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SPACING POLL: Do you think Gardiner and DVP should have tolls?

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Do you think the Gardiner and DVP should have tolls?

I went on a quick road trip this weekend to Chicago. Our vehicle had to pay a few highway road tolls along the way — the only toll that was more than 50 cents was the bridge to get into Detroit. It got me thinking….

I’m eternally frustrated with Toronto’s lack of gumption in dealing with serious congestion problems in our city, especially when it comes to road tolls. Based on the number of trips that residents make daily on Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway, Toronto could raise between $50-million to $70-million a year if it enacted a 50 cent toll. While it might be unpopular with drivers who are feeling pinched at the gas pump, cheap road tolls would be the first step towards finding an alternative way to fund our transit system.

So the question Spacing poses to you today is: Do you think the City of Toronto should implement road tolls on the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway? Let’s hear your reasons for and against in the comments section.

photo by Trevor Schwellnus

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39 comments

  1. I voted No. There needs to be a plan first (a real one, not just Dalton’s lines on a map) that can be implemented with the money raised. Otherwise it would achieve nothing.

  2. Charging money for road tolls is a much better revenue tool than the land transfer tax — it targets the right market (people who are doing something harmful to the rest of us as well as themselves).

  3. It is a tough position to be in. While i do not drive much, I could see how frustrated drivers might be having to pay a dollar each way – they would likely find alternative routes. On the other hand, this puts more emphasis on taking transit, or carpooling – both of which should also be supported. I think if tolls were to be in place, the transit system needs to be ramped up and made more reliable to accommodate such a change.

  4. I voted “No” but wanted to vote “Not yet”. Once something on the scale of the MoveOntario plan is implemented, road tolls would be a great way to encourage ridership and pay the operating subsidies. Right now, the TTC and GO are already running at/near capacity — a sudden 20-40% increase in transit ridership (if tolls had the desired effect) would swamp the infrastructure.

  5. Doing nothing until a committee gives you a twenty thousand page report is a great way to procrastinate. Achievement is the result of many little steps, and highway tolls are a canonical little step.

    Tolls increase the demand for better transit, and they make people conscious of their driving habits. Making people think is good, because we’d all rather just be lazy and take the easy highway to oblivion.

  6. Yes, yes, yes. It boggles the mind how much taxpayers pay to maintain a road network. Why should I pay for it? I live downtown (and pay the premium in exorbitant rent), don’t own a car, and bike or take public transit everywhere. Living in Riverdale, I also bear a lot of the brunt of the massive pollution being pumped out by these cars 4 hours a day during rush hour… We must do everything we can to get people out of their cars and on to alternate modes of transportation. As most everyone can testify to, most of these cars have one person in them. Ack! The reasons go on and on. Regardless of whether these funds go into public transit, beefing up bicycle routes, implementing anti-smog regulation, cleaning up the don–whatever–at least our bankrupt city can collect a few more dollars.
    I also think the land transfer tax is a great and appropriate thing.

  7. Motorists have it good here. They complaint about being squeezed, yet they don’t pay a fraction of the real costs cars have in the economy and society. If motorist in Toronto had to pay what they pay in Europe we would probably have a drivers’ revolution in our hands, they are extremely spoiled with low gas costs and free reign in our streets and communities. You pollute, you pay, it is as simple as that. I don’t think property taxes should subsidize such a wasteful form of transportation. So I vote YES, toll every single highway in the GTA, but use the money and put it into transit, which is a good kind of subsidy.

  8. well… I’m always afraid about the competitive disadvantage to Toronto compared to the 905 should road tolls be implemented.

  9. Why should taxpayers pay to maintain the road network? Because practically every you buy comes in through those roads. We have a truck-centric continent. And if you put it on rail, you’re going to hinder commuter rail and make it more expensive.

    Motorists already pay additional taxes at the pumps, through their property taxes.

  10. Andrew, you are absolutely right. Tolls would have to be implemented throughout the GTA, not just Toronto. But you also must consider that most highways are inside or across Toronto, so a huge part of the collected money should end up with the TTC (at least in an ideal world).

  11. A.R. — how do motorists pay additional taxes through property taxes? Are you saying that as a non-car-owning homeowner, I’m getting some kind of deal? Cool, if so, but please explain.

  12. To clarify- no motorists don’t pay additional property taxes. But they do pay the tax like anyone else for the roads they benefit from.

