Toll lanes coming to QEW
- Thread starter AK-47
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Said no government who ever wanted to get re-elected. Automobile drivers already pay tax on the purchase of their vehicles, parts, service, licence renewals, tires, fuel etc. It would be political suicide to even suggest that.
The problem is for most people it's far less time consuming and more convenient to own and drive a car than it is to take public transit. Until transit is more efficient, people are going to drive. Government talks a big talk but with Toronto's current capacity for public transit, they couldn't possibly handle a 20% increase in ridership. They tell people to ditch the car but our current transit system can only handle so many people at the moment. It's why people drive.
Aside from insurance and the initial cost of buying a car, driving it is the cheapest expense but offers the greatest convenience. Consider the typical family with a couple kids. Imagine leaving for work, dropping the kids off at daycare, getting to work, stopping on the way home to pick up groceries, returning to pick them back up then home at the end of the day, all by public transit. Hell, even a Metropass is $1,700 a year.
People choose the path of least resistance. The auto makes the most sense for most people. Not too many people choose to drive to work if it takes twice as long and costs twice as much!
People here talking like Ontario is breaking new ground are hilarious. There are no unsolved problems here, many places have HOT lanes and they work fine and have efficient, automated systems. Ontario is one of the last places in North America to do this, the many others already solved it.
There are various systems. For example, in some you can only drive in the HOT lane if you have 2+ occupants OR you have enrolled in the program and acquired a transponder. The transponders are switchable so you can turn them off and not pay the toll if you have a second person. Drive without a transponder and without a second passenger, get pulled over and get a ticket by police who can run your license to see if you paid the toll.
Lots of cities already have had this system running for a decade, it works, and it is efficient.
There are various systems. For example, in some you can only drive in the HOT lane if you have 2+ occupants OR you have enrolled in the program and acquired a transponder. The transponders are switchable so you can turn them off and not pay the toll if you have a second person. Drive without a transponder and without a second passenger, get pulled over and get a ticket by police who can run your license to see if you paid the toll.
Lots of cities already have had this system running for a decade, it works, and it is efficient.
Is it fair that someone living in the 905 region that uses any Toronto highway does not contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of the highway?
It's amazing that this toll thing is such a taboo subject in this province yet so many other jurisdictions have had it for decades. IMO it's not as a big as a political suicide as you'd like it to believe. Some people will choose to drive no matter what, which is fine and they should pay for that privilege. Maybe you won't vote a government in that institutes tolls on all highways, but they only need to convince a certain number of people.
If you live out in the burbs, then yes driving makes a whole lot more sense. It's not exactly convenient owning a car if you don't have a place to park it like many houses do in the middle suburbs. The sad thing is that we've not invested in our transit system for decades so we're now going to have to pay through the nose just to get it 50% reliable never mind expanding it.
For me, it's an issue of fairness. Is it fair that someone can pay for a toll while other people have to use the regular lanes? The implementation of HOV lanes is a bit wonky IMO. I've driven up the 404 near Highway 7 a few times. Smooth sailing (usually) from 401 north, but you run into a log jam when you try to merge back into the regular lanes.
Aren't they already paying by virtue of the high gas taxes, with the amount directly correlated to consumption? You can also add in the Liberals HST bump on gasoline.
The problem is they are simply out of ideas beyond more taxes. The Liberals in particular have zero accountability for how they spend it, they just know they want to spend more. It is like giving an allowance to a crack addict, and then raising their allowance because they ran out of crack.
Actually I believe the city is responsible fiscally for the sections of the DVP and QEW located within the city limits. Hence all the arguments over what to do with it. The the province has in fact down loaded other services while not properly transferring cash to cover them.
We were told that all the other fees were to supply the maintenance. That's why they were added on. In other jurisdictions like the USA the gas taxes etc are not nearly as high. Hence the tolls. User pay.
This is a cash grab. They are broke.
The point I think here is how much of the supposedly already dedicated taxes and fees for road maintenance and improvements is actually going to it, and how much of it is ending up in the general coffers for use in other things.
Every time a new levy is brought in the reason is the same. At some point, considering the continued deficits and lack of proper maintenance I think questioning this is valid.
Supposedly these roads were paid for by all. These aren't new highways or even lanes. They are existing infrastructure and from what we were told all the existing taxes would cover them.
So what has changed?
That is my belief as well. Is it any different than people paying to jump the wait list to see their doctor? What about paying to jump the line at any government building? It's the same thing.
They can call it "choices" if they want, but what I see is money buying advantage for items that everyone should have equal opportunity to.
Correct, gas taxes are far less in the US which is why they supplement revenue with road tolls. Here, they want revenue from both gas tax and road tolls. With the amount of money the Liberals piss away, it's no wonder they need to double dip.
Well, they do have a monkey on their back. http://www.debtclock.ca/provincial-debtclocks/ontario/ontario-s-debt/
Fuji posts always make me laugh! I guess in his mind if he speaks "firmly" people will assume his posts contain researched fact. But the truth is, Fuji BSs allot and I believe most people by now realize that.
In all of North America there are currently less than 9 dedicated fully-electronic HOT/HOV implementations. There are ~4 others that use toll booths, but these are being converted to electronic. Several states, especially California are planning rollouts, but because most of the existing HOT infrastructures cost more to implement and administer than they generate in revenue, progress is slow and the business case for reasonable paybacks poor.
