Torontoist vs. Torontoist in: Congestion Charges!

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41 Comments January 6, 2007 at 1:10 pm

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Every week (or so), two Torontoist staffers square off to debate an issue that’s important to our city. We invite our readers to join the debate in the comments section following the post.

Background photo by imuttoo from the from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
London’s congestion charge was introduced in February 2003. The initial charge was £5, but as of July 2005 it costs £8 (roughly $18.25) each weekday to drive a car into the 22 sq km congestion zone in central London. From some perspectives, the charge has been incredibly successful. The total number of cars entering the congestion zone is down about 30%, use of public transportation and cycling are up. At the same time, however, many businesses have reported drops in sales and increased costs for things like deliveries.
London isn’t the only city with a congestion charge. Singapore has long had a charge. Oslo has one. Stockholm had a trial run with a congestion charge in 2006 and the Swedish government has announced that the charge will return permanently this year. Other major cities, including New York, are considering it, but is a congestion charge right for Toronto? We’ve talked at some length about this issue earlier this week, but it’s time to examine both sides in greater detail.

FOR

KEN HUNT

In the future, congestion charges in large cities will be the rule rather than the exception. This is the one of the most effective tools we have to keep cities from choking on their own success. A congestion charge is such a good idea for Toronto, it’s no wonder that we haven’t done it yet. We fight good ideas so well, it’s almost like we have a natural immunity to them.
Let’s face it: anything that will start to get people out of their cars is a step in the right direction. Of course, a congestion charge, by itself, is not the whole answer. Part of the solution has to be more bike lanes and better police enforcement of the rights of cyclists. Another part of the solution is better transit, including a fully integrated pan-GTA transit strategy. But, no matter how easy you make it for people to choose a better way, no matter how many carrots you put out there, for some people you still need to have a stick. A tax on driving your car into the city, even a small one, would force people to at least start thinking about the way they commute. Right now, a lot of people don’t think at all, they just hop in their car because that’s the easiest thing to do.
It’s starting to seem like every other summer day in Toronto is a smog alert day, but this is not just about the quality of the air we breathe or even global warming. This is about our overall quality of life. Traffic congestion affects us all in numerous ways. A city that is in constant gridlock is not a great place to live and it’s not a great place to do business either. If there were fewer cars on the road, the people and businesses that really needed to use the roads would be able to get where they need to go much quicker. Deliveries will be easier. Life, in general, would be better. After the implementation of the congestion charge in London travel times dropped at much as 50%.
It’s fine to say that the TTC should provide better service to outlying areas, but with so many people opting out of the system, the TTC is under constant strain just to maintain its current level of service, let alone expand. In London, revenues from the congestion charge are directed into the city’s transit system by law. That should also be the case here. In fact, in order to underline the point about transit, the congestion charge should be about the same as two one-way TTC rides: $5.50. That will help people get the point: You can take the TTC (or drive to a GO station and park), or you can pay the full TTC fare for the right not to take transit. You should have to pay for the privilege of inconveniencing the rest of us by driving your car downtown.
There is a whole segment of the population out there who think that transit is not their problem. They don’t take it and they don’t know anyone who does. They drive to work, they drive their kids to soccer practice, they drive whenever they want and never give it a second thought. It’s time to kick those people in the ass.

AGAINST
PATRICK METZGER

The motive for a congestion charge is a splendid one – such a law would, so the argument goes, reduce traffic congestion and pollution, encourage transit use, and in general make everything just dandy for everybody.
There’s only one problem – it won’t work, and it could make things much, much worse.
Toronto, alas, is not Singapore or London. London is the unchallenged business capital of the UK, and surrounded by protected greenspace unsuitable for development. Singapore is an island nation with very limited land resources and a superb public transportation system, meaning that most big business is centralized downtown, and it’s easy to getting there.
Relatively speaking, our public transportation system sucks. While it’s pretty easy to get around if you’re in the center of the city, commuting downtown from the outlying suburbs without a car can be a multi-vehicle, multi-hour exercise in urban masochism. Even GO Transit, a decent system if you happen to live on one of the main lines and travel during peak periods, couldn’t round up sufficient crew to run all their trains the day after New Years. Making the downtown more expensive to drive to would penalize thousands of workers who realistically have no other practical way of getting there.
The second problem is that Toronto is surrounded by sprawling built-up regions which continue to devour farmland voraciously, and which are characterized by abundant parking, low taxes, and civic authorities eager to draw businesses away from Toronto. Politicians like Mississaguas’ wildly popular 700 year old mayor Hazel McCallion, dismissing the detail that the uber-suburb to the west has been sucking at Torontos’ swollen teat for generations, are delighted to siphon off businesses, workers and tax revenues from the core of the GTA, regardless of the consequences for the region as a whole.
These two issues combined mean that a congestion charge in the current environment would just be another nail in the coffin of the vibrant downtown that makes Toronto such a great place to live. In the current state of affairs, rather than improving public transit and decreasing pollution, the fee would just be another means of shifting cars, drivers, shoppers, and businesses out to the great wide open where public transit is largely used only by the poor and the infirm. The greater good would surely not be served.
The answer? Give regional public transit the money and the planning that it deserves. Stop the feds and the province from favouring the outlying regions over Toronto when it comes to taxation. Give people reasons to come downtown, and a multitude of ways to get there. Then think about a congestion charge.

