredible bargain. Consider that a subway ride for two in and out of the city costs US$11.60. Provided it survives, the congestion pricing plan would be the first in the United States, following the lead of London, Milan, Singapore and Stockholm. It’s also the opening salvo in a wider battle over city streets and the purpose of neighbourhoods that is playing out across the country, and will also be closely watched in cities such as Toronto, which are also being strangled by traffic problems.

The debate over this plan is most often framed in the potential harm it would cause to suburban commuters, to outer-borough neighbourhoods that may absorb more traffic and to essential workers like teachers, nurses, police and firefighters who live outside the city. Ms. Hochul even delayed it until after November’s election in hopes of not losing Democratic House seats in the suburbs. What’s never considered are the residents of Manhattan, and particularly of Lower Manhattan, where I’ve lived for nearly 25 years.

No one moves to Manhattan for a bucolic, honking-free environment, or at least no one should. That said, the traffic in Lower Manhattan has gotten exponentially worse since the pandemic. Intersections are routinely gridlocked. Drivers veer into oncoming traffic, bike lanes and crosswalks, endangering pedestrians. Once, my street was relatively little-travelled. Now it is the de facto entrance to the currently free Williamsburg Bridge, with near constant idling cars and smog. Recently the NYPD brought in a surge of traffic enforcement to my street, which now has a mid-block light and several cops on each corner just to keep a semblance of law and order. I know of two people who’ve been hit on one end of my street, and the other end is named for 12-year-old Dashane Santana, who was killed in a crosswalk several years ago.

One day, the idea that we prioritize car mobility in this way will be unthinkable in the same way today’s residents can hardly imagine a time when people smoked in bars and restaurants and streets had no bike lanes or bike share docks. Today, the only smoke anyone smells in New York City is weed and there’s more than 1,500 miles of bike lanes. (Mile 1,000 is commemorated with a little sign in front of my building.)

Keep in mind, the only reason this neighbourhood exists at all is because a group of iconoclasts and visionaries led by writer Jane Jacobs prevented then-unstoppable city planner Robert Moses from building the Cross Manhattan Expressway in 1959, which would have levelled the Lower East Side, Little Italy and SoHo, all to provide motorists a convenient through-way across the island. That may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it’s unthinkable today. In a few years, the idea that people drove into Lower Manhattan will seem just as ridiculous.

It’s time to ask (and answer) a simple question: What are neighbourhoods for? Do they exist to enable the efficient passage of traffic, which is how NYC’s Department of Transportation treats them? And why should the passage of cars have priority over nearly every other use of our streets?

Ironically, the pandemic, which drove people away from mass transit and into their cars, also opened up the issue for debate. As we speak, the city is demolishing the pandemic-era dining sheds. Some had become decrepit, but others literally transformed streets by taking real estate away from cars and giving it to people and small businesses. Why shouldn’t the reconquest of streets, some widened in the 1940s and 1950s to accommodate cars at the expense of dining, pedestrians and literally anything else, continue?

The city is taking some steps to take space back from cars. Park Avenue, the Gilded Age boulevard that once actually had a park in the middle, is getting its park back at the expense of two car lanes, and the city has a similar proposal for the iconic Fifth Avenue. It should keep going. Does it make sense that shoppers on Spring Street in SoHo literally turn sideways to make it down sidewalks while a half dozen giant SUVs sit there, idling on its cobblestone streets? Or how about Mulberry Street in Little Italy? No, it doesn’t.

Change is hard, and I do sympathize with folks who will have to adjust as a result. That includes me, by the way. Even residents aren’t exempt from congestion pricing, so I’ll pay US$9 every time I re-enter the zone, which will definitely change the math when I decide whether to pick up someone at LaGuardia or go to Lowes in Brooklyn. But because the billions raised are earmarked for transit, ending the car subsidy will finally force drivers to contribute to a system that makes urban life possible, rather than tear it down because it’s cheaper or incrementally more convenient.

Soon, driving to Manhattan will be understood for what it is, a luxury product that has a cost that you should be paying for.

How paying a road toll can fix your life

This editorial was written and published by the Globe & Mail on December 16, 2024.

Everyone likes to get something for free, including drivers who spend hours commuting. But that highlights the paradox of free roads: they aren’t, really, once all the broader costs are tallied. The price of maintaining roads is spread among everyone, whether they drive or not. And motorists pay the cost of congestion in time and aggravation. This has never been particularly logical, but it makes even less sense as traffic woes mount and gas-tax revenues, which help fund some road costs, are set to decline over time.

