People in Toronto are deeply and rightly frustrated about our traffic. We have truly world-class congestion. But here's the thing, the way we're going about solving this problem is all wrong.
Transportation staff seem to believe that congestion charges would not reduce or deter traffic from coming into Toronto. Never mind all the global precedents, never mind that we have the tolled 407 highway to look to, and never mind that economics tells us that when the price of something increases, the quantity demanded decreases.
People in Toronto are deeply and rightly frustrated about our traffic. We have truly world-class congestion. But here's the thing, the way we're going about solving this problem is all wrong.
Transportation staff seem to believe that congestion charges would not reduce or deter traffic from coming into Toronto. Never mind all the global precedents, never mind that we have the tolled 407 highway to look to, and never mind that economics tells us that when the price of something increases, the quantity demanded decreases.
, including higher fines for disobedience. (Interestingly enough, higher fines are supposed to deter people, but congestion charges won't do the same. I'm confused.)
None of this will fix the mess we're in.
This is a case of politics over data and experience. Identify something that people are pissed off about, and then create the illusion that you're doing something to fix it. Good politics. But the reality is that this problem is much trickier to solve. It will require vision and meaningful change. That's a much tougher sell.
Think of this way. Can you identity a large car-oriented global city with millions of people that doesn't have a traffic congestion problem? Even the Katy Freeway in Houston, which counts as many as 26 total lanes, has a congestion problem. And the last time I checked, it didn't have any bike lanes.
Now let's look at the largest city region in the world -- Tokyo. The city proper has about 14 million people and the broader region has about 41 million. This is the entire population of Canada in one city region, and yet it's generally viewed as being one of the most well-run and efficient cities in the world. How do they do it?
Here are the modal splits within Tokyo's 23 wards (2018 data):
36% public transport (rail and bus)
27% passenger cars
23% walking
14% bicycles and motorcycles
Now compare this to the splits in Toronto's census metropolitan area (2021 census data):
76% passenger cars
16% public transport
5% walking
1% bicycles
2% other
Of course, if we were to look at the modal splits within the core of the city they would look quite different and much closer to Tokyo's numbers. This is why it can be so hard to achieve consensus on many city building issues -- we are quite literally a divided and different kind of city.
In the end, this is the root cause of our traffic problem. The vast majority of people in this city region drive. And they are not to be blamed. It's because we've designed this to be the only practical option.
But if we're serious about solving congestion, it's going to require some bold changes. It's going to require reducing this 76% figure. We can fool ourselves into thinking that better construction coordination, fewer bike lanes, and higher fines will somehow solve this enormous and deep-rooted problem, but the inconvenient truth is that they won't.
What we need are real solutions. Is anyone going to take the lead?
This won't come as a surprise to many of you. But I recently attended a community meeting where someone was advocating for adding new lanes to a particular road. Their argument was that traffic congestion is forcing too many cars to sit needlessly idle and that that is bad for the environment. The proposed solution of adding new lanes would get traffic moving, reduce idling pollution, and therefore be overall better for the environment.
I disagree entirely.
But transportation planning seems to be one of those things that many people feel is intuitive. It's one of those things where people feel confident saying, "I know how to fix this. We just need to do this." But the reality is that cities are incredibly complex organisms and it's not always obvious what should be done. So I think that a big part of making our cities better comes down to having much better data. And that's why I'm very intrigued by the work that startup Viva, and others, are doing.
About a year ago I wrote about how NYC is considering a congestion charge on vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th street. Well it looks like that plan could be adopted as early as April 1 (however the fees won't start until 2021). Here's a map of the proposed congestion pricing zone from the NY Times:
, including higher fines for disobedience. (Interestingly enough, higher fines are supposed to deter people, but congestion charges won't do the same. I'm confused.)
None of this will fix the mess we're in.
This is a case of politics over data and experience. Identify something that people are pissed off about, and then create the illusion that you're doing something to fix it. Good politics. But the reality is that this problem is much trickier to solve. It will require vision and meaningful change. That's a much tougher sell.
Think of this way. Can you identity a large car-oriented global city with millions of people that doesn't have a traffic congestion problem? Even the Katy Freeway in Houston, which counts as many as 26 total lanes, has a congestion problem. And the last time I checked, it didn't have any bike lanes.