Comments

Anticorium

It doesn’t matter if a $5.50 congestion charge dings every single person who drives from Brampton to Bay Street, if the people who actually live downtown have to drive out to Richmond Hill because the company can’t afford the Bay Street office anymore.
Give us a congestion charge that works like London’s (residents get a 90% discount) and we get the worst of both worlds: nobody drives into the downtown because there’s no reason to anymore, and nobody who lives downtown can afford to give up their car anymore. Have you ever spent four hours every day on the road to get to and from work? I did… because I took transit. One-sixth of my life was thrown away in buses and subways so I could feel less guilty about reading Spacing Wire.
(If you think that the solution would be to eliminate the loophole, well, I’m really glad to finally meet that one person who thinks the problem with living south of Bloor is that it’s too inexpensive. I knew you had to exist somewhere.)
Patrick wins by a landslide. If congestion charges are the stick we’ll use to beat people who drive downtown, the response won’t be to stop driving. It’ll be to get the hell away from the stick-wielding psycho.
Ken Hunt

Anticorum,
I don’t see a good reason to give residents of the zone a huge discount. Driving your car is arguably even more selfish when you already live in an area where most shops and services are in easy walking/biking or transit distance. Alternative vehicles, like scooters are also exempt under London’s rules and hybrid vehicles can apply for a waiver. Residents of the zone should be even more motivated to ease congestion… after all, this it the air they breathe all day, every day.
Of course, the ideal situation is for people to live closer to where they work. Urban Sprawl is at the heart of this problem and a congestion charge would act as a tax on urban sprawl. Those chock-a-block bedroom communities going up in the farmlands outside of Toronto look a lot less attractive to buyers and developers it there’s a tax on getting into the city. Density is a good thing from an environmental perspective. NY’ers some of the smallest ‘environmental footprints’ in the world.
There’s no question though that a two-hour transit ride is unacceptable. That’s no way to spend a life. But, we need the money and will to provide better transit and I think the congestion charge would help provide both of those things.
As for the cost, $5.50 is a lot less than people currently pay just to park downtown, day or night, so I don’t think it would have the cataclysmic effect that you suggest.
james

Speaking as a downtown-living non-car-owning cyclist and transit user who would love to see better adoption of the TTC, I would love to see a congestion charge.
But.. Speaking as someone who wants his office job to remain located downtown rather than moving to Mississauga and forcing me to buy a car, I’m glad we don’t have one.
http://kompot-photo.blogspot.com/ Paul

I’m typically not in favour of congestion charges or tolls since they effectively discourage people from doing business where you want them (ie.: along the main public transit routes downtown) Ideally, additional revenue would be generated from an increased gas tax and dedicated to public transit. The main advantages is that it applies to all trips equally and won’t encourage business to leave the downtown thereby further exasberating the problem. Any solution, whether tolls, congestion charge or parking levies must be implemented on a regional level.
http://null DeeKay

How about a Greater Golden Horseshoe Congestion Charge for those entering/leaving the GGH? Most people, regardless of length of commute, are staying within the GGH. This would ding the (even more) irresponsible people who choose to live in places like Cambridge or Orangeville and commute into the GGH. But the motive for offices to move closer is certainly diminished…you can only move your offices so far, after all.
rek

Anticorum – How many of those 4 hours you spent on public transit each day were on buses and street cars fighting the rush hour traffic?
http://www.ch.aoti.ca Stefanie

I agree with Patrick and many of the other commenters – the congestion charge would kill downtown and it would not solve the smog problem. Commuters are travelling from suburb to suburb and from downtown to the suburbs (this is my case) as well. The fuel charge does not address these commuters at all. If I had the option to take public trasit I would, but taking the Go Train and then Mississauga Transit would increase my workday by hours. The problem is that the system is not built for the many commuting options.
Instead of just copying the congestion-charge idea from other world center, we should think of our own Toronto solution to solve our own Toronto problem. Our downtown core needs life, note an emptying out – so let’s not make that problem worse.
Step one would be to improve our current transit system to accomodate the many different ways people are commuting across the city and make the integration between systems smoother. Step two would be to think of an appropriate “stick” once the “carrot” is actually in place. I think that many Torontonians would welcome and use a new system that does not waste their time.
http://ohoe.blogspot.com John Spragge

The way you see this issue will depend on what you think of the stakes. If you see the problem as smog days, then you’ll balance economic development against fewer cars, and vote for or against a congestion charge. If you frame the question in terms of preventing a two degree temperature rise, then you have to face the possibility that in a very few years, private cars as we know them will simply no longer exist, and you will probably ask questions such as: how soon can we start digging up the 401, 400, 429, and 404?
If we have the problem some climate scientists seem to think we do, then a congestion charge will barely begin to accomplish the changes we need to make. It seems to me to make sense to start by asking whether, given what we know and suspect about global climate change, we can manage to carry on with our current pattern of privately owned transport. Not whether we want to, which should remain an individual decision, or whether we should, but whether we can.
http://null Amanda Buckiewicz

Ken, something I think you forgot to mention is that most of the people who drive downtown don’t live downtown. Therefore, they use our services, drive on our roads, depend on our workers, and pay none of the taxes that help fund these services. As more and more people are doing the great commute into the city as opposed to paying the high rents to live downtown, there is more strain on our system and little to no increase in tax dollars to hold it all together.
I think a congestion charge is a great idea.
Anticorium

I don’t see a good reason to give residents of the zone a huge discount.
You need to double-check your writing there, Ken. You totally omitted the word “former” in that phrase. If you jack up the cost of living another $5.50 a day, that’s $2000 a year. That’s $165 a month, which is right around the right amount of money to tip a whole lot of people away from downtown life to something a little more… amenable to their needing to get to work in the morrning.
Driving your car is arguably even more selfish when you already live in an area where most shops and services are in easy walking/biking or transit distance.
That would be a good point if it had a bloody thing to do with what I said. Hint: I used words like “commute” and “work”, not words like “24-hour laundromat” and “used bookstore”. From this you may draw the conclusion that if you are talking about shops and services instead of workplaces and businesses, you are not actually engaging me.
There’s no question though that a two-hour transit ride is unacceptable. That’s no way to spend a life.
But you want to force it on me, by giving the 905 yet another competitive advantage, so that the next time I job hunt I have even fewer downtown options.
As for the cost, $5.50 is a lot less than people currently pay just to park downtown
That’s not even close to true in the case I’m arguing. As long as parking is a tax-deductible benefit, people who drive to work pay $0.00, which is a lot less than $5.50. The nice fat suburban parking lot at my old workplace cost every single nice fat SUV that inhabited it not one red cent.
rek@6: Anticorum – How many of those 4 hours you spent on public transit each day were on buses and street cars fighting the rush hour traffic?
Good question, so I repeated the homework I did on it while I was living that golden dream. Google Maps gives the door-to-door time as 24 minutes, and from the times I was able to bum a ride off car-owning coworkers I know that door-to-door travel time really came to around 35 to 45 minutes each way.
So congestion added about 20 minutes each way. On a really bad day, anyway. The vast majority of my transit time was spent maintaining my indie cred, and feeling like a chump for doing it, knowing full well that I’d be sneered at for not “working where I live”.
http://cork2toronto.blogspot.com Mark Dowling