It’s time for “toll” to stop being a dirty word in Canada. Not convinced? Forget about the effect of congestion on the economy and consider how it affects you personally.

A recent study conducted for lobby groups in the construction and road-building industry pegged the effect this year of congestion on the “daily lives and well-being” of Ontario drivers at nearly $44-billion. With 11 million licensed drivers in the province, that works out to $4,000 each.

There are problems inherent in cost-of-congestion studies. They usually compare existing travel times with some theoretical scenario with less traffic. However, with rare exceptions – Singapore and its extensive tolling network springs to mind – cities are congested. It’s a sign that they’re economically robust.

Still, congestion in many Canadian cities is increasing. There is value in limiting its psychological and time-wasting impact. So far, though, Canadian drivers have expected others to pick up the bill.

Consider those soft costs supposedly being borne by Ontario drivers. Do they feel their time and aggravation is worth thousands of dollars a year? One way to deduce that is looking at how much they’re willing to pay to get home faster. The answer for most of them, it’s clear, is nothing.

The tolled Highway 407 north of Toronto is relatively empty while the untolled Highway 401 that runs parallel to it is jammed. Instead of paying to drive on the 407, drivers clamour for the government to build a new, and untolled, Highway 413. (The province has also mused about a massive tunnel underneath the 401. Untolled, naturally.)

It’s a pan-Canadian tradition. When the Champlain Bridge in Montreal was replaced at a cost of more than $4.4-billion, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stressed that drivers wouldn’t be charged to use it. In British Columbia, the Pattullo Bridge is being rebuilt for $1.4-billion and won’t levy a toll.

This is misguided. Tolling reduces congestion by putting a value on how much a driver wants to make a trip at that time. This frees up road space for those who truly need it, and levels traffic flows through the day.

Less crowded roads also mean faster bus and streetcar service, in turn convincing more people not to drive.

Charging to drive also addresses a basic issue of fairness. Who should pay the full cost of driving? Drivers. But the gas tax doesn’t come close to covering the costs of road infrastructure.

Longer term, gas-tax revenues will go down as automobiles become more efficient and electric vehicles become more widespread. Several U.S. jurisdictions have reacted to falling gasoline consumption by switching to distance-based charges. Oregon, an early adopter, in 2015 started experimenting with a two-cent-a-mile driving fee.

The convergence of worsening traffic and diminishing gastax revenues offers an opportunity. Gas taxes are a dumb tax in that they charge a set amount for gasoline no matter where and when it is burned. They are crude. Replacing that tax with a price on driving offers far more sophisticated possibilities.

Imagine a higher toll at the worst of rush hour. This would shift some trips to less busy times, freeing up capacity for those who can’t adjust their schedule. Or the cost could fluctuate based on congestion, encouraging drivers to take less crowded routes. In the most efficient use of resources, the 401 and 407 highways would be equally busy.

Even though road-pricing works, the preference among Canadian drivers has been that someone else should pay. Motorists are quite willing to have governments spend vast amounts of money on road-expanding projects that won’t end up shortening their commute time.

Instead, they should accept a toll to help their own cause. It could get them home more quickly – and in a better mood.

Singapore’s traffic is no worse than Halifax’s. Toronto’s could be, too

Andrew Coyne

This opinion was written by Andrew Coyne and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 29, 2024.

Motorists enter Singapore’s central business district during peak morning traffic, on May 31, 2016.ROSLAN RAHMAN/GETTY IMAGES

Every day the traffic problem in Toronto seems to get a little worse. Because it is getting worse – measurably, miserably worse. A recent Globe story offers some telling statistics: Torontonians spend 63 hours a year, on average, stuck in traffic. It takes 11 per cent longer on average to get to where you’re going than it did even 10 years ago, when traffic was merely intolerable.

Toronto also has the longest commute time of any city in Canada, at more than 33 minutes. All told, according to the 2023 Traffic Index, compiled by the GPS software firm TomTom, Toronto’s traffic is third worst among 387 major cities in 55 countries around the world. Third worst in the world.

Just don’t expect Toronto’s politicians to fix it. All through the years, as traffic in Toronto first slowed, then crawled, then stopped, the same non-solutions have been advanced. “Build more roads!” say the right. “Build more transit!” say the left.