  13. what makes me angry is that the very people who try to live downtown in order to cut down on their commute (and take public transit) are forced to pay a double land transfer tax, but the people polluting their way into the downtown core from the suburbs (where the property taxes go to other municipalities and not the city of toronto and the TTC) aren’t charged a cent.

    shouldn’t it be the other way around??!?!?!?!

  14. If there is carbon taxation in our future (& I think it’s inevitable), then we’d better get road tolls in place sooner rather than later. Once the Feds start carbon taxing drivers through the gas pumps and their car purchases there will be even less appetite at the municipal level to make the politically unpopular tolling decision, and the City will have lost control of the means to focus taxes collected from drivers toward transit improvements.

  15. One of the sillier ideas I’ve heard yet. I take the TTC (subway + streetcar) to and from work every day, but I also own a car. My SO lives and goes to school in Waterloo, and until they’re out of school I’m making lots of trips to and from there. Using VIA and Greyhound sucks up a huge part of the weekend, and is also very expensive. It’s not an option.

    The subway and streetcar are BEYOND crowded already. Adding a toll to encourage more people to suddenly take the subway and streetcar to work is ridiculously stupid if the infrastructure is not there to support it.

    One thing I’ve noticed in communities like this online is a car-hating trend. Many people here may not own cars, and they seem to think people who do own cars are either idiots or simply lazy. Not everybody can live downtown or live on convenient TTC routes (and if you did make the TTC the only reasonable way to get downtown, watch your rent spike from the increased attractiveness of yuor location). Not everybody never has to leave the downtown core.

    Please examine the big picture. How do all of the goods you buy get downtown and to all of the stores? How would the TTC support the excess capacity of the new toll? How will you deal with your increased rent cost if you live in a TTC-accessible area (eg, near subway/streetcar lines).

    It seems to me too many people think “I don’t drive a car, so taxing those who do is the best solution”. It’s shortsighted, to say the least.

    I’m all for encouraging everyone who needs to get downtown to take transit, but not everybody can. The TTC is a disaster in terms of infrastructure (at least compared to other cities I’ve lived in), and it should not be the only way to get downtown until it is respectable.

  16. Its more of a yes, if…. answer.

    I no longer have to take transit since i moved as close to work as possible but I also am a driver.

    I think if you toll any of the incoming roads, people who drive in from the suburbs will only start using the other routes into town such as don mills, bayview, and leslie only clogging these roads more than they are, bringing more pollution into the inner city rather than keeping it along those corridors.

    I also think it will increase ridership onto the already crowded Yonge subway so I think before they can start collecting tolls, they should provide more solutions for getting into the city. Dedicate all the gas tax collection towards transit and road maintenance.

    Its all about balance.

  17. I really don’t think people will suddenly start taking the arterial roads instead of the DVP and Gardiner because they have to pay 50 cents. The time wasted will not be worth it to them. That’s why keeping it at a small amount is the right way to do it. It will still generate lots of money and not be cost-prohibitive.

  18. I voted yes because the amount proposed is small. Overall, it would generate a lot of money for improving transit and creating much needed new routes. I live close to downtown and regularly let subways pass without getting on because they’re jammed by the time they come my way – something that is not addressed in the transit plan. The hit on any individual driver wouldn’t force them out of their cars onto already crowded subways. Hopefully, that’s a choice they would voluntarily make once the new options they helped pay for were in place.

  19. When the GO Train starts running more than once an hour, sure, but not yet. There are just no real alternatives to driving from the suburbs at the moment. Some lines on Chicago’s METRA (Equivalent to the GO Train) runs every 20 minutes.

  20. I think that people need to see whether Transit City and similar initiatives will improve the speed and accessibility of public transit before they decide against the car.