The issues with a congestion charge are:
1. Trusting Toronto Council to spend every penny on transit as additional funding and not to cut back existing services or to bundle other projects into transit projects like the St. Clair street enhancement which multiplied the actual cost of the streetcar tracks.
2. Trusting that funds will go into enhancing GO Transit and new streetcars and hybrid buses for downtown and not Vaughan subways to nowhere.
3. Trusting that a small charge won’t spiral to much higher levels and the zone won’t be expanded as in London, instead planning with the knowledge that a successful charge will by its nature earn less and less money.
4. Trusting Toronto Council to take permanent steps to reduce traffic by adding more pedestrial space, cycle lanes and transit lands and police them rigorously.
5. Trusting Toronto Council to reduce parking requirements for new downtown buildings.
Lot of trust needed so far, eh? Lastly:
6. Using an existing off the shelf solution like the 407ETR and using the saved money to decrease the error rate rather than invent a completely new system, throwing money into Accenture or some other consultancy’s pocket. 407′s pricing system should be nationalised by MTO so that all future tolls and road pricing in Ontario is one system and thus a visitor from Ottawa has the same transponder for a single monthly charge (lower given efficiency of scale) as one from Windsor or London.
http://null GH

Where would the congestion zone(s) start? I have seen some of the worst congestion in the city outside the “downtown” area and so if this is intended to reduce congestion, it would presumably be targetted at all congested zones. Does anyone have any idea where the worst congestion in this city is (for these purposes, ignore the highways)? There seems to be an assumption that it is the core, but I think that comes from people who live downtown.
I will admit to knowing little of the ways in which these operate elsewhere, but have a few other questions that need to be considered, I think, in these debates. What happens at the margins? How is entry determined (GPS, licence scans as on the 407)? How many access points are there (the larger the zone the more there are; are streets closed or rerouted)? What is the cost of all this, both monetary and in changes to the city’s neighbourhoods? What happens if congestion zones create congestion outside the zones by inducing new traffic flows – do we keep adjusting the zones? What happens on the weekends when many (presumably) target zones are wastelands (King and Bay)?
On smog, how much of it is actually caused by the fraction of GTA cars that travel in congested areas (e.g., downtown)? While every bit may help, if the impact is minimal, justifying it on that basis is a little weak (i.e., why target only these particular cars and not all?).
Personally, I think these charges would be a failure at achieving the many presumed benefits.
http://null Ken Hunt

Anticorium,
First, on the question of math… all of which is irrelevent because we are talking about a hypothetical… but it’s actually closer to $115 per month at most. The charge only applies on weekdays, and then, it only applies on days you choose to use your car. Is that enought to drive people out of downtown? I don’t know. But I know that $4.00 for a coffee isn’t enough to drive us downtowners away from Starbucks, etc.
Amanda has a good point though that residents of the zone already pay for the local roads, etc., through their taxes and commuting suburbanites don’t. That is a pretty good argument for having a discount, but if your goal is get cars off the street, I don’t think it should be the 90% Londoners get.
Why did I write about shops and services? Well, because we’re talking about car use and why those who already live downtown have less of a need to use their cars. The same equally applies to work/commuting. Most people who live downtown find work easy to get to by transit/bike/walking etc. I think that goes without saying.
If you happen to be one of the few who live downtown but commute to the suburbs then you’ve already made a bunch of choices that make your life more expensive, maybe another $5.50 will tip you into moving out of the congestion zone. If so, that’s better for the environment, better for you, and better for everyone else who lives downtown.
On the issue of parking… you’re just wrong. Parking of the type provided in downtown office towers is a taxable benefit. From Cowperthwaite Mehta accountants website: “Where an employer pays for individual spaces and assigns a space specifically for the use of a particular employee then that employee may be deemed to have received a taxable benefit. The taxable benefit is equal to the market value of the parking spot.”
If you pay for your own parking, that’s just an expense. There is no tax write-off, just like you can’t write off all the other expenses you have that relate to work (lunches, clothes, etc.)If you’re self-employed you might be able to claim parking as a business expense, but if you’re an employee, like most people, you’re S.O.L. There’s no such thing as free parking, at least not downtown.
Anticorium

If you happen to be one of the few who live downtown but commute to the suburbs then you’ve already made a bunch of choices that make your life more expensive, maybe another $5.50 will tip you into moving out of the congestion zone.
(So that’s what John Spragge was talking about, all that time he ranted about how the waterfront people didn’t care about air pollution, as long as it was stuck out in Mississauga where they didn’t have to smell it. I think I owe him a small bit of apology.)
Your bellief that people choose their workplace is charming in its wrongness. You choose where to send resumes, that’s all. In the end, you work at the best place that will hire you, and that’s a big chunk of different from what you postulate.
And in my case, after my job hunt, there were three candidates for “where I get hired”. One of them, the job I could take the streetcar to, would probably just about cover my monthly expenses, as long as I stopped eating. Another, which was a subway ride, didn’t pay quite so extravagantly. The third, the job that was a 2-hour commute away, paid enough for me to cover all my bills and even save a bit for a rainy day.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for me to apologise for “choosing” to feed my family at Loblaw’s instead of the Daily Bread Food Bank. Just like, you know, I don’t expect an apology from you for the insinuation that maybe my foolish ass is undeserving of the downtown on account of my poor “choices”, and if I really cared, I’d spend thousands of dollars moving every time I switched jobs.
Yeah, this really is all about reducing traffic on Queen Street. It totally is.
If you’re self-employed you might be able to claim parking as a business expense, but if you’re an employee, like most people, you’re S.O.L.
Again you tell little fibs. And the difference between our beliefs about employee parking is that you once read something on a website, and I have worked at two different places in the GTA that subsidized employee parking through taxable benefits.
My current downtown workplace is not even close to an office tower (either conceptually or geographically), but it offers parking as a taxable benefit to all employees. I can tell, see, by all the cars that are parked there by employees.
Now, I will be fair. There’s a chance that maybe I actually do work in an office tower, in which case I’ll have to inquire where they got the technology to make the building’s third through thirty-fifth flooors invisible. If that’s the case, I’ll be sure to apologise, though of course you won’t know it’s me, what with my wearing an invisibility cloak and all.
http://www.ch.aoti.ca Stefanie