Put in more bike lanes! Take out the bike lanes! Force people to carpool! Synchronize the traffic lights! In the latest addition to this canon of futility, Ontario’s Premier has proposed building a tunnel under the city’s central artery, Highway 401. Might as well. We’ve tried all the other solutions and found they didn’t work. Why not try one we know won’t work?

All of these approaches, disparate as they may seem, have a common theme. Traffic is moving too slowly. Therefore: make the traffic go faster. Sounds logical enough. The reason it doesn’t work is rooted in a phenomenon well known to traffic experts: induced demand.

There aren’t enough roads in the world for all the cars that might want to use them, if they all headed out at the same time. Road space, like anything else, is scarce, and like any other scarce thing, has to be rationed. Most things we ration by price: otherwise we’d have bread lines. How do we ration road space? By time.

The amount of time it takes to get somewhere is the “price” you pay to use the roads. Lower the price – make the traffic go faster – and what happens? Right: people drive more. Build more roads, and they are soon just as clogged with cars as before. Build more transit, and even if you can get some people to leave their cars, others take their place.

It doesn’t have to be this way. For a vision of what is possible, we take you now to another city, half a world away: Singapore. The city-state has a population of more than six million – nearly as many as the Greater Toronto Area, only packed into an island about a tenth the size.

Yet it ranks 170th on the TomTom index – about the same as Halifax (population 480,000). Where the average time it takes to travel 10 kilometres in Toronto is nearly 30 minutes, in Singapore it is under 17 minutes. The average speed at rush hour in Toronto is 18 kilometres an hour. In Singapore it is 28.

Things weren’t always so free-flowing. Fifty years ago, Singapore had traffic problems on par with most other rapidly expanding cities, particularly in its central business district (CBD). What changed? Road pricing: only for real, not the time-based parody of it. In 1975, Singapore implemented the world’s first system of congestion pricing, a ring of 28 overhead gantries around the CBD. Drivers had to buy and display paper licences costing roughly $3 a day.

In 1998 the system was expanded and upgraded: the world’s first electronic road pricing system. Since then dozens of gantries have been installed, not just around the CBD but on every major artery, with sensors that can detect the transponders in people’s cars as they pass. The price is deducted from stored-value cards in the transponders, varying with the size of the road and the time of day.

And coming soon: ERP 2.0 – the world’s first GPS-based electronic road pricing system. No more gantries: the on-board transponders will correspond with satellite-based monitors. In principle, this means you could price, not just major arteries, but every road, with prices changing dynamically, in line with congestion levels. And no, that doesn’t mean the government tracks everyone’s movements. The data are all anonymized.

Traffic is not only one of the worst of urban blights, but one of the few that could be cured literally overnight. Road pricing works. Singapore has proved it. Or forget Singapore: Toronto already has a working model of road pricing, the hugely successful Highway 407, which opened in 1997 – one year before Singapore’s. Yet here we all sit, decades later, stuck in traffic.

It’s one thing to refuse to learn from other people’s successes, but to refuse to learn from our own is criminal.

PCs urged to pay truckers’ tolls

Proponents say move could quickly reduce gridlock on highways, roads

This article was written by David Rider and was published in the Toronto Star on December 2, 2024.

Proponents of diverting truck traffic from packed 400-series highways to private Highway 407 say the Ford government doesn’t need to strike a deal with the 407’s owners — it can quickly ease gridlock by simply paying truckers’ tolls.

Vaughan Coun. Marilyn Iafrate will on Tuesday urge her colleagues to lobby Premier Doug Ford to study the feasibility of buying back Highway 407 which the provincial government built and in 1999 sold to private operators to run as a tolled alternative to public roads.

But Iafrate said that, in the meantime, the province should launch a one-year pilot program to subsidize or eliminate truckers’ Highway 407 tolls to lure them off public highways and regional roads.

The province should then, she said, study the move’s impact on “traffic congestion and overall traffic efficiency.”

In an interview, Iafrate accused Ford of dreaming up new roads to combat gridlock, including planned Highway 413 that would impact her ward and which she opposes, and a possible tunnel under a swath of Highway 401, when a quicker, more cost-effective and underutilized solution sits in plain sight.

“If I’m on Highway 7 stuck at Bathurst Street going toward Bayview Avenue, I look south and see Highway 407 running free and that’s what irritates people — they’re very angry because we’re stuck while traffic is running free over there on a highway that we paid for,” she said.

