It's time for "user pays" in the GTA
Fixing Toronto – Part One
It was just a few hours ago that I had to pay 50 cents to enter a stretch of road near Reston, Virginia. And then another 50 cents to exit some 15 minutes later. Most of my fellow commuters were fixed up with electronic tolling passes, but my Ontario-made Malibu rental was not so configured. It didn’t take a minute to pony up, even if you don’t have exact change. Even in the Land of the Free, driving on a highway isn’t.
User pays. How simple. How smart.
As the City of Toronto tries in vain to get its arms around yet another budget deficit, I read in my morning newspaper that the plan is to “cut 5%” from every departmental budget. Surely there must be 5% of fat in any particular bucket, but life in government is never so easy.
The federal government tried to do something similar circa 1992, and then Government House Leader Harvie Andre was looking for 10% cuts across the board. The Cabinet Ops committee was getting up a head of steam; it was a recession after all, and the deficit was far too large for anyone’s comfort. I pointed out that a 10% cut would have a bunch of unintended consequences: 10% out of a grant to the volunteer Civil Air Search and Rescue Association would mean they could fly 10% fewer missions in Thunder Bay, for example. Which would mean that DND would need to send up a search and rescue helicopter or plane from Trenton to fill in the gap. A very expensive budget cut that would actually cost money in the end. (They pulled that one from the list.)
Torontonians will soon learn which budgets can spare a 5% belt-tightening: police and fire services seem like very inappropriate places to cut, and welfare costs aren’t something that one can fiddle with. The weakest in society have been dealt a bad enough hand as it is.
So, what to do?
Tolls on the DVP and Gardiner Expressway (see prior posts “Bring on the toll roads” Sept 10-07 and “Globe columnist joins the toll road gang” Nov 25-07), that’s what! Two tiers: one price for those who live in the “M” postal code, and a higher one for the rest. Whether you drive in Florida, California, New Jersey or Virginia, tolls are a natural way to help pay for the cost of maintaining road infrastructure. Even in New Brunswick.
A home near ours is full of 20-somethings who appear to be in some bizarre stage in life where no job is required to get by, and yet the driveway is home to five different eurpoean-made cars. The property taxes on that house are the same, whether or not these residents drive or take the TTC to their next all night booze-up. They aren’t paying their fair share of the upkeep and policing of Toronto’s two major roadways. Nor are the good people of Aurora, Thornhill, Richmond Hill, Markham, Mississauga, Burlington, Georgetown, Oakville, etc. who choose to drive to work each day on these very roadways.
Why are the residential and commercial property taxes of these regions lower than Toronto’s? In part, because Torontonians cover the cost of the road that the good people of leafy Old Oakville need to get to their jobs in the urban core; or tonight’s Raptors home-opener. The Nightingale performance at the COC. Or a U2 concert at the Rogers Centre….
If tolls reduce traffic, all the better.
Bury the Gardiner? Maybe someday. But it can never happen without a meaningful way to get the private sector to pay for the billions involved; the 407 is proof that we can succeed at this.
The free ride must end. 5% budget cuts isn’t leadership.
MRM
Taxing drivers won’t fix Toronto.
Mississauga’s budget is approximately $734 Million for 670,000 residents or about $1095 per resident. Toronto’s budget is approximately $8.8 Billion for 2.5 Million residents or about $3520 per resident. Even with some extraordinary items, The City of Toronto spends three times what Mississauga does to provide similar services. In addition
Mississauga residential tax rates are in fact almost 50% higher than Toronto residential tax rates, not lower, and Mississauga runs a balanced budget.
Don’t try and blame Toronto’s woes on the surrounding areas. Toronto has an expense problem, and a leadership deficit to deal with years of mismanagement.
Mayor Hazel McCallion is thinking about retiring from the City of Mississauga in a few years, you may want to have a chat with her.
I don’t think Toronto should have the same property tax rates as Toronto–you don’t build a world class city by running it like a second rate suburb.
It’s a shame that some of the major breakthroughs of the Miller years (many of the TTC and infrastructure related – Transit City, West Don Lands/Waterfront Toronto) might fall by the wayside now. Toronto is at its best when it’s thinking big, and taxing road users is a way to help bridge the gap.
I’m in.
would it be fair to say that this is something you and our outgoing mayor agree on?
I am not sure what you are saying about the 407. Built with public $, operating at a profit and sold off as part of an asset sale to reduce current expenditures by the government of the day, a myopic approach in my opinion. I think that tolls on the DVP, Gardner, even the 427 and perhaps the express lanes on the 401 are a good idea….but not without improving public transit. Using the some of the gains from tolls to fund those improvements would be appropriate.
I’ve always said that the City of Toronto should sell 49% of the Gardiner/DVP to the 407ETR Consortium. Those guys would pay top dollar to gain another stretch of highway to leverage their existing operations.
Use the 49% upfront payment to retire debt and replenish rainy day funds, while using the ongoing dividends from the 51% towards transit funding.
It’s refreshing to read a published recommendation that suggests the need for more entrepreneurial effort on the part of the city to help allay its enormous deficits, including those being generated by the so-called "improvements" to public transit the public transit authorities would have us believe are where we should be spending so much money lately.
As for selling the highways, I don’t agree with anyone who says that any parts of the city should be sold to pay off the deficit; because the properties that the city owns, so far as I understand the process, are considered by the world bank, Standard & Poors, etc., to be its non-liquid assets; and selling them off to create liquid assets without the sale returning continuing remittances such as mortgage interest, development tax, or continued taxation would normally reduce its creditworthiness.
An unfortunately example of this is where the city has already decided to sell off its remaining waterfront lands to condo developers rather than developing a Chicago-like waterfront park there that would automatically increase all Toronto property values over time; but at least there will be a continuing income source of all three varieties from the sale.
Creating a toll road on any of the city’s highways is a two-edged sword. While out-of towners will be helping to reduce the city’s debt; the very highway-supporting Torontonians who are being taxed at every turn because they are a captive audience, but of the group who live in town and work out of town, will be asked to pay not only to use the highways, but also to get back home after work. And despite the two-tier cost system you advocate for highway use, the severe rush hour jams caused by the highways being the only viable non-stop routes in and out of the city (as compared to a complementary one-way street system or electronic traffic controls on the in-town routes for example,) and the brief 50-cent hiatus you experienced in Reston Virginia due to the technology being used there, would cause untold grief if the already-existing jams were enhanced by a toll station at either end.
That’s why the 407 now, and any new toll system would have to be electronically monitored. And electronic monitoring has two hiccups of its own: its very expensive installation costs (at every entrance and exit), and the difficulties inherent in billing and collecting the toll payments by mail…also not an inexpensive proposition.
Positive suggestions for the city to earn funds in other and different ways to pay off its debt are valuable considerations. There’s no question in my mind that eliminating a debt caused by decades of irresponsible budget management and the shortsighted planning environment it engenders in a city council frantic to succor development as a viable source of income regardless of the consequences on future generations (who will have to live in a city composed of hodgepodge concrete jutting out all over it like porcupine quills) is the number one priority issue over which the next civic election will be fought.
Mark State