If you happen to be one of the few who live downtown but commute to the suburbs then you’ve already made a bunch of choices that make your life more expensive, maybe another $5.50 will tip you into moving out of the congestion zone.
I agree with the post above – this comment indicates someone who does not understand how most people work. I am a contracter, so I go where the work is. Sometimes it is downtown, other times it is in the suburbs. Maybe one day I can make geographical constraints about where I will accept contracts, but for now I have to be flexible.
It would be ridiculous for me to move every time I get a new contract (every 6 months or so). To assume that I am choosing this because I wanted to make my life more expensive is not correct.
ok

Could we tone down the belligerence?
Nobody wants to sacrifice anything, but wants it fixed. That’s not going to work. It may be necessary to lose some downtown businesses to the 905 (or just, you know, elsewhere in the city), to keep the deliveries and employees moving to and from the rest at a reasonable price and timely fashion.
Toronto has a people-moving problem, above and beyond any concerns about how to move them.
905ers come downtown with their SUVs because public transit isn’t a viable alternative to most, and no amount of bike lanes will get people cycling from Mississauga to Bay Street. Give them a way to take public transit that makes stops just steps from their door and goes downtown, without having to change vehicles three or four or five times to do it, and they will take it.
Getting about a third of the way across the city on TTC can be done in a fairly decent time, but any further and it becomes arduous because there aren’t any express subways, and the buses only move as fast as the congestion allows. More express buses, TTC ROWs (not just for street cars), and express subways (would automation make it possible?) could solve much of that.
Bloor at noon is a parking lot, and it’s not going to be expanded for more automobile traffic any time soon. Neither will Yonge or King or Bay or Queen or any of the streets servicing built up areas. Something has to be done to reduce the number of cars going to congested areas (wherever they may be), and that means giving drivers incentive not to drive, and/or charging those who do. It just happens that charging the drivers would help pay for the incentive of transit-takers.
http://null rod

ya’ll…
i reckon this congestion charge idea is very short-sighted. why do people fail to address the REAL issues associated with our situation in toronto, gta and ontario?
our public transport system sucks. but if you look at cities or regions that have great public transport, they have two major advantages. one, their population densities are far greater than ours. look at nyc and london. and two, some cities and regions enjoy much greater public funding instead of depending soley on fares. copenhagen has an amazing public transport system and they recieve huge amounts of public funding. in fact, they had a great system but then they recently built a subway system.
so, until we achieve either advantage (or both), i reckon short-term solutions will be largely ineffective.
http://null Ken Hunt

Anticorium.
I think debate is great for society and great for this website, which is why I participate in a discussion like this. However, there is very little margin in trying to conduct a reasonable discussion with someone who:
Claims that I’m fibbing when I quote an accountant’s website on taxable benefits then goes on to state that his own company provides parking as a taxable benefit. Note: taxable benefits are not free… you pay taxes on them just as though they were regular income. Here’s the relevant page from Revenue Canada on this issue: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tax/business/topics/payroll/benefits/automobile/parking-e.html
Who insists that I don’t care if Mississaugans choke on smog, when I’m the one arguing for fewer cars on the road. Please.
Who resorts to the histrionics of suggesting that I am trying to send his kids to the food bank.
And who then launches into some bizarre tirade about invisibility cloaks.
Some people think that every debate about society is a debate about them and their lives. They blow up at everything because everything is personal with them. It’s impossible to have a rational discussion with these people.
Unless you have something substantive and reasonable to contribute, I don’t think I’ll respond any further.
Anticorium

It just happens that charging the drivers would help pay for the incentive of transit-takers.
Actually was thinking about this while I was walking around downtown earlier today, and I’m not sure that any solution that involves using vehicle traffic to fund transit would work out in the end. I think that we’re just going to have to do it the simple way: a share of the gas tax goes toward the city’s general revenue, and transit is funded from general revenue.
Let’s make up some numbers here: let’s say the TTC costs $15 billion a year and the earmarked gas tax brings in $1 billion to the city to spend on transit. Now, we have a golden year: through a combination of carrots and sticks, we switch enough people from car to subway to cut traffic — and the gas tax — in half.
If that gas tax was key to funding the TTC, we’d be so screwed.
We still have a $15 billion transit system (assuming that the new load on the TTC doesn’t add any additional costs), but now we’ve got only $14.5 billion to fund it. Either we cut funding to the TTC, which makes people switch back to their cars, or we don’t cut funding, in which case the money comes out of general revenue anyway. I tend to believe cuts are a lot more likely, at least as long as Rob Ford and his eighteen-cent office budget have their say.
Gas-tax-as-transit-funding is an incentive. I worry it’s an incentive to government to only fund transit until we actually use it.
Anticorium

