Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Tag: congestion pricing

  • The geometric impossibility of the car-centric metropolis

    The Katy Freeway in Houston has 26 lanes at its widest, and after a $2.8 billion expansion between 2003 and 2008, commute times reportedly increased by 30-50%.

    Highway 401 in Toronto has 22 lanes at its widest and is ranked as the busiest highway in North America with an average of ~500,000 vehicles per day. It does not flow freely at most times throughout the day.

    Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires is one of the widest surface avenues in the world, but traffic congestion didn’t improve until lanes were converted into a bus rapid transit line.

    Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai ranges from 12-16 lanes and acts as the main high-capacity spine for what is a linear, car-dependent global city. It too is known for its traffic congestion.

    The common thread among all of these examples is that, irrespective of the width and number of lanes, none of these cities have solved the problem of traffic congestion. I challenge you to think of a counterexample. And that is because it is impossible to build a large, economically vibrant global city centered primarily around private automobiles without suffering severe traffic congestion.

    The car is the most spatially inefficient mode of transport for cities, and this doesn’t change with tunnels or with autonomous vehicles (at least sufficiently to make this statement wrong). The fundamental issue is one of space: too many cars for a finite amount of road capacity.

    People who live in car-dependent communities are reluctant to accept this reality, but the only proven solution to congestion is to reorient away from the car toward more efficient modes of transport, namely mass transit. And one of the most effective ways to make this switch is to price roads and congestion.

    This is not to say that individual cars don’t have a place in global cities; they of course do. It is to say that it’s impossible to rely on them as the primary means of mobility without there being negative consequences.

    It’s also worth pointing out that one of the core features of cities is agglomeration economies, which is to say that the spatial concentration of activities leads to cost savings, productivity gains, and greater innovation. Cars demand the exact opposite: spatial dispersion.

    Which would you rather optimize for?

  • Toronto’s bike lane pendulum

    This week, the Province of Ontario started work on its plan to remove about 19 kilometres of bike lanes in Toronto on major streets such as Bloor Street, Yonge Street, and others. The plan is to restore motor vehicle lanes, push bike lanes to secondary streets, and “keep drivers moving.” However, work did not start without protest. Hundreds of cyclists have been protesting this week, and a handful of arrests have been made.

    The thing about bike lanes in Toronto, and other places, is that they tend to follow a political pendulum. We have a history of building bike lanes, and then paying lots of money to rip them out. It’s of course wasteful, but bike lanes are divisive and they can make for good politics. Recent polls suggest that the majority of Torontonians support removing them on major streets. And I can understand why. We’re all frustrated with traffic congestion!

    But here’s what I would say in response to what’s happening this week:

    • The city should be making the decision, not the province.
    • A street like Bloor serves as an important east-west artery in our cycling network. Toronto’s grid does not have a secondary street equivalent.
    • Toronto needs more major streets like Bloor. It needs a bold 21st-century masterplan.
    • It is true that some sections, such as in Etobicoke, do have lower cycling ridership, but every lane needs to be evaluated in terms of the broader network.
    • Built form dictates behaviour.
    • Successful cities must be multi-modal.

    Traffic congestion is no doubt a major problem in Toronto, but we’re nipping around the edges and unwilling to make big, bold changes. The keys to solving traffic congestion are appropriate land-use policies, road pricing, and investment in non-car forms of urban mobility. Pretending otherwise is just fooling ourselves. To solve congestion, Toronto needs to reduce automobile dependency.

  • Why uploading Toronto’s highways to the province won’t fix traffic congestion

    In 2023, the City of Toronto announced a deal that would “upload” the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway from the city to the province. This was a big deal because these highways were previously the city’s largest state-of-good-repair liabilities, and so, before this deal, the city was, you know, trying to figure out how to pay for them.

    One option was road pricing (or expressway tolls). And in 2016, this became a real possibility with City Council overwhelmingly endorsing the plan, before it got rejected by the province. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I was in support of it and writing about it at the time.