  21. I understand what people say about the TTC being a joke when compared to other transit systems around the world (especially Europe and Asia) but the facts remain that drivers here do not pay the full costs of driving, no matter what they say. Gasoline is twice the price in Europe and Japan and there are much more tolls there than here. Politicians for some reason assume that taxing home owners and renters by default is better than taxing consumption and pollution, that is such a ridiculous notion which can only be explained by North America’s wasteful consumption capitalism. Dave assumes everyone in here is anti-car, I don’t believe in that assumption, people here are against the stupid ways cars are used and how there is a lack of alternatives and infrastructures to the automobile. I find that those who traveled around the world can see how badly planned Toronto is and how sickening it is that drivers in this city do not have the vision to see better alternatives to driving. The best examples I can think of is the Netherlands and Germany, visiting those countries you can see that they have a mentality where the car, although adored as much as here, is not considered the higher priority in implementing urban policies. The priority they have is pedestrians, cyclist, transit users and then you have the car dead last and that is the way it should be. I hear drivers complaining the lack of alternatives (which they are right), but I think most of them desire the horrible public transit we have because it gives them the excuse and a clear conscious not to use it. Even if we had a good infrastructure and a competent urban planning you would always have people that would not quit their cars no matter what (just like you have in Germany), and in my opinion those people should carry all the costs of highway pollution, congestion, accidents’ burden on health care and the paving of prime farmland. Drivers have it too easy here in Canada. Dave is mistaken when he assumes rents and property taxes will go up near transit lines, the opposite will actually happen in suburbia, low density and higher energy costs (which are unavoidable) will make living in the suburbs and shopping in big box plazas extremely expensive. If you own a house in the suburbs sell it as fast as you can, when the barrel of oil reaches the $200 mark (which will happen), people will just pack and leave their suburban homes to rot.

  22. What about charging a toll (similar to London)??? …this would directly target the people who use the roads to comunte into Toronto and don’t already pay taxes that are used to support the transit and road system in the city. The people who use the roads should have to pay for them!!!!

    This would also encourage new development would be encouraged within the existing city limits rather than the farmers fields.

    We have also been waiting for decades for the Toronto transit to improve. The only way we are going to see a marked difference is if there is some serious pressure put on the system and the government. A toll can make many good things happen.

  23. I voted Yes. But there are some differences between Toronto and Chicago with respect to the tolls on roads.

    In Chicago the toll roads are nearly exclusively those that go from suburb-to-suburb. The highways that run from the North Shore, O’Hare, near western suburbs, to Joliet and South Side to downtown are “free”. It’s the tri-state ring highway, highway to Rockford (about 3 miles north east of the city), and highway to Indiana that are tolls.

    Also as another poster pointed out the Chicago equivalent to GO transit, called Metra, is much more extensive and reliable. On many routes it runs every 30 minutes until 10 PM, and up to 2 AM on some lines. It has 11 routes with 237 stations (to GO’s 6 routes and 56 stations). The one big difference is that Metra has few direct connections to the Chicago Transit Authority (the El doesn’t enter any of the downtown stations or any of the Metra stations within city limits).

    Either way: tax drivers, they already do more than enough damage!

  24. We have to turn the freeways into feeways – though the arguments against tolls before transit improvements have some merit. If we changed the Front St. road folly to a Front St. transitway that expedited the trips in and out of the core right beside the Gardiner (and the GO trains), we would actually have improved the transit services ahead of tolls. But it’s been now five years since suggesting transit options please, and while the FSE hasn’t gone ahead, nobody has had the guts to actually study transit though it’s right beside the GO trains and the King car (both with some real service challenges/demand) and one might think that some of our governments might be interested in tackling climate change some decade with transit.
    And I don’t hold a lot of hope for smart transit with the Transit City plan either given how resolutely obdurate the TTC has been to go beyond a Metro era excessway plan, as they embrace a metro-era transit plan on the Waterfront (WWLRT) that won’t provide the real competition/alt to the Gardiner that is needed ahead of tolls.

  25. A lot of the comments here are focusing on the role of a fifty-cent toll in increasing transit ridership, and how that can’t really happen until transit capacity goes up. But a fity-cent toll on an expressway isn’t going to push large numbers of people to buy a two-dollar bus token — especially not inter-suburban travellers. What it will do is enable the city to squeeze some money out of road users and spend it on transit (or anything else, really, but transit makes the most sense). The short-term goal is not to increase transit ridership: it’s to increase funding.

    Remember, gas-tax-payers, that most of your pennies haven’t been going to the city’s road budget. If you imagine that you’re paying for the DVP with gas taxes, you’d better thank me for the taxes I pay on pizza, too, because the money’s going to largely the same place.

    When it comes to road tolls and congestion charges, the cry of “think of the delivery trucks” is often raised. Trucks give the roads quite a pounding, due to all of the mass they’re carrying. That’s a good reason that they should pay for the privilege, but it also means that per unit of mass moved, they’re more efficient than cars. What’s a fifty-cent toll to a truck carrying thousands of dollars worth of goods? And if I’m wrong and it’s an economy-crushing disaster, trucks could be exempted.