…and, having just made a substantive contribution describing a policy initiative that I think would lead toward an improved transit system, it’s back to bizarre tirades! Hi, Ken! You’re probably wondering what you said that led me to believe that you’re not really serious. Allow me to explain, again.
See, you flat-out said that people should work close to where they live, and hey, if that means that folks are forced to move, it seems that’s no big deal to you. It’s just one of those things that a responsible person would do — “better for the environment” and “better for you”. But for someone (like Stefanie, or me so recently) who lives downtown but works in a pedestrian-hostile suburb, that expressly means that you’re asking us to take our undeserving asses to Mississauga where we’ll need a car for everything, not just getting to and from the soul-deadening office. You may not be asking for it in so many words, but the net effect of living my life by your rules would indeed have been more smog in Mississauga. (Well, Markham. But I have trouble telling the two apart anyway.)
At that point, well, to be honest my girlfriend asked why I was wasting my time, but I’m not going to give up just yet. I’m asking you, with rancour turned off, to consider the possibility that people work where they are able to work, not where they would like to work. And further, the original point I made so many moons ago: when you make it harder to put your business downtown and attract good employees to work there, the net effect will be fewer businesses downtown, and more of the GTA’s employment being located in those office towers that the 905 is sprouting like weeds. Fewer people will be able to work in the congestion zone, which I suppose is one way to reduce traffic demand there….
Put all of that together, stir in a fresh batch of live-where-you-work, and you end up with a hollowed-out downtown and nice full five-acre parking lots all along the 407, full of cars owned by people who need them to do everything in their life except get their mail (unless they’re in one of those new subdivisions with a single central mailbox, in which case that assertion is sorta iffy). Traffic doesn’t go away. It shifts outward, and multiplies. But someone who never goes north of Bloor would never know, and would appreciate how much that sweet, sweet congestion charge had improved the environment and their streetcar ride to the sports bar.
I’m doiing this because, well, here’s the thing: I am onside with your stated goals much more than anyone else you will have to convince. It seems like being a transit user isn’t that much of a sacrifice for you, and I’m glad that you’re lucky that way. But, it was for me. I let one-sixth of my waking hours be stolen from me by public transit at that old job because I cared that badly about getting traffic off the road and reducing my carbon footprint. Every winter day that the wind chill was -20, I walked past two different used car lots on my way to and from the bus stop. Hell, that commute even endangered my relationships with my family, though I hope you’ll understand if I don’t explain how. What more do I need to do to establish my bona fides here?
So, you know, a little more “hey, that’s pretty pessimisic of you, and meanwhile HERE IN REALITY what would happen instead is this” and a little less “I deeply pity you for foolishly making such expensive choices”, and a lot less “seriously, it seems like you’d fit in better in Richmond Hill”. Please. And if you could read my comment and see why I said that my choices were a suburban job or the food bank — hint: It’s because the downtown job offers didn’t put a lot of money on the table, and I would have been unable to afford both food and rent if I’d taken them — that’d be a bonus.
As for parking, well, all I can say is that I know a lot of people who drive to work. Try rereading my comment in the face of your assertion that all those parking spaces adjacent to the series of 2-storey buildings where I worked simply do not exist. (You might also try being drunk. I wasn’t at the time, but I’m told I’m deceptive that way.) And as for the fact that they’re not free, that’s true — but they’re so effectively externalized that they’re considered free. Not one of my coworkers who drives to work thinks that they’re paying for parking. Not a single one. Not even when you point at the line item on their pay stub. And thus when I say that $0.00 is less than $5.50, well, it’s because I know that’s how a whole bunch of people actually think.
(And yes, of course when I talk about my coworkers’ opinions about employer-provided parking spaces, it’s because I’ve had long, probing conversations on the topic with them! I’m a civics nerd, like pretty much anyone else who bothered to read the original post, let alone get this far.)
http://mute.rigent.com miles

I’m living in England at the moment and the visits I’ve made to London still highlight the need for traffic control in the city. But I’m surprised to hear about congestion charges in Toronto, of all cities. The centre of London and downtown Toronto are very different places.
Toronto is most certainly a ‘world city’ but when it comes to traffic chaos you guys are way down the league. When I hear about how poor and expensive public transport is in Toronto… you have no idea how pathetic and expensive it is to try and live and work London using public transport, it’s insane. I know there are cities with better public transport but Toronto’s isn’t bad on a world scale.
I don’t think congestion charges are a bad idea I just think the idea of implementing them in Toronto may be premature. I see charges as a last ditch method in a desperate system. It is working in London, but it’s not an answer to the city’s problems, the underground is falling apart and under-funded, and unfortunately this government wants to privatise everything, instead of just managing it properly.
The congestion charge hasn’t saved London, it’s just eased the pressure. London is still looking for an answer.
rek

I don’t think we should assume there’s a single solution to people-moving problems. There are many approaches we can take, and nothing says we can’t use them in combination: Congestion charges, gas tax shares, toll booths, express subways (even 20 minutes twice a day would do wonders), more ROWs, making it easier to lose your license, maybe take a page from some Asian cities facing much worse air quality problems: license plate date restrictions (if your plate ends in 1 or 2, you can’t drive on Mondays, that sort of thing), car-free zones (temporary and permanent), and on and on.
Toll booths and gas taxes and the like can only help fund transit. Under ideal conditions, the TTC would come in under budget, with no effect on their funding for the next year, and build a surplus over the years for big improvements and expansion.
http://ohoe.blogspot.com John Spragge

Ken Hunt said:

…I’m the one arguing for fewer cars on the road.

Sadly, no, Ken; not if you encourage people to move out to car-dependent suburbs, unless you also have a plan to make those suburbs less car-dependent.
Rod said:

…if you look at cities or regions that have great public transport… their population densities are far greater than ours. look at nyc and london.

I made that exact argument when a development, which would have added apartments steps from a subway station, came up for discussion at a community meeting. Someone yelled “Judas” at me. Community groups worked on the proposal for weeks, trying to come up with an acceptable compromise design. Community council finally shot down the proposal (moving the whole issue to the OMB) after a local resident told them she did not want an apartment building looming over her back yard.