Now let's look at the largest city region in the world -- Tokyo. The city proper has about 14 million people and the broader region has about 41 million. This is the entire population of Canada in one city region, and yet it's generally viewed as being one of the most well-run and efficient cities in the world. How do they do it?
Here are the modal splits within Tokyo's 23 wards (2018 data):
36% public transport (rail and bus)
27% passenger cars
23% walking
14% bicycles and motorcycles
Now compare this to the splits in Toronto's census metropolitan area (2021 census data):
76% passenger cars
16% public transport
5% walking
1% bicycles
2% other
Of course, if we were to look at the modal splits within the core of the city they would look quite different and much closer to Tokyo's numbers. This is why it can be so hard to achieve consensus on many city building issues -- we are quite literally a divided and different kind of city.
In the end, this is the root cause of our traffic problem. The vast majority of people in this city region drive. And they are not to be blamed. It's because we've designed this to be the only practical option.
But if we're serious about solving congestion, it's going to require some bold changes. It's going to require reducing this 76% figure. We can fool ourselves into thinking that better construction coordination, fewer bike lanes, and higher fines will somehow solve this enormous and deep-rooted problem, but the inconvenient truth is that they won't.
What we need are real solutions. Is anyone going to take the lead?
This won't come as a surprise to many of you. But I recently attended a community meeting where someone was advocating for adding new lanes to a particular road. Their argument was that traffic congestion is forcing too many cars to sit needlessly idle and that that is bad for the environment. The proposed solution of adding new lanes would get traffic moving, reduce idling pollution, and therefore be overall better for the environment.
I disagree entirely.
But transportation planning seems to be one of those things that many people feel is intuitive. It's one of those things where people feel confident saying, "I know how to fix this. We just need to do this." But the reality is that cities are incredibly complex organisms and it's not always obvious what should be done. So I think that a big part of making our cities better comes down to having much better data. And that's why I'm very intrigued by the work that startup Viva, and others, are doing.
About a year ago I wrote about how NYC is considering a congestion charge on vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th street. Well it looks like that plan could be adopted as early as April 1 (however the fees won't start until 2021). Here's a map of the proposed congestion pricing zone from the NY Times:
Viva uses small street-light mounted cameras and machine learning to track urban mobility (see image above). Currently they track 9 different modes: pedestrian, bicycle, e-scooter, motorcycle, car, van, light truck, semi-truck, and bus. And after they collect this data, the relevant information is extracted and then everything else is deleted for privacy reasons. There are also plans to make this data openly available to the public so that people can use it and/or build on top of it.
Obviously this is still going to raise privacy concerns and that is something that will need to be carefully addressed. But I do think that the data from a platform like this is going to be invaluable for cities. Among many other things, it will help us to better allocate space among the various modes and design much safer streets. Hopefully it can also help to take some of the politics out of these sorts of decisions: "Here's the data. Take a look."
Viva currently has 1,000 sensors already installed in London (where they are being used to evaluate the impacts of congestion pricing), and about half a dozen in New York. So it'll be interesting to see what this leads to. And who knows, maybe it will actually turn us all into amateur transportation planners. We'll certainly have access to a lot more data.
I have written extensively on road pricing over the years and so I won't repeat myself here today. Suffice to say that I think creating a sustainable funding source for transit and other mobility options is a positive step forward.
Viva uses small street-light mounted cameras and machine learning to track urban mobility (see image above). Currently they track 9 different modes: pedestrian, bicycle, e-scooter, motorcycle, car, van, light truck, semi-truck, and bus. And after they collect this data, the relevant information is extracted and then everything else is deleted for privacy reasons. There are also plans to make this data openly available to the public so that people can use it and/or build on top of it.
Obviously this is still going to raise privacy concerns and that is something that will need to be carefully addressed. But I do think that the data from a platform like this is going to be invaluable for cities. Among many other things, it will help us to better allocate space among the various modes and design much safer streets. Hopefully it can also help to take some of the politics out of these sorts of decisions: "Here's the data. Take a look."
Viva currently has 1,000 sensors already installed in London (where they are being used to evaluate the impacts of congestion pricing), and about half a dozen in New York. So it'll be interesting to see what this leads to. And who knows, maybe it will actually turn us all into amateur transportation planners. We'll certainly have access to a lot more data.
I have written extensively on road pricing over the years and so I won't repeat myself here today. Suffice to say that I think creating a sustainable funding source for transit and other mobility options is a positive step forward.