(People are) very angry because we’re stuck while traffic is running free over there on a highway that we paid for.

MARILYN IAFRATE VAUGHAN COUNCILLOR

“It’s a no-brainer — they’ve got a piece of road that could be kickstarted tomorrow and provide immediate relief to residents of Vaughan,” and beyond.

Her push comes days after a spokesperson for Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said the government has “been in conversations with the 407,” adding: “We will continue to find ways to make life more affordable for Ontarians and ensure they can get where they need to go every day. This includes looking at all options and building the critical infrastructure we need to keep up with our growing population.”

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation, Dakota Brasier, declined to say if talks are about buying back the highway or subsidizing truck tolls, or something else.

In an email Highway 407 ETR spokesperson Christina Basil said: “We continue to have regular meetings with the Government and explore opportunities to alleviate congestion across the region. We’re always open to constructive dialogue that benefits both commercial users and the greater transportation network, though the Ontario Government hasn’t engaged in any discussions with us regarding a potential buyback of Highway 407 ETR.”

Basil declined to say if talks have included the possibility of Ontario subsidizing truck tolls.

Iafrate, whose ward includes Maple and Kleinburg, argued that Highway 407 majority owners, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, should not charge Ontario for a pilot project to shift trucks to the tollway given that, in 2021, the Ford government opted to not pursue about $1 billion in penalties when 407 traffic levels fell below a contractual target during the pandemic.

The province could strengthen its bargaining position by buying out the current 407 shareholders, she said, including the 6.76 per cent AtkinsRéalis Group Inc., formerly SNC Lavalin Group Inc., which plans to sell by the end of 2027. But even if no deal can be reached, the province could simply start a process to fully or partially rebate truckers any Highway 407 tolls, Iafrate said, predicting an immediate decrease in gridlock on Highway 401 and other roads at a cost affordable to taxpayers.

A September 2023 report commissioned by Environmental Defence argued that fully subsidizing Highway 407 truck tolls for 30 years would cost substantially less than building the 52-kilometre Highway 413 through York, Peel and Halton while sparing agricultural land from the steamroller.

Phil Pothen, the group’s Ontario Environment Program Manager, said in an interview: “Subsidizing tolls on the 407 could be implemented easily and ramped down as measures to actually reduce traffic on Highway 401 kick in.

“The actual solution to traffic problems is, in concert with shifting traffic to 407, moving other trips to transit and active transportation while densifying urban neighbourhoods and suburbs,” so people have shorter trips to work, shops, hockey arenas and other vital trips, he said.

Don’t buy back the 407

This opinion was written by Marcus Gee and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 30, 2024.

The 407 toll highway, seen passing under Jane Street in Toronto in 2019, was built in the 1990s. It was sold by the PC government of Mike Harris at the end of that decade.

Why spend tens of billions of dollars to obtain an asset that already exists?

The critics rightly panned Doug Ford’s last big idea for solving Greater Toronto’s congestion crisis. Just about everyone agreed that it would be loco to spend tens of billions of dollars to tunnel under the clogged 401 highway and create a whole new subterranean road there. So Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Premier is toying with another loopy idea.

North of the 401, and running roughly parallel on an east-west track, lies the 407, a toll road. It was built by an NDP government under premier Bob Rae in the 1990s. It was sold by the PC government of Mike Harris at the end of that decade.

Now some people want Mr. Ford to buy it back. Why? Because he could make it a wholly public highway again and take off the tolls. Motorists would migrate to the less heavily used 407 from other routes, spreading the traffic around and taking the pressure off of the 401. Brilliant!

One tiny problem: the price. Mr. Harris’s government got $3-billion when he sold the 407 to Canadian and Spanish investors. Mr. Ford said this fall that buying it back could cost around $35-billion, a staggering amount of money to spend on an asset that already exists. Ontario, remember, has a debt of more than $400-billion and is adding to it every year by running budget deficits. Nevertheless, Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said this week that the government has been “in conversation” with the owners of the 407, though he was vague about what.

The gargantuan cost is not the only reason Ontario should reject this notion, either. There is nothing wrong with tolled highways. They work perfectly well all over Europe and Asia. Many are private.