That, to me, sums up a huge part of the issue: we can’t have a workable city or a livable region if we go on listening to people who only care about their own back yards. A congestion charge won’t help anything if we cater to people who want to keep car-dependent urban planning policies.
Disparishun

A congestion charge would be a lot easier for commuters to swallow, if the long-distance commuting infrastructure in place for commuters worked a bit better. Regional transit just isn’t integrated. The interconnection just isn’t there. The feasable commutes which are foregone as a result of the lack of interconnection, would make congestion charges very infuriating indeed.
Classic example: say you want to get to downtown via Yonge and 7 — the big-box complex where the boundaries of Markham, Vaughan, and Richmond Hill meet the intersection of the major north-south artery and the big new east-west one (407).
Well, the intersection has a GO station, Langstaff, and a VIVA station. The GO station is recently expanded. The VIVA is brand spanking new. There are GO trains that go right downtown from there. Yet:
- Brand spanking new VIVA buses in the region do not feed the GO station. They feed only the Finch subway, a few kilometres south,and basically ignore GO altogether. Imagine diverting parking commuters and significant bus traffic from a few very congested kilometres of Yonge?
Well, the transit agencies don’t seem to have. You can’t even walk between the adjacent GO and VIVA stations with much ease — there’s a fence and a bunch of traffic separating then.
Why would York Region Transit, in designing a hub-and-spoke bus rapid transit system, not want use existing GO stations as hubs … and, instead, create their own drive-don’t-walk-there system of hubs? Why is only one GO station served by any VIVA bus at all (per YRT)?
- a couple of stops later, en route to downtown, that GO train stops at Oriole station, about a km from Leslie station on the Sheppard subway line. Yet: the two stations are totally disconnected, as far as I know — why? And, even if they were interconnected, the existing fare system would make it totally illogical for local commuters to use the GO route as an express route to downtown. How does that make sense?
- after Oriole, it’s right to Union station. Which is great. But the train has just crossed the Bloor line, within a km or two of a subway stop, without bothering to interconnect. Same problem as Sheppard, only greater: given the traffic on the Bloor-Danforth line, would it not make sense to give commuters going back up the other way an express route, either within the city, or up to — say — Yonge and 7?
Until they at least start using using systems to greater efficiency by integrating and interconnecting them, it will be hard for poorly-served commuters to swallow congestion charges that try and encourage them to opt for public transit options that take a long, long time to get anywhere.
http://cork2toronto.blogspot.com Mark Dowling

Disparishun
I think Oriole is going to be moved is or being so. That said your point about Langstaff is intriguing.
Ken Hunt

Obviously, people like Anticorium and Stephanie (the contractor who switches jobs every few months) are not the real problem. Lower income people who would otherwise use transit, but due to economic circumstances cannot.
The real problem is the 1000′s of high income people who work at King and Bay, but who live in 4000 sq. ft. homes in Woodbridge and Oakville. These people need to be directly taxed for their behaviour and that money needs to be directed to improving public transit.
Does regional transit need to be integrated? Of course. This has been true for years. But where will the money and will for this come from if not from a congestion charge?
So, how do we deal with the otherwise virtuous people who have no choice but to make environmentally damaging choices? Well, we give them some options. We ask them if it’s possible for them to use a motorcycle or scooter, which are exempt. We ask if they can use a hybrid or alternative fuel vehicle, again exempt. We encourage them to carpool to split costs. We do all those things.
What we can’t do is let everyone off the hook because some people have been forced to have big carbon footprints.
If not a congestion charge, what are your other solutions? And don’t just say ‘better transit’ because there is no money or political will to fix this issue at the moment.
Ken Hunt

Mr Spragge,
I am certainly not encouraging people to move to car-dependent suburbs. Just the opposite. I want to tax people who live in car dependent suburbs but who work downtown (just like you want to encourage the idea of a downtown airport that is closer to where people live/work). These commuting suburbanites are the heart of the problem.
However, if you do work in Mississauga, then you should, if possible, live in Mississauga. That’s the environmentally sound thing to do. You’ll use less gas going back and forth to the grocery store than you will going back and forth to work. (Just as you beleive that people who live closer to Pearson should fly out of Pearson, I assume.) It’s fine to say that we shouldn’t have car-dependent suburbs at all, but that is a much different (and harder to deal with!) problem than the congestion caused by commuter traffic.
I just don’t buy the idea that a $5.50 (again, hypothetical, maybe it should be more, maybe less) congestion charge will send businesses scurrying for the suburbs. Doing business downtown is already more expensive in a lot of different ways. Rents are much higher. Parking is much higher (despite Anticorium’s shifting ‘tax-deductible’, ‘no taxable, you accountant-quoting fibber’, then ‘completely externalized’ shifting argument).
A congestion charge is a move in favour of density and against sprawl. Not the opposite. Again, I suppose that’s another reason why residents of the zone in London get a huge discount. It’s a ‘good for you for not being a suburbanite’ benefit.
http://cork2toronto.blogspot.com Mark Dowling

Follow-up to Disparishun
I posted in the Transit Toronto Yahoogroup about the lack of VIVA-GO links and got this reply from Richard Hooles (need to subscribe for the full post)
“When Viva first started, YRT was running the 99 Yonge South bus to Langstaff GO Station from Richmond Hill Centre to meet with the trains, but this was unpopular with customers, and was discontinued. A walkway from Langstaff GO Station to Richmond Hill Centre is currently in the development stage.”
http://www.guesswork.ca Patrick M

In doing a little research for this, I came across a site quoting some politicians who called Toronto “the hole in the donut” because of the jobs and businesses it was losing to the 905. Obviously, that impacts the quality of life downtown, and unless we want to look like most American cities, we’d better do something about it.
The economics of taxation for social engineering are simple: you get what you charge for. A congestion charge in downtown Toronto penalizes people for driving in downtown Toronto, period. What is needed are policies that penalize people for driving ANYWHERE, thereby discouraging sprawl and encouraging public transit use. However, that means something like a gasoline tax, the suggestion of which would be be an act of political suicide for any party foolish enough to try it. The fact is that the collective “we” are mortgaging our future for a little convenience, and don’t see any reason to stop.
Ken Hunt

