Raise the Hammer

Alternatively, people can get sick of waiting in line at the buffet and make their own food at home. I'm fine with tolling intercity highways not so much when it comes to intracity highways and my reasoning comes from this logic...

I can drive to Toronto and it takes me an hour and a half at rush hour or close. I can take the train to Toronto and the time is relatively equal. However I can drive from my place near Eastgate to the Meadowlands in about 20 mins. If I were to take the bus, even the beeline would be a lot longer than that.

Tolling highways is great as long as the transit alternatives are actually present.

This is a vicious loop. In order to be able to institute a Toll policy you'd have to be able to demonstrate an effective alternative (ie. Transit). To have that effective alternative you need to have the revenues that proactive anti-driving intitiatives would generate.

Personally as somebody who carpools with my wife to near her work in Mississauga and then takes the GO the rest of the way in, I have no problem with using tolls as a way to lessen traffic flow and put the necessary funds into Transit. But in order for it to be successful it has to be viable as Frank has said above.

That means affordable and available.

Subsequently, those who have jobs that are in areas that are underserved by transit also need to be able to afford their cars, so while the toll would have to be big enough to encourage transit use, it would have to be modest enough to allow those people who depend on their cars some sort of affordability.

See, some people move out because of necessity. My wife and I were living in a very transit friendly area of Southwestern Toronto that we quite liked. I was a walk to the GO Train or the TTC Rail Line was right outside my door and she was a 10 minute drive against traffic into Mississauga.

But the reality is living in that area and owning a home (which can run $450-$500k for 1200sq ft) was not in our reach and in order to afford to get out from under the thumb of a landlord we had to go to where we can afford.

It's a convenient excuse of those who are quick to roll their eyes at people who move out the suburbs to point out that we chose to move out to a place with limited transit. I say that if you look at areas of the world where Transit work, people live a lot farther out of major areas than a lot of us in the Golden Horsehoe do and have access to better transit and that any comprehensive transit plan needs to address those areas and beyond.

Honestly, it's tough to encourage people to use transit when they only have access to one or two unreliable routes. And it is those people you have to convince to abandon their cars for any sort of transit initiative to work.

Nobody is demonizing suburban dwellers here. Of course we all move to wherever it is we can afford. All that's being said is that there is a false economy at work and it needs to be addressed. Yes that would mean short or medium (or probably long...) term pain for many folks but that's no argument for saying it's not the most prudent thing to do.

As for buying your food rather than queuing up for it, sure - road tolls will be more accessible for those that can afford it. This is no different to the way we eat today. Those of us with no moola eat crappy food. This creates a valid concern with Ryan's hypothosis: Even if we charge for road use, what assurances would we get that transit would improve exponentially? (Would the poor lose out again?)

Inhocmark, in my experience, having one less car is the equivalent of a $10,000 raise. You might have to pay more for the house, but you make that money back over a few years. YMMV.

Ryan, while it may be cheaper in the long run to live in the city close to transit, if the transit sucks why would someone use it? Also, while it may be cheaper to live in a city and take transit versus outside and driving in, I think you're omitting the fact that at least in Hamilton it takes 3 sometimes 4 times as long to get somewhere by bus than by car. So if the economy is based on dollars alone you may be correct but if time is included (and time is money isn't it) then it's not. I'm sorry, but your solution and by extension your false economy only exists if the transit system in that area is a viable alternative to driving.

Inhocmark, in my experience, having one less car is the equivalent of a $10,000 raise. You might have to pay more for the house, but you make that money back over a few years. YMMV.

Actually my thinking is the same. We have one car with no desire to buy a second and I add about 20 minutes onto my commute to make the arrangement work. Heck, I work in TO, I couldn't afford to drive in and you couldn't pay me enough to deal with the aggrivation. Since our move it has worked out quite well driving to a GO station near her work and continuing on to Toronto from there.

For tolls to work, they'd have to be area based rather than specific road way based to avoid clogging up secondary roads with those trying to beat the toll.

Transit would also have to come before tolls. The funds would have to be outlayed in advance to get the network in place to get people where they are going and in an acceptable timeframe. London can charge tolls to enter the city centre because they can point to their expansive public transit network and present a viable and cost/time effective alternative. Sadly I think in today's political climate the initial cost of getting the idea off the ground would be too prohibitive for cowardly politicians.