The operators use part of the money they make to maintain and improve the roads, which in most cases are far better than the deteriorating public highways Ontarians are accustomed to driving. Those who choose to pay to use the broad, well-kept 407 usually get where they are going in a hurry. A final eastern section, which is government-owned, opened just a few years ago.

If it were smart, the Ford government would build more toll highways, using the revenue from the tolls to pay for their construction and maintenance. That is how New York built most of its network of bridges, tunnels and expressways decades ago. It is how many countries build their infrastructure to this day.

That way, the burden lies at least partly on the drivers who use them, rather than on the public at large. Some of the money can even be used to finance public transit. New York’s planned US$9 congestion tax, a toll on vehicles entering the heart of Manhattan, would help upgrade the city’s tired subway system.

We already apply the user-pay principle to many public services, from garbage pickup to piped fresh water. Why not roads?

Tolling makes drivers consider when they drive and what routes they take, shifting some traffic off the most heavily used routes at the busiest times of day. Prosperous, well-run Singapore has had a tolling system in place for half a century. Tolls rise during congested periods and fall during quieter hours. The roads are in excellent shape.

Using market principles and price signals should be catnip to an avowed conservative like Mr. Ford. Yet he has developed an absolute allergy to tolls of all kinds. He boasts of how he removed tolls on two Ontario highways, the 412 and the 418. Just to make his aversion clear, he earlier this year banned any more tolls on Ontario roads.

The other side of the political spectrum is just as toll-averse. Ontario’s NDP wants the government to eliminate tolls for commercial truckers who take the 407. That way, it reasons, trucks would move to the 407 from the 401 and traffic on the 401 would flow more smoothly.

How much would that cost, who on earth knows.

A FAMILIAR RING

Dispute over Paris’s crusade against cars comes to a boil with slashed speed limits

This article was written by Allan Woods and was published in the Toronto Star on November 24, 2024.

Construction workers install a 50 km/h speed limit sign on Paris’s ring road, the boulevard peripherique, at the Porte d’Ivry in Paris, in late September.

Hell hath no fury like a driver scorned.

Take the trafficchoked French capital as an example, where an attempt to reduce vehicle collisions, gridlock, emissions and noise on a highway encircling Paris has provoked a headon political crash.

The longsimmering dispute over what many see as Paris’s crusade against cars has come to a boil over a controversial decision to slash speed limits on a 35kilometre highway known as la périphérique.

In some ways, it is the European equivalent of the fight between Toronto, the most congested city in North America, and the carfriendly Ontario government, which wants to tear up the city’s bike lanes and build a tunnel beneath Highway 401 to ease gridlock.

In one lane is Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

In a measure intended to cut noise, pollution, traffic jams and accidents on the Paris ring road she recently ordered speed limits reduced to 50 km/h from 70 km/h.

It’s one step along the path to a more extreme transformation that reimagines the carsandconcrete highway as a boulevard shared by buses, bikes and bipeds.

In the opposite lane is a convoy of irate suburban commuters, motorcyclists, professional drivers like cabbies and truckers, and opposition politicians.

They are now charting lawsuits, legislation and political campaigns, arguing that Hidalgo’s anticar policies have now swerved recklessly across the median line.

“What is very different with the 50 km/h (speed limit) compared to the other anticar measures in Paris is that this affects many more people who did not vote for her, who did not choose her as their representative and who are deeply opposed,” said Alexandra Legendre, a spokesperson with the Drivers’ Defence League, a group that lobbies

Gridlock, noise and emissions

The Paris ring road was built on the site of fortifications erected around the French capital in 1844 and torn down in 1919 at the end of the First World War. More than three decades later, work began on the circular highway intended to liberate drivers from the evils of traffic jams, letting them reach their destinations without having to negotiate the hustle and bustle of central Paris.

“In a few days, getting around Paris without meeting a single red light will no longer be a dream,” a television announcer proclaimed ahead of the completion of the final section of the loop in 1973. Yet the work had barely been completed when complaints of peakhour traffic jams and overuse by suburban commuters began. Other, more serious problems soon appeared.

Noise from the fastmoving cars has long been a nuisance for the 500,000 residents who live next to the highway and is believed to be linked to health problems, such as sleep loss, cardiovascular problems and stress, according to the World Health Organization.

And the 1.3 million cars that use it each day are responsible for about a third of Paris’s total emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, according to Airparif, an agency that tracks air quality in the greater Paris region. Naturally, there are also accidents, albeit very few fatalities, perhaps owing to the highway’s congestion, which keeps daytime speeds to a little over 30 km/h.