Well, a little research can be a dangerous thing. The “Hole in the Donut” is a well-known model in urban studies and usually refers to the flight of capital and retail out of the downtown core. Many American cities have suffered from the ‘Hole in the Donut’ syndrome.
One of the things that typifies this syndrome is the bottom dropping out of property values in the core of a city. This is not a problem that Toronto has. Everywhere you go in this city, you find vibrant neighbourhoods. Gentrification (for good or bad, depending on your personal viewpoint) is the rule now in Toronto, not the expection.
A lot of people are now choosing to eschew the commute to the suburbs and live a more sensible life. This means paying more for a smaller house than you would get in Woodbridge. It means your kids play at the park instead of in your backyard. But it also means that you’re not contributing as much to pollution and gridlock.
A gas tax (well, more gas taxes) are a fine idea, but not something that we can enact locally.
People keep making this blanket assertion that a congestion charge will cause capital flight to suburbia. How? Why?
As I’ve already indicated, doing business downtown is far more expensive right now then doing business in suburbia. Rent, Parking, taxes, etc., are all more expensive in the city. But: the city is vibrant. It a hub full of life, services, excitement, transit, etc. The city doesn’t compete with the suburbs on price. Never has, never will. We bring things to the table that the suburbs cannot and that’s our competitive advantage.
Think about it. Are companies who are currently located downtown, where a great number of their employees can get to them easily going to move to Oakville so that EVERYONE in the company now has to drive for hours to get back and forth to work? Are a bunch of multi-national banks, huge law firms and trading floors going to open up north of the 401 or west of the 427?
Or, are the people who work at these places and who still choose to live in suburban mansions simply going to have to pay a commuter tax or help offset the problems they cause with congestion and smog?
GH

Ken Hunt, in a discussion of congestion charges how does the size of a person’s house have relevance? Oh yes, as ususal, many of the anti-car people are under the surface really borderline socialists who cannot stand that someone else has the money to own a car and operate it. It’s about class ultimately, which is why the downtown is targetted (those rich lawyers and bankers…), not about the environment for these.
Ken Hunt

The size of a person’s house matters a great deal! This is not about class, this is environmentalism 101.
The desire for big houses with big yards is what causes urban sprawl. Urban sprawl causes congestion and pollution. This is the reason people have to drive so far to get to work. People build huge mansions in Rosedale. That might not be a good use of land, but at least they’re not driving for two hours to get to Bay St.
http://taylor.typepad.com Chris Taylor

The real problem is the 1000′s of high income people who work at King and Bay, but who live in 4000 sq. ft. homes in Woodbridge and Oakville. These people need to be directly taxed for their behaviour and that money needs to be directed to improving public transit.

Are there some statistics to back this up? How many high-income people working at King/Bay but living at Oakville/golf course have to be surcharged (or completely dissuaded from driving downtown) in order for congestion to improve?
My guess is that there are a lot more low-to-median income jobs within Toronto that require cars than there are six-figure execs in Oakville who have to commute downtown every day. I would also be willing to bet there are a lot of single parents inside the city limits who require a car to drop off their child at daycare before they head downtown to work. Try finding a carpool willing to make daily home-daycare-work treks, or better yet, make the whole home-daycare-work commute on the TTC. And of course the daycare doesn’t mind and won’t penalize you if you’re a half-hour late picking up your child due to a transit glitch.
Perhaps some actual study and data collection on local commuting patterns is warranted before people jump to the conclusion that it’s evil rich suburbanites with SUVs that are the primary problem. Here’s a hint: If you’re rich, you don’t need to commute from Oakville to downtown; you own (or rent) a condo close to the office where you can bed down during the week and avoid daily commuting hell. And on the weekends you go back to the burbs.
What we need are some facts about commuter patterns to make informed opinions about whether or not congestions charges are going to make a bit of difference. Otherwise it’s all idle speculation and witch-hunting.
GH

So are the big houses in Rosedale or the suburbs? If a large house in Rosedale is fine and one in Oakville is not, then is it the house that really matters?
Anyway, I’ve seen plenty of townhouses in the suburbs and know plenty of office-tower rich people who take the GO from Oakville, take the subway from Lawrence Park etc. Urban sprawl is also (mainly?) a function of people looking for an affordable single family house, not the rich looking for a 6 bathroom, 4 car garage house.
Urban sprawl was actually initially facilitated by public transit (see the book “Downtown” by Robert M. Fogelson), and is still facilitated by it. Getting people out of their cars and onto transit may or may not change that. Adding density may also add to congestion (unless all new residents do not bring cars), so the issue is more complex than urban sprawl, and is certainly more complex than blaming people with middle class (or higher) aspirations (as opposed to aspiring to be part of the chattering downtown classes).
http://www.guesswork.com Patrick M

” Think about it. Are companies who are currently located downtown, where a great number of their employees can get to them easily going to move to Oakville so that EVERYONE in the company now has to drive for hours to get back and forth to work? Are a bunch of multi-national banks, huge law firms and trading floors going to open up north of the 401 or west of the 427?”
Absolutely. I know of of hundreds people who were moved out to Brampton and Markham with companies like RBC and Rogers. MOst of the moved jobs are low-paying, so people either go where they jobs are, or they quit and look for something else because the commute is impractical. Rich people can live whereever they want, of course.
The “hole in the donut” is not a pat catchphrase, it’s demonstrable fact. People who cannot afford cars have to live in an area with decent transit, i.e. Toronto. If the jobs move away – as they are doing – then you have a lot of poor, unemployed people which further strains the city social services and budget. Quality of life suffers, accelerating the flight to the suburbs, and the whole thing snowballs. The pattern is extremely well documented, and we would be foolish to think that it could never happen here. Anyone who has been downtown in my hometown of London, Ont, has seen the disastrous decay there – within my memory, that used to a vibrant thriving place too.
I’m not suggesting that a simple congestion charge would do all this, but every additional tax burden drives out people who have alternative places to live and do business. Solutions in this day and age have to address a much bigger picture.
GH

So are the big houses in Rosedale or the suburbs? If a large house in Rosedale is fine and one in Oakville is not, then is it the house that really matters?
Anyway, I’ve seen plenty of townhouses in the suburbs and know plenty of office-tower rich people who take the GO from Oakville, take the subway from Lawrence Park etc. Urban sprawl is also (mainly?) a function of people looking for an affordable single family house, not the rich looking for a 6 bathroom, 4 car garage house.
Urban sprawl was actually initially facilitated by public transit (see the book “Downtown” by Robert M. Fogelson), and is still facilitated by it. Getting people out of their cars and onto transit may or may not change that. Adding density may also add to congestion (unless all new residents do not bring cars), so the issue is more complex than urban sprawl, and is certainly more complex than blaming people with middle class (or higher) aspirations (as opposed to aspiring to be part of the chattering downtown classes).
Anticorium

