City Observatory recently republished their commentary on a report (released earlier this year) called Who Pays for Roads. I missed their original post, so this is new to me.
The report and commentary are all about the mispricing of roads/driving and the fallacy that “user fees” (gas taxes, tolls, and so on) are enough to completely cover the costs associated with driving.
I have been a vocal supporter of road pricing and/or congestion charges here in Toronto, and so I’d like to share two pieces from their commentary.
The first is this paragraph, which talks about how mispricing leads to demand issues (i.e. traffic congestion):
The conventional wisdom of road finance is that we have a shortfall of revenue: we “need” more money to pay for maintenance and repair and for new construction. But the huge subsidy to car use has another equally important implication: because user fees are set too low, and because, in essence, we are paying people to drive more, we have excess demand for the road system. If we priced the use of our roads to recover even the cost of maintenance, driving would be noticeably more expensive, and people would have much stronger incentives to drive less, and to use other forms of transportation, like transit and cycling. The fact that user fees are too low not only means that there isn’t enough revenue, but that there is too much demand. One value of user fees would be that they would discourage excessive use of the roads, lessen wear and tear, and in many cases obviate the need for costly new capacity.
And the second is this chart, which shows the cumulative net subsidy to highways in the US from the late 1940’s:
The point of all this is that when you subsidize something it’s because you’d like to see more, not less of it. So why then are we even surprised by the crippling traffic that plagues our cities? We are doing a lot to encourage exactly that.
On Thursday afternoon the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, was in London meeting with their mayor, Boris Johnston, and talking about Toronto-London business relations, the economy, and transit.
Here is the tweet:
I’m meeting with @MayorofLondon this afternoon to talk Toronto-London business relations, the economy & transit. pic.twitter.com/fpVsPIBvtQ
— John Tory (@JohnTory)
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On the topic of transit, the big item to see and discuss was The Crossrail. For those of you who might not be familiar with it, here are a few bullet points from their website:
Crossrail is Europe’s largest construction project – work started in May 2009 and there are currently over 10,000 people working across over 40 construction sites.
The Crossrail route will run over 100km from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through new tunnels under central London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
Crossrail will transform rail transport in London and the south east, increasing central London rail capacity by 10%, supporting regeneration and cutting journey times across the city.
Crossrail will bring an extra 1.5 million people to within 45 minutes of central London and will link London’s key employment, leisure and business districts – Heathrow, West End, the City, Docklands – enabling further economic development.
And below is a neat diagram that I found in this City of London report. I think it does a good job summarizing some of the spatial impacts of The Crossrail.
In the past I’ve been negative about John Tory’s SmartTrack proposal, which is clearly inspired by The London Crossrail. I had my reasons for that. But I want to be clear that I am not in any way negative on Regional Express Rail as a mobility solution.
Toronto would benefit greatly from RER and Metrolinx is working diligently to deliver it to the region. I can’t wait for that to happen so I can drive even less than I already do.
We are all selfish bastards when it comes to sharing road space and public space.
When we drive, we complain about pedestrians jumping out in front of us, crazy cyclists who get in our way, and under-utilized bike lanes that are taking away valuable driving space and creating traffic jams.
When we take surface transit (such as buses and streetcars), we want all the cars out of the way so that we can move more efficiently. And we complain about drivers who don’t stop to let us off and on when the streetcar doors open. (Toronto specific reference.)
When we cycle, we complain about cars parked in the bike lanes, people who don’t look before changing lanes or opening their car doors, and drivers who honk at you because they just want you off the road and onto the sidewalk.
And when we walk, we complain about cyclists who ride on the sidewalk (they should be on the road!), cars that don’t stop to let us go, and slow walking groups who linearly block the entire sidewalk so you can’t pass.
We are never happy. And we automatically assume that we could do it better. (I know I’m guilty of this.)
But here are a few things to consider the next time you’re flipping the bird to someone on the streets. Here are a few things that we do know about urban mobility.
There is an unprecedented number of condominiums in the development pipeline right now in Toronto. For argument’s sake, let’s assume 75,000 condominium suites – many of which will be built in central areas of the city.
At a parking ratio of 0.6 stalls per unit, which isn’t an unreasonable assumption today, that’s 45,000 new parking spots and potentially 45,000 new cars in the city.
If you think that 45,000 new cars will be able to get fully absorbed into the core and somehow move around in an unfettered way, then I believe you are mistaken.
If you think that there’s something that can be done to magically expand road capacity to handle all of these additional cars in the city, then I believe you are mistaken.
And if you think that adding a bike lane is the only reason you are currently stuck in traffic, then I believe you are missing the bigger picture.
Over a decade ago, we made a decision in this region to encourage building up, instead of building out. And along with that decision came a necessary rethink of how we get around. That transition is what we are living through right now.
The other thing we know is that the 4 modes of mobility that I started this post with are ordered from least sustainable to most sustainable.
Electric self-driving vehicles will reduce the impacts of driving, but it will also transform it into something that feels more like transit and less like the driving we know today. That will be a very good thing.
But I’m not yet convinced that it will solve all of our problems. To do that I think we will need to adopt a much more balanced and unselfish view of what it takes to move around a city. That, of course, isn’t always easy.