The final piece of the puzzle would have to be the modification of laws regarding car pooling and providing value for a person's toll beyond the right to drive. Making it officially legal to car pool (it is currently not from my understanding), adding HOV lanes and ultimately implementing measures that ensures a smooth traffic flow in 'normal' conditions.

I'm a huge proponent of thoughtful and effective public transportation. I've lived in some of the biggest cities in Canada and seen the good, bad and ugly. I love the ideas of municipalities, especially in the Southern Ontario corridor charging modest tolls to plug back into the entire transportation system.

"Making it officially legal to car pool (it is currently not from my understanding)"

As crazy as that may sound, it is true.

If I remember, you are allowed to car-pool, but you are not allowed to accept payment (gas/mileage etc..).

Can anyone help here?

Great article, I really enjoyed the buffet analogy.

Here it is....

"You have to meet four criteria. Those criteria state: you can only go to work, you can only go with the same driver, you can only go within your municipality and you can only pay the driver once a week."

Can read the article here.

www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=9605e954-e719-4aee-a636-de59c5f54179&p=1

Not sure if any legislation as changed since this article was posted.

Tolls on major routes- absolutely- but there's also a problem with congestion on local roads.

Therefore you also need a real gas tax, and funnel this combined revenue into transit, road maintenance, and other externalizations of car culture such as trauma, diabetes and heart disease mediated through inactivity and poor air quality.

I don't know when the political will can be found to do this, but it has to happen or increased congestion and the reason for it - stagnant, selfish thinking - will creep further into our society and weigh down all kinds of innovation. Canada is already a laggard in creativity and R&D as a result of the last couple decades of middle class hollowing out, tax cuts, and shifting spending to the squeaky wheels. This will drag down our economy and make us progressively less competitive globally.

Any self-interested strategy is bound to fail, because that's what got us into this mess. Road tolls + gas tax funding better transit is a collective action that benefits society on the whole and is unequivocally more fair than the current subsidized arrangement. Some good leader has to have the guts to say this is more important than any individual gripes.

Drivers pay their fair share already. They pay for gasoline (which is 50% tax), insurance (supports the finance sector), purchase an automobile (support's the sales, service, and manufacturing industry), driver's licence fee (supports safety and road maintenance), plate permit fee (supports safety and road maintenance), and parking fees (revenue for the city). Take away cars and drivers and you have a fruitless economy. Now I'm not saying it's so black a white.

What I would like to see is for transit providers stablize their books. Each year more and more people take transit due to the government pushing for more people to take it. Each year, the transit providers jack up their prices. Doesn't make sense. Riders should cover 100% of their fare, then you won't have a funding problem. The transit providers should actually make a profit to invest back into the system.

Here's my honest view:r. 1. Transit providers should cover 125% of their operating expense through fares. 2. Transit providers should cut down on operating expenses. 3. Businesses should be more open to spread out their offices so employees don't have to travel very far. 4. Transit should be faster than taking the car. 5. Transit should be economical even when owning a car. 6. Support the car and transit industry, both complimenting each other. 7. The government should not create a false market where they manipulate the cost of driving to drive the use of transit, then raise the price of transit. 8. Keep fares low, service fast, and social, and increased customer service. 9. No tolling of roads. In Ontario, we seem to take everything to the extreme. A toll charge in Florida would be $0.25, but here it would be $3.00. 10. The government has to bear some responsibility to cut down expenses and improve efficiency. 11. Incentives for businesses to build in local communities. 12. Build modern LRT systems in advance of growth in growth centers. 13. Make the airport a central hub for transportation in the GTA. 14. Remove centralization of transporation of downtown Toronto else where. Growth is not happening in the core anymore. People are moving out and around.

In response to the above:

"Drivers pay their fair share already"

No. According to the Transport Canada study, they don't. Drivers pay alot, I will concede. This is due to the fact at an automobile based transportation network is obscenely expensive. A similar study found the US interstate network was only 50% covered by user fees: http://www.subsidyscope.com/transportati...

"1. Transit providers should cover 125% of their operating expense through fares." "2. Transit providers should cut down on operating expenses." "8. Keep fares low, service fast, and social, and increased customer service."

