I can understand the initial hesitation to more and more fees. If you’ve ever tried getting out from Front Street at 5pm on a weekday you’d wish for something like that.
Thing is that everyone inside and outside cars effectively subsidize the externalities of traffic. Everyone’s wasted time, wasted gas money, health effects of breathing car emissions, noise, so on and so forth. Don’t forget that every car on the road is being subsidized by taxpayers from road maintenance, gas tax subsidies, parking facilities in the suburbs, service delivery and upkeep to the far suburbs, so on and so forth.
I agree that Toronto’s network is not quite as good as New York to really justify such a toll at this very moment but within 10 years I think it will be, and if it shows early signs of success then I think many cities around both Canada and the US will be quick to adopt it.
I can understand the initial hesitation to more and more fees. If you’ve ever tried getting out from Front Street at 5pm on a weekday you’d wish for something like that.
Thing is that everyone inside and outside cars effectively subsidize the externalities of traffic. Everyone’s wasted time, wasted gas money, health effects of breathing car emissions, noise, so on and so forth. Don’t forget that every car on the road is being subsidized by taxpayers from road maintenance, gas tax subsidies, parking facilities in the suburbs, service delivery and upkeep to the far suburbs, so on and so forth.
I agree that Toronto’s network is not quite as good as New York to really justify such a toll at this very moment but within 10 years I think it will be, and if it shows early signs of success then I think many cities around both Canada and the US will be quick to adopt it.