    In 2016, Toronto estimated that 40% of all trips on these two expressways were by non-residents, and yet they were being funded by Toronto taxpayers. When I said this on Twitter, many of you got upset and argued that people coming in from the suburbs are a boon for the city. No doubt. But the reality is that this was an inequitable funding structure.

    Let’s look at the 2022 Transportation Tomorrow Survey results, which I wrote about here.

    The mode share for all trips to downtown Toronto (from within the city) was 75% non-car, with transit making up the largest share at 40.4%. And the mode share for home-based work trips to downtown Toronto (people who leave home in Toronto to go to work downtown and then come home) was about 80% non-car! In this case, transit made up nearly 50% of the trips.

    The effective result is that the people who tended to drive the least to work were paying for the highways with their tax dollars, and the people driving into downtown were not. This is in no way intended to be an attack on the latter camp. The simple reality is that driving into downtown and buying a chicken souvlaki pita from Jimmy the Greek at lunch isn’t enough to offset the road usage costs.

    The uploading of the highways to the province (which is still advancing but has already relieved Toronto of its financial obligations) is a more equitable solution. It shifts the cost burden to Ontario taxpayers, reflecting that people from all over the region use these highways and that Toronto is part of a broader economic agglomeration.

    But this only solved the jurisdictional problem. We still have worsening congestion and an inefficient funding model. The problem with using broad-based taxation to obfuscate infrastructure costs is that direct usage then goes unpriced, and that leads to what is known as a “tragedy of the commons.”

    We all tend to act in our own short-term self-interest, and the result is that road demand constantly outstrips the available supply. There’s zero marginal cost to actual usage, whether you drive 100 kilometres each day or bike to work. The most effective way to manage traffic congestion is to remove the hidden subsidy for driving and price the costs and negative externalities.

  • Traffic is agonizing, maybe we should try something new

    The other day I asked my dad how a function he attended went, and he responded by saying, “Traffic, BRUTAL. Traveling by car is an agonizing experience.” He’s not wrong, and I know most of us in Toronto like to complain about it. Traffic is one of the negative externalities of a big city.

    But here’s the thing: we know how to solve this problem. You price congestion, as has been done in New York, London, Singapore, and many other cities, and then direct the revenue it generates to a mode of transport that isn’t as agonizing in a big city: rail travel.

    I’ve written so much on this topic over the years that there’s very little I can add at this point. If you’d like to have a read, here are the search results for “congestion pricing.”

    While the policy has proven successful elsewhere, political inertia and valid concerns over equity keep Toronto stuck. But until we charge for valuable road space, gridlock remains our default. New York City has also shown us that once people see the benefits, they quickly change their minds.

  • Toronto’s congestion crisis needs solutions, not politics

    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.

    Instead, we seem to think that we can solve this problem with fewer bike lanes, improved traffic management, and better policing, 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.

    https://twitter.com/joshuahind/status/1837347617304424620

    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?

  • New York City is piloting about a dozen motion sensor cameras

    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.

    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.

    For more information on Viva, here’s their website.

    Image: Viva

  • Manhattan is getting a congestion pricing zone

    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:

    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.

  • A picture of dynamic road pricing

    Below is a photo of Interstate 95 near Miami, which, for the record, I myself did not take while driving.

    image

    The two empty lanes that you see are the “Express Lanes.” The price for using these lanes varies based on demand.

    During periods of low demand, the toll could be around $0.20 per mile. 

    During periods of high demand, such as during rush hour, it might be $1 per mile. 

    And during unusually heavy periods, like when there’s an accident, it could be more.

    We used these lanes while driving around the Miami area on this trip. The pricing always seemed reasonable and the lanes were never congested.

    I think the above picture is a good demonstration of how dynamic road pricing can be used alleviate traffic congestion.

    That’s why many cities, such as Portland, are exploring it as a solution. I wish Toronto would do the same.