In 8 of the 9 implementations, extra road capacity was added to create the HOT/HOV2 lanes. To be clear, existing lanes were not turned into HOT/HOV2. Traffic planners know that removing existing capacity from a congested highway to create HOT/HOV will ONLY RESULT IN INCREASED CONGESTION IN BOTH THE FREE AND HOT/HOV LANES. HOT/HOV3 will improve traffic flow in the HOT/HOV3 lane significantly, as much fewer cars have 3 or more occupants during rush hours, but at the expense of the free lanes. Clear proof of this concept was the Toronto Pan-AM games where HOV3 slaughtered the productivity of the QEW and Gardner.
The concept that HOT/HOV reduces congestion in-of-itself is a joke. HOT/HOV has not been proven to encourage car drivers to seek out alternatives in multi-city urban conditions, especially in the Golden Horseshoe where rapid transit is focused on the Toronto core. Many 905ers don't work in the core, so public transit offers little/no benefit.
Further; HOT/HOV will result in INCREASED commercial traffic costs as most trucking firms cannot cost-justify the tolls and their trucks travel slower and burn more fuel in the free lanes. So .... although Fuji believe there is nothing more "free enterprise" than a toll highway, the reality is it will cost the economy more money in every conceivable way.
Bang on ! People are speaking as if the highway is an optional luxury mode of transportation that has not been paid for. The highway is part of a transportation infrastructure to move people and goods to sustain the economic growth of the city. If you look at nature's version of the pumping blood through the body - it's not much different. Restrict traffic with these tax money collection schemes, you start to affect economic health by incurring additional costs and delays to all businesses. That is my biggest beef with the utterly insane moronic decision to take the vital 407 - a major thoroughfare vital to the future of a growing economy - and ransom this economic necessity to a foreign enterprise concerned with maximising profit over the economic needs of the community that it was put in place to serve.
If you have lived in the US, you will note that there is a substantial difference ion the cost of gas. We have much higher taxes here and we told that the purpose of the taxes was to pay for the roads - and we are talking about billions of dollars. 14.5 cents a litre ( ~ $0.65/ gallon) is collected by Ontario for this purpose (originally).
So those vehicles travelling the highways ARE paying their way. Unless they are pedalling bicycles - the fuel they burn, the vehicle licences, the truck commercial permits and your license fees are all paying for your use of the roads that you are travelling on. We are taxed to death here - it's about time we stop fueling successive attempts to remove what little money we have left to spend by these new tax methods.
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As such a well-informed insider, I think you owe us TERBians more updates on the secret purposes and strategies of the government of which you must be a member. A daily blog would be best.
Clearly you are a fervent — but secret — socialist valiantly trying to preserve The People's Democratic Free Sidewalks and Roads. And Bicycle Lanes and Parking on the Free Roads and, …, and …. Yay for you! Higher taxes for ALL!
I predict the QEW experiment will be of no value - this "experiment" is nothing more than the gov't trying to socialize the near-future concept of toll roads on existing infrastructure. Today the QEW moves fairly well between Trafalgar and Guelph during rush hour (ignoring weather and accidents) where the current HOV lanes operate. The congestion occurs between Ford drive and Trafalgar and Guelph line and the Hamilton 403 exit. In both congested locations, there are no HOV lanes. Allowing ~1000 permitted single passenger cars into the HOV will make little measurable improvement to overall traffic flow.
Less sure about 427 as I only travel that section 4-5 times a month, but my initial impression is that it won't improve flow. The experiment will begin as additional lane capacity and HOV is added to the 427.
HOT/HOV can work - but in a narrow set of conditions. Traffic planners should be allowed to do the studies and recommend accordingly ..... this should not be a political-based decision.
Any system that requires the honesty of the driver will fail. A driver selectable transponder-only system will fail. Today I estimate that 25-35% of the drivers in the HOV lane on the 403 during rush-hour are single occupants. There is very little police enforcement of the 403 HOV lane during rush hour. Today there are no camera systems that can reliably determine the number of occupants of a vehicle in all conditions.
Less sure about 427 as I only travel that section 4-5 times a month, but my initial impression is that it won't improve flow. The experiment will begin as additional lane capacity and HOV is added to the 427.
HOT/HOV can work - but in a narrow set of conditions. Traffic planners should be allowed to do the studies and recommend accordingly ..... this should not be a political-based decision.
Any system that requires the honesty of the driver will fail. A driver selectable transponder-only system will fail. Today I estimate that 25-35% of the drivers in the HOV lane on the 403 during rush-hour are single occupants. There is very little police enforcement of the 403 HOV lane during rush hour. Today there are no camera systems that can reliably determine the number of occupants of a vehicle in all conditions.
Your concerns belong in the Technology Forum, surely.
On the couple of non-tech points: I don't think sleeping infants qualify a driver to move into the HOV lane; they certainly don't answer the law's intent of removing a car from the road-load by making a driver into a passenger. Like 407 tolls, there's no pressing need for on the spot real-time enforcement, as long moronic scofflaws eventually get the message they can pay cheap and honest, or dishonest and pricey, but they will pay. However your dummy scenario with the flashing lights has already happened repeatedly, and has zero to do with HOT. With HOT, those single-occupant drivers you have noticed, would now be identifiable by the technology that determines whether a car had paid/had an account, and the same convenient and scrupulously fair system that keeps 407 open, flowing and profitable could be applied to collection.
The occasional dummy in the photos could even be ignored, to give the patrolling panda cars something amusing to watch for.
I 110% agree! ~40 years ago the Burlington skyway bridge and Garden skyway bridge had a toll. The toll stayed long enough to pay the bridges-off and were then removed. I'm not opposed to doing the same for new highways as long as the tolls are reasonable and are removed when the financial target is hit. Assuming the politicians can be trusted to keep their word. The current 407 model is moronic.
Back to name-calling eh oldjones? Another yahoo post.
How can a person be both fervent and secret?
