Canada lags in use of road tolls
Many drivers see road tolls as a nuisance, but they're not just a way to raise money — transportation experts say they’re a valuable way to regulate the transportation grid and streamline traffic.
Countries like Sweden and Great Britain have used tolls to ease congestion, curb carbon emissions, fund public transit and generally create a more comfortable and expedient commute for all travellers.
In Canada, however, tolls are a relative rarity — across the entire country, there are only 18 pay-as-you-go routes. What’s more, only two of them are roads (the 407 in Ontario and the Cobequid Pass in Nova Scotia), and 12 are bridges or tunnels on the Canada-U.S. border, like the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit from Windsor, Ont.
Given crumbling bridges in places like Montreal and crushing commute times in Toronto, experts wonder why Canadian municipalities aren’t using tolls more often.
“‘Tolls’ is kind of a catchphrase for road pricing, which has lots of different options,” says Cherise Burda, director of Ontario transportation policy at the Pembina Institute. That can include everything from traditional tolls, to congestion charges, to more progressive strategies like vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
“Things like that have the added benefit of giving drivers pause, and making them think, what are some of the other options of getting around?” says Burda.
Manipulating traffic
According to Enid Slack, director of municipal finance and governance at the Munk School of Global Affairs, tolls are important “not only because they bring in money to build the roads, but they discourage people from using those roads, and in the future would reduce the need to expand those roads.”
Says Slack, “The tolls don’t just act on the revenue side, but they play a role on the expenditure side, because they reduce the demand for roads.”
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They can also manipulate traffic flow, and one of the most successful models is the congestion charge in London, England. Between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., London drivers must pay a rate of £10 (approximately $16 CDN) to pass through the downtown core.
This great experiment was launched by London mayor Ken Livingston in 2003 with the aim of reducing congestion and raising investment funds for the city’s transit system. While the “C-charge” continues to have its detractors, a 2007 study reported that it had reduced car traffic in downtown London by about 70,000 vehicles a day.
A similar toll introduced in Stockholm in 2007 has shaved car traffic by 25 per cent.
Singapore has had a congestion charge since 1973, and since it was implemented, the city-state has witnessed a 70 per cent bump in transit ridership.
Canadian congestion
Canadian cities have some of the highest commute times in the world — in Toronto, it takes an average of 80 minutes to get to and from work every day; in Montreal, it’s 76 minutes. Canada is in desperate need of some sort of road infrastructure strategy, says Burda.
Introduced in 2003, London's congestion charge has significantly reduced the traffic in the city's core.
“We’re years behind where we should be,” she says.
That's one of the factors making the idea of tolls more palatable to Canadian drivers. According to an online poll conducted exclusively for CBC News by Leger Marketing, half of Canadians would be in favour of road tolls if they reduced gridlock and shortened the daily commute.
One of the most successful tolling strategies in Canada is Ontario’s 407, a privately owned express toll route (ETR) that stretches 108 kilometres across the top of the Greater Toronto Area. Opened in 1997, the 407 is the world’s first electronically operated toll highway.
The 407 charges what’s called a “free-flow” toll – in other words, drivers don't need to stop to pay. When motorists get on and off the highway, they pass under a gantry mounted with equipment that automatically records the beginning and end of their trip. Their ride is validated in one of two ways: by a video camera, which scans the car’s licence plate; or through a signal to a transponder mounted inside the vehicle. (Riders can rent the transponder for $21.50 per year.) The driver then gets a bill in the mail.
“The people that use [the 407] know that every day they’re going to get to work at the exact same time that they did the day before,” says Martin Collier, a road pricing consultant based in Guelph, Ont.
“[The highway’s owners] get a bad rap because they only comprise 100 of 300,000 kilometres in the province of Ontario. But for their customers – about one million of them – they’re giving them the best ride in all of Ontario.”
More can be read at:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/...oad-tolls.html