  • Portland is considering whether to solve traffic congestion

    image

    Chris Hagerbaumer is the deputy director of the Oregon Environmental Council. She recently delivered the below testimony on “variable traffic-based tolls”, a form of road pricing. This is something we have talked a lot about here on the blog. 

    Oregon is currently looking at implementing this on two freeways in Portland, which is why Chris delivered this testimony. And as many of you know, I am very much in support of this demand management approach. So here you are: why congestion pricing makes sense for Portland (taken from City Observatory).

    ——————————————————–

    The question in front of you is: how do we actually solve congestion, solve it in a way that is the least cost to the taxpayer, and in a way that doesn’t result in more pollution. When we add more supply (in other words, build more roads) we end up exactly where we started when it comes to congestion (due to induced demand), we spend billions of taxpayer dollars (much of which comes from drivers who aren’t the ones demanding more road space), we harm surrounding communities as highways encroach into neighborhoods, and we pollute the air and heat up the planet.

    Induced demand is the fact that when you add freeway capacity it induces longer trips, more sprawl and more driving. Traffic is like a gas, expanding to fit whatever space there is. In one infamous example, Texas spent nearly $2.8 billion expanding Katy Freeway to 26 lanes and congestion has actually worsened.

    Building new roads is a supply-side solution that simply doesn’t work.

    An effective, least-cost, environmentally sound way to address congestion is the proposal before you: congestion pricing to manage demand. Drivers pay an automated fee to enter highly congested roads at peak hours; in return, they travel smoothly and reliably, getting where they need to go on time. Prices are set at the lowest possible level to free up just enough road space to eliminate bottlenecks.

    When you eliminate bottlenecks and get traffic flowing freely, you have—in essence—added capacity. You no longer need to add new lanes, you save taxpayers a bundle, and you reduce dangerous auto and truck exhaust.

    Congestion pricing is a demand management solution that’s proven to work and does so in cities around the world. Drivers opposed congestion pricing at first: no one wants to pay more. But that opposition of 60% or more turned into support of 60% or more after congestion pricing was implemented. People’s opposition turned to support because they now get that it works—they experience the value.

    Equitable application of congestion pricing absolutely requires mitigating diversion to local streets. But note that congestion pricing actually pulls many drivers who were already cutting through local roads back to the highway because those drivers who were stuck in traffic now have an option to get where they need to go, on time, for a small price.

    Equitable application of congestion pricing also requires significantly increasing transit service and other travel options in the corridor and considering other means to make the system work for low-income commuters who must drive during peak hours, such as targeted discounts or exemptions.

    We think of highways as free and we think of driving as freedom, but by investing almost solely in infrastructure for cars over most of the 20th century and into the 21st century, we created a transportation system that is costly not only for our pocketbooks, but for our very health and wellbeing and our region’s economic prosperity, a transportation system that contributes to the existential risk of runaway climate change.

    You have an opportunity to make a decision that will lead to less time stuck in traffic, healthier air, and more economic prosperity for the region and state. We hope you embrace that opportunity.

    Photo by Zach Savinar on Unsplash

  • Stockholm’s congestion charge reduced car traffic by 20%

    Stockholm has a congestion charge that is used to reduce traffic volumes in the center of the city. Toronto does not. We looked at it, actually fairly recently, but then we lost our nerve.

    Stockholm’s congestion charge was first implemented on a trial basis starting in January 2006. Trials and pilots have become a common way to actually create positive change. Otherwise the status quo bias may simply be too strong.

    When Stockholm started the trial back in 2006, public support was very low. Maybe 30%. But as soon as it was implemented, car trips dropped overnight by 20%. Once people saw the benefits, support grew – hitting around 70% by 2011.

    Here is a brief Street Films video with Stockholm’s Director of Transport, Jonas Eliasson, talking about their experience with congestion pricing. If you can’t see the video below, click here.

    [vimeo 244771087 w=640 h=360]