Think about it. Are companies who are currently located downtown, where a great number of their employees can get to them easily going to move to Oakville so that EVERYONE in the company now has to drive for hours to get back and forth to work?
Yep.
A few months before I got there.
Apparently the old office was right on top to a subway station, too.
Disparishun

Mark, thanks. If anything, Mr. Hooles’ response underlines the point. There’s a GO train station with a giant parking lot. Inaccessible but adjacent, there’s a VIVA hub where VIVA buses unload and people can transfer. Yet the twain do not meet — and rather than try and turn two hubs into one hub, they try rerouting a non-VIVA bus which does not connect up to either hub. What on Earth is going on there?
It is nice to hear that a walkway from Langstaff GO Station to Richmond Hill Centre is currently in the development stage, sort of like the long-promised walkway between Oriole and Leslie on the Sheppard line. I make no comment on how long these will take, though they are long-promised and no delivery in sight. More to the point is that these are totally separate stations for which some walkway will perhaps eventually be created, rather than single multimodal stations, in the first place. Interconnection multiplies network value. The GTA transit systems don’t do that — and that’s only the first step to eventual integrated transit planning that actually makes sense.
Some sign of that, at least, would make selling congestion charges and the like in 905-land a little bit easier — it’d make it appear as though there wer a realistic attempt to provide transit alternatives.
http://null Josh

We’ve gone a bit off topic but cars are not the enemy, it’s cars with one person commuting that’s a major problem. SUVs hold 7 people sometimes, so we need the incentive to fill cars. HOV lanes help, but a further step is necessary. I travel on the GO every weekday – some days on the GO bus down the 404/DVP – and it’s astounding how many people are alone in their cars while my bus will zoom past them using the HOV (until we hit the DVP of course, but after wynford it’s clear sailing again). Drivers will endure quite a bit of traffic torture only to drive solo.
James

I believe in a congestion charge in principle and in the right city. London is the right city for a congestion charge, Toronto is not. I lived in London for three years. I did not live in Central London, but rather just outside and did not use a car while travelling in the city, even once and this is before the congestion charge. This is because London has something that Toronto does not: AN ACTUAL PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEM!
Imagine if you were somewhere in North Etobicoke and knew that in a five minute walk (Hell, even a ten minute walk), you could be on a subway and on your way downtown. Imagine the same if you were in Pickering. Or Markham. That is what it is like to live in London. NOT HERE. There is no possible way you can force a significantly higher percentage of the population into public transit unless it is there and available within a reasonable walking distance from their home.
A congestion charge will in no way reduce our smog levels either. Yes, a lot of our smog comes from cars driving in Toronto, but what about all the thousands of cars driving around the 905? What about the 50% of our smog that comes from south of the border? What about all the smog that comes from Ontario’s coal burning plants?
The issues goes further than just traffic congestion. The charge will continue to make downtown Toronto a bastion of the rich. Rising property prices has long forced people to move out of Toronto and to places like Mississauga where housing is slightly more affordable. I am not one of these people, but I know many. When they get to the suburbs they have no choice but to drive and drive everywhere. There simply is no other reasonable option.
I say the people of Toronto refuse to even consider a congestion charge until the politicians of our city, province and country step up to the plate and give us a transit system that we can use and be proud of. We’ve fallen far, far behind virtually all cities of our size and are LIGHT YEARS behind everywhere in Europe. We don’t even have a railway from the airport to downtown! I’m not taking a few new buses either. I’m talking rail transit along Eglinton, along Queen or King, out to Mississauga and into Vaughan. Scarborough presently has NO subway access. We’re so behind it’s pathetic. There can be no congestion charging in Toronto until our transit woes are resolved. This will require political will and buckets of cash.
Tree

There is a whole segment of the population out there who think that transit is not their problem. They don’t take it and they don’t know anyone who does. They drive to work, they drive their kids to soccer practice, they drive whenever they want and never give it a second thought. It’s time to kick those people in the ass.
OK people, I just have to say that no one mentioned anything about people who live in Toronto who have to drive to work. Why? Because clearly no one on this list is pregnant and has had the displeasure of trying to get on a subway or streetcar every morning to go to work. No one has tried to take their kids to daycare via transit. Either you’re all self-righteous childless people trying to tell other people how to live your lives, or you’re the jerk who told me I was “selfish” to ask for your subway seat when I was eight months pregnant (but “not showing enough”) or you live so far downtown, you have no need or desire to own a car.
Here’s the real truth: I took the TTC for many, many years and told people who owned cars that they were expensive pollution machines and a waste of money.
Then I started a family. Guess what? Unless you live right on the TTC main grid, it’s nearly impossible for a busy double income middle-class family with kids to get around without a car. The penalty for picking your kid up late at daycare can be as high as $2 a minute. That’s nothing compared to a congestion charge. Walking to the subway and being jostled while standing for the entire 30 minute ride while pregnant means you’re possibly putting your health at risk if you suffer from dizzy spells or nausea. And don’t even get me started about trying to take a proper snow-competent stroller on a bus.
The last time I took the TTC home from work, I was eight weeks pregnant, exhausted, and a snowstorm had crippled the streetcars along King. I walked 2 km to the subway in the snow, nearly passing out from exhaustion, only to be jostled for another 30 minutes on the subway to my stop, then walked about 20 minutes to get home. I had such bad cramps that night, I ended up at home in bed unable to move for a day. I was terrified I was miscarrying. I missed putting my baby to bed, and thank god my husband was home that day or we would have been screwed.
So I’ll keep driving thanks, until the TTC pulls up its socks and starts treating us like human beings. The real congestion problem is on the subways, buses and streetcars downtown. What we *don’t* need is more people squishing through the doors at rush hour. Improve the system, and only then will I stop driving to work. Til then, I’ll take my quick, safe drive to work/daycare/wherever over risking my health and sanity on a system that is in sore need of that “kick in the ass” you mention.
And by the way? Those stickers that say “please give this seat to elderly/disabled riders” should also mention PREGNANT WOMEN. Sometimes there is the odd annoying woman who doesn’t get tired, dizzy or nauseous and thinks everyone should stand like her. But for the rest of us, we need to sit.
Thanks.

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