To tackle these issues, officials have, over the years, installed sound barriers to cut the noise levels. In 2014, reduced the maximum speed on the highway to 70 km/h from 80 — a measure that experts said had positive effects on emissions entering the atmosphere as well as the fluidity of traffic.

Car wars

This was the same year that Hidalgo, a member of France’s Socialist Party, was chosen as mayor and launched what her opponents say has been a frontal attack against cars and drivers.

Over a decade in power, she has shut down express lanes on the banks of the Seine River, reduced the number of downtown parking spaces, converted car lanes to bike lanes and pedestrianized city streets.

Just recently, her administration designated the central core of downtown a limited traffic zone — barring through traffic by drivers seeking to quickly cut from one end of the city to the other. without an express purpose such as a medical appointment, tickets to a show, or getting to work.

Residents have long grumbled about the inconveniences caused by Hidalgo’s car wars. However, when the collective joy of last summer’s Olympic Games dissipated and she announced that the city would be moving forward with a longplanned cut to the speed limit on the city’s ring road, many saw it as a step too far.

“They’ve put in place a policy where cars are excluded, but there has been nothing to compensate for the absence of cars,” said Séverine Manna, a Paris lawyer preparing a legal challenge to the 50 km/h speed limits.

She said city officials haven’t done the necessary studies to back up the new limits. She added that the restrictions have not been accompanied by a more robust public transport system to give people alternative ways to get to and from Paris in a timely manner.

“They’re telling people: `There are no more cars — get used to it,’ ” Manna said. “We are all ecologists in our souls but there are times when there are realities that are not being heard.”

Others have complained that Paris failed to consult with neighbouring municipalities before taking a decision that has a great impact on commuters from the suburbs.

A regional elected official, Valérie Pécresse, has deemed the new speed limits “antisocial and ineffective” and urged Hidalgo to instead install sound barriers along the ring road or turn over responsibility for the road to the region.

In addition to the war of words, a statistical battle has broken out.

The city has started releasing a weekly bulletin showing drops in nighttime noise, traffic jams and accidents — though no significant reduction in emissions.

In response, Pécresse ordered her own officials to begin tracking noise, pollution and traffic indicators along the route. The initial findings for the month of October show reductions in every category, including pollution.

`Traffic evaporation’

Paris is hardly alone in wanting to transform its infrastructure to make it safer, greener or more amenable to the people who live and work in its vicinity.

New York, Barcelona, Helsinki, Vancouver and many other cities around the world have all questioned the sustainability and uses of highways built for an era when the car was king and the environment was an afterthought. Before opting to rehabilitate and modernize the Gardiner Expressway Toronto, too, flirted with the idea of dismantling or burying its main easttowest highway as a way to reconnect the city with its waterfront.

The evangelists of highway transformation see no alternatives.

“The question is: can we imagine that our highways remain as they are? We’re in a very deep climate crisis,” said Paul Lecroart, a senior urban planner for the Paris Metropolitan Region. “The question is how can we do things faster.”

Lecroart acknowledges that fear and the inconvenience of adopting new habits plays a big role in the public resistance to such largescale change. The key to success is to provide readymade alternatives and demonstrate their benefits.

The main one, in Lecroart’s estimation, is “traffic evaporation.”

“People give up on movements that are less useful,” he said.

The shining example is South Korea, where 80 per cent of automobile traffic disappeared after the mayor of Seoul decided to demolish the sixkilometre Cheonggyecheon Expressway, reclaiming and rehabilitating the stream that ran beneath the highway as a public space.

In other cities, Lecroart said, traffic dropped between 20 and 25 per cent due to people opting instead for public transport.

“They are never forced. We’re in a liberal system where everyone can do what they want. People can take their car downtown, but either we encourage it, (or) we discourage it,” he said.

Construction ahead

Paris hasn’t completely laid out its longterm vision for la périphérique, perhaps for fear of raising the ire of its fourwheeled adversaries. But the French capital also has likeminded allies too.

In the eastern suburbs, officials have drawn up a rather extreme plan to overhaul a sixlane highway that ushers motorists into and out of central Paris. It’s a slowmotion transformation that starts with the installation of dedicated publictransit lanes in 2026, continues with lowered speed limits in 2032 and cutting the space for cars by half in 2040. The project concludes in 2050 with a road — one lane moving at 30 km/h in either direction — in something resembling a nature park, surrounded by reclaimed and reforested land, bike paths, and picnic tables.