    Gas prices rise by tens of cents per litre without chasing cars and trucks off of the roads. The 407 seems to remain in business. Road tolls can get the city some money without turning society on its ear.

  26. Thanks for your comment Eric (comment above). You’ve articulated what I was eventually going to post in this section. I picked 50 cents as my base becuz it’s not cost-prohibitive. But just like PST or GTS a small amount can add up.

    Now, if you put a toll of $2.75 on highways to match TTC fares, you’d see an outcry like never before.

  27. Be careful what you wish for when you rail against those leeches who don’t cover their own costs. The last time we had that talk, a whole bunch of Ontario taxpayers decided to stop paying for a transit system they’ll never use.

  28. I remember those taxpayers. Harris spent millions of dollars to pose in front of an empty hospital bed on television and tell them that by closing hospitals they would get better health service. They re-elected him. I guess they got what they deserved.

  29. Anticorium > taxpayers (including ones who don’t drive) pay the *entire* capital and maintenance cost of roads (except the 407), but even under the previous funding system paid only a fraction of the cost of the transit system.

    The argument that tolls would make Toronto’s downtown less competitive is problematic. Most poor and many middle class commuters already pay a lot to get downtown – through transit and GO transit fares (and bear in mind that many of them probably own and pay for the maintenance of a car at home, too). That has not stopped them from working downtown. Only a fraction of commuters to Toronto’s downtown core actually drive, and I’m guessing that they are on average higher-earners than transit users, so I’m guessing that a small fee would not make a big difference to them.

    The other reason there should be a toll on the Gardiner and the DVP is simply economic. They are both way over capacity, because they are a free good that is in high demand. It makes sense to impose a toll that would be a step towards reducing their usage to their planned capacity – and use the money to expand transit to compensate.

  30. I don’t have issue with tolls except for the fact that I live and work in the City, by choice. I need my car for my job working for the City of Toronto. Take transit when I have meetings downtown but in Scarborough where I work the transit system isn’t efficient. I’d probably be standing on the curbside waiting for buses all day. A vast majority of people who work with me commute in from the suburbs. If the toll is to discourage that and promote transit then I’m all for it. Seems like a deterrent for someone like me who is choosing to live and work in and for the City.

  31. I agree with Miller in that you can’t just implement the tolls in highways leading to downtown; it would only drive business away. The only way to implement them, especially on a revenue basis, is across the GTA so that businesses won’t be motivated to flee to the suburbs. Of course, the suburbs don’t have sufficient transit service, so you’ll have to wait until after moveontario.

  32. I think that anyone who uses the Gardiner should pay a toll. By giving such an ugly structure a use, they are ugly-ifiying the harbourfront.

    Save up all the tolls from the Gardiner and tear the beast down.

  33. I voted Yes.

    I think an excellent amendment to the idea would be to make the HOV lanes (3+ people) toll-free.

  34. I am in favour of tolls and congestion charges with an anti-pollution twist: These charges should increase sharply on smog days.

    This means 10 cent per km tolls that increase to 50 cents on poor air pollution index days and a congestion charge of $10 that increases to $50 on smog days.

    Air pollution kills. It is time to clean up the air we breathe.

  35. No. Cars will just spill onto the local roads instead. If you want to get drivers, tax parking spots!

  36. I voted Yes. I also think they should raise rates for parking in the city. Increase the cost by 50 cents an hour everywhere, and increase the cost of not paying. And increase the cost of parking in Green P spots and put a tax on the revenue made by private parking establishments. All this money should be given to infrastructure.

  37. I voted NO! For someone like me that relies on a car for business this is murder. I already pay tolls for using the 407 ETR road which I think is extortion. The tax taken from fuel that we pay at the pump is for maintenance and construction, this needs to be put to use better instead of lining politician’s pockets. Besides if these tolls are put in place more congestion will occur on secondary roads because of people using them as a bypass. Think of that if you live off of Lakeshore road or Dundas Street.

  38. I agree. Toll charges contribute a lot to the government revenues. Huge amount of money were being utilized for the improvemnet of roads and highways. I just want to put an emphasis on the heavy traffic situation encountered by motorists almost everyday. Something should be done about this.