I'm still trying to figure this one out. 1 implies jacking fares by 300%, which fails to satisfy 8. 2 suggests reducing expenses reduce the fare revenue required to satisfy 1 and 8 at the same time. But operating expenses would then have to be negative. So, become an international transit operation academy where the students drive our buses?

Andrew, check out the related blog:

http://www.raisethehammer.org/blog/1595/...

and the links showing that drivers clearly do not pay their fair share, despite all the taxes you mention:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/policy/report/aca/fu...

comparing the high estimate of any remotely road related revenues $17.2B, of which $10.2B is gas tax, with the high estimate of road costs $25.8B, you see a clear shortfall which comes out of fixed revenue sources, primarily income tax.

And gasoline is not 50% tax, it's 35%: http://www.caa.ca/mini%20sites/gasprice/... http://www.ontariogasprices.com/can_tax_...

Doing a little math, 25.8-10.2 = $15.6 billion is the shortfall for gas tax covering road costs (this still ignores costly externalities like road trauma, air quality health effects, congestion, etc).

So @ $1/L, $0.35 tax makes up 10.2/25.8 = 40% of what it should cost if gas taxes paid their fair share. Based on that, the revenue neutral gas tax should be $0.89/ L. Similar to Europe. When $1 gas becomes $1.54 through taxation, then Andrew will be almost correct with his statement:

Drivers pay their fair share already.

Until then, we're subsidizing cars, not transit. And I could make a good argument, given more space, for a adding another $1/L in tax (revenue neutral) as a way of funding transit, shifting demand to transit, covering health costs, and improving economic efficiency through increased density and avoiding congestion. I'd be happy happy to pay this much to avoid stop and go traffic forever, and so would a lot of other people. Traffic fatalities would decrease. Then there's the quality of life argument which is priceless.

The point is that the way we use cars is really expensive and inefficient. At 25% seat occupancy, which is what we have in GTA commuters, that's 3 out of 4 seats driving around empty. Unforgivably wasteful.

So the true current situation is not:

1. The government should not create a false market where they manipulate the cost of >driving to drive the use of transit,

it is that the government has ALREADY created a false economy by manipulating the cost of driving to be paid largely through fixed taxes, so it encourages overuse to get your money's worth with predictable congestion. And by subsidizing cars this way it discourages transit.

Fixed insurance costs contribute similarly to this 'tragedy of the commons' problem, as does vehicle depreciation.

Oh, and:

Growth is not happening in the core anymore. People are moving out and around.

Duh! That's because we are subsidizing car culture! And people who move to the fringes of suburbia not only don't pay enough for gas, they are subsidized by inner city dwellers who have higher density and lower infrastructure maintenance costs.

When all externalities of car travel are paid for through gas taxes alone, then we can debate whether transit should pay for itself, or it is a public good that deserves some subsidy. Private vehicle use certainly does not.

Just build more roads and teach people how to drive proper

Great analogy Ryan

I'm recently back from a trip to the US, and was surprised to see so many toll roads and bridges, in a country that hates taxes more then terrorism. I'm left to wonder why we don't poll tax our highways and bridges in Ontario.

I was a 'foreigner' using their highways and bridges, some of the local people may never use or drive on them, so why would they be subject to subsidizing me travels..?

Put a toll over the Hamilton Skyway Bridge and put a toll on the RedHill Expressway and a toll at the top of the Chedoke Expressway (for some reason now called the Ancaster Hill) and the Linc.

The image of an open highway, a 1960 Mustang and full tank of gas = freedom, democracy and liberty. Is one of the biggest scams ever pulled on Americans. When in fact, the road, the vehicle and the fuel were all socially subsidized. And to think the US hates anything 'socialist'.?

I agree. We are not only subsidizing drivers by thousands per capita on an average annual basis, but we as a society are discouraging transit use on a wide scale. Those that do not drive do not have access to employment, beyond the usual minimum wage, low-skilled jobs, and also end up spending a lot more money on necessities, such as groceries.

As somebody that does not drive, I resent paying taxes for roads, policing, traffic lights, parking, and other amenities enjoyed for "free" by drivers, while they receive preference on almost every job when compared to an equally qualified non-driver.