Gaylord Le Chequer, a city councillor in Montreuil, said the initial reaction of residents was surprise and, for some, hostility — the sense that they were being deprived of something or punished.

“For us, it’s important not to be seen as punishing people but to demonstrate, going step by step, that the transformations are useful — notably from an environmental perspective — and that they are possible,” he said.

“Whether you are right or left … there is a movement that is growing to say on behalf of the residents who live in proximity to this infrastructure, that we have real problems and so it’s time to act.”

Charging drivers only way to fix Hwy. 401

This opinion was written by Martin Regg Cohn and was published in the Toronto Star on October 4, 2024.

Premier Doug Ford’s plan to dig under Highway 401 has drawn snickers, but the joke is on us if we keep ignoring the economic realities of congestion, Martin Regg Cohn writes.

Doug Ford’s tunnel vision has everyone focusing on his blind spots.

Too bad most motorists refuse to look at the congestion solution in plain sight.

For all the public mockery of the premier’s plan to dig under Highway 401, which came out of nowhere last week, traffic jams are no joke. But the bitter truth is that almost everyone is guilty of closing their eyes to the economics of commuting and congestion.

The critics claim to have a cleverer, better way: Why not buy back Highway 407 (technically it’s been leased, not sold) for an estimated $30 billion, remove its exorbitant tolls and take the pressure off the 401?

In fact, Ford says he hasn’t ruled it out. After all, he has cheerfully cancelled tolls in the past and could well do it again in future to win more votes.

In truth, removing those tolls would be a false economy — leaving us no further ahead in time or money spent. Just further behind fiscally and environmentally.

In reality, the only lasting solution would be the complete opposite:

Keep those existing tolls on the 407.

And go one step further by adding new tolls to the old 401 — not to mention all other major highways and parkways encircling and choking the GTA.

What? Tolls on the 401?

We all know that toll roads are the third rail of Ontario politics.

Yes, it’s unthinkable. But try this thought experiment.

Forget the pocketbook politics for a moment. Never mind the populist impulses that everyone falls for.

Not just the premier but almost everyone — politicians, pundits and the public — has become avowedly, adamantly anti-tax and anti-toll. Of course everyone instinctively dislikes tolls, but that distaste won’t get us where we need to go.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Or a free highway.

A toll-free highway still exacts a heavy price in lost time if you’re stuck in traffic, because time is money. The cost has been estimated in the billions of dollars annually in delayed deliveries and lost productivity, not to mention people cheated out of personal time — and family time.

In a free market, everything has a price — and it’s never free. Highways cost big money to build, but road tolls (unlike bridge tolls) are no longer about cost recovery.

Now, road tolls (and congestion charges for crowded downtowns) are a price signal — a way of flagging for drivers that they must choose carefully whether or when to travel, not on a whim or caprice.

Economics is all about scarcity. Pricing is way of allocating or rationing — rationally — a commodity that others are also competing for, in this case highway space.

In the real world of economics, prices are typically set at levels that the market will bear, based on the fundamentals of supply and demand.

Building (or opening) more tollfree highways tends to encourage more cars, creating greater congestion until we end up right back where we started — in bumper-tobumper equilibrium again. Economists and planners call it “induced demand” — a consequence of increasing the supply of free freeways.

Raise prices (tolls) higher? Demand will decrease and traffic congestion will decline.

Reduce road tolls to zero, while building or tunnelling new roads? Demand from cars will increase as more motorists clog the roads — at an enormous price in lost time.

Digging a tunnel replicates the same dynamic: If you build it — or dig it — they will come.

People will drive on and under the 401 without limits as soon as you allow unlimited access. That’s the inevitably of induced demand.

Ultimately, when the flow of traffic stalls, motorists will search for alternatives: rapid transit, remote work, off-peak commutes, or toll roads that represent value for money (savings in time).

To be clear, congestion is out of control. The question is how to win the congestion battle, not an election battle.

The reality is that road tolls are time-savers, and time is money. The problem is that voters don’t want to hear about it.

The premier’s pie-in-the-sky proposal to tunnel across much of the GTA is not only a road map to ruin, it is a teachable moment. But the opposition’s counterproposal for a free Highway 407, which would create a free-for-all, is merely a diversion on the road to induced demand.

Many are snickering at Ford’s tunnel vision. But the joke is on us if we keep looking away from economic realities.

This thought experiment on road tolls might read like a political dead end. But more of the same wishful thinking about free highways won’t get us anywhere.

Ford critics say he should buy back the 407

Premier’s opponents say using existing highway would be an easier way to ease gridlock in GTA

This article was written by Ben Cohen and was published in the Toronto Star on September 28, 2024.

Premier Doug Ford’s political opponents say a more prudent means for the province to relieve congestion on the 401 is to buy back the underused 407.

Leaders of the three other major political parties in Ontario agree it would be far cheaper, quicker and simpler to purchase the private toll road than what Ford proposed — digging what could be the world’s largest tunnel beneath the world’s busiest highway.

While the 18-lane behemoth that is the 401 is perpetually packed, the 407, which runs parallel to it, resorted to a promotional campaign earlier this year to entice drivers to take it.

Despite this, the Ford administration never considered buying the 407 before announcing the 401 tunnel proposal, a senior government source at Queen’s Park told the Star.

The reason being that if population growth trends in Ontario hold, all of the 400-series highways in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area will hit or exceed capacity within the decade, according to the province’s traffic modelling.

“The 407 will be at or over capacity in 10 years anyway,” said the source, speaking privately on background to discuss internal deliberations.

Ford said as much on Wednesday in unveiling the tunnel plan.

“We can’t just sit by and let this happen,” he told reporters, noting Ontario’s population increased by 800,000 last year.

The premier has made no secret that he is not a fan of the tolls motorists pay on 407, and has said former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris made a wrong turn in 1999 when he decided to privatize the highway to raise money to lower his government’s deficit.

But tolls can be tools to fight congestion, said Matti Siemiatycki, professor of geography and planning and director of the infrastructure institute at the University of Toronto.

“Tolls encourage people to use other modes of transportation,” he said. “Or to carpool or to go during times when tolls are lower. That’s what we’ve seen in other regions.”

Had the 407 not been privatized in a 99-year lease for $3.1 billion, the initial cost of building the highway would have long ago been paid off and tolls eliminated. More recent estimates of 407’s value have come in at around $30 billion or more.

Arguments in favour of buying the 407 over building the tunnel hinge on the former seeming like it would be significantly cheaper. But the province has not released a cost estimate for the dig and experts say they don’t have enough information yet to make their own calculations.

‘‘ The best we can do is provide more people opportunities to use other modes so that they don’t have to be part of the congestion.

STEVEN FARBER UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PROFESSOR, TRANSPORTATION GEOGRAPHER AND SPATIAL ANALYST

Siemiatycki’s best guess, at this stage, is “mega billions.”

“We don’t know the length, we don’t know how many lanes we’re talking about here, this is really early days,” he said. “The premier also talked about building transit under there, so that’s another huge cost.”

The Star reached out to 407 ETR, the company that operates the highway, to ask whether it would sell to the province, and if so, for how much. It declined to answer.

“407 ETR is a private road operator and we’re not involved in provincial transportation policy discussions beyond our responsibilities under the concession agreement,” said Christina Basil, 407 ETR’s vice-president of communications and government relations. “Shareholder transactions are commercially sensitive, and as such, we are unable to comment on valuations.”

Either way, tunnel or 407 acquisition, you can’t defeat congestion for good with more lanes, transit experts say. This is explained by the concept of induced demand. More space for cars encourages more drivers. If you build it, they will come.

University of Toronto professor Steven Farber, a transportation geographer and spatial analyst, has a more sophisticated solution to gridlock than either proposal.

Instead, Ontario needs to develop a “holistic strategy” for tolling the 400-series highways, he said.

Single-occupancy vehicles are the largest contributor to congestion, he said. A “modest investment” in high-occupancy vehicle lanes could reduce their concentration.

“I would also restrict truck use of the 401 during peak periods to encourage logistics companies to pay for 407 use out of pocket,” said Farber.

Ontarians should give up on the idea that roadways will become less congested, he added. Instead, efforts should go toward making other forms of transportation more accessible.

“The best we can do is provide more people opportunities to use other modes so that they don’t have to be part of the congestion,” he said. “But that’s easy for me. I live about five kilometres from my work and there are good transit options. We need to create those conditions for more people in more parts of the city.”