Tory once called road tolls ‘highway robbery’

When Tory ran for mayor against David Miller, he openly opposed road tolls, worrying about the ‘impact it will have downtown.’

Thestar.com
Nov. 23, 2016
By Betsy Powell

Mayor John Tory has a somewhat complicated relationship with road tolls.

Back in 2003, the first time Tory ran for mayor of Toronto, he attacked rival David Miller for suggesting he would consider imposing road tolls on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway.

Miller refused to back away from the idea, saying a discussion on road tolls was needed if the city could come up with no other way to pay for transit.

Tory called the idea “highway robbery.”

His supporters stood at the Spadina Ave. entrance to the Gardiner holding signs. One said, “Road Tolls = Highway Robbery.” Another said “Honk if you hate tolls.”

“What really worries me is the negative impact it will have on the downtown,” Tory said during the campaign. “If people just had that one other thing to worry about — paying $4.50, $2.25 each way — they may not bother to go downtown to do some shopping or go to a restaurant.”

Tory lost that election to Miller, who never carried through with the tolling idea.

Fast forward to January 2013, when Tory, then a private citizen, participated in a panel discussion on transit in a pub.

Tory told the small gathering that he had “performed a disservice” with his attacks on Miller and that it is unfortunate that politicians were “afraid to talk about the truth about what’s needed.”

“I don’t happen to think that road tolls are the best answer of all the sort of (revenue) tools that are available, but I will say and have said consistently we need some combination of tools to raise this money.”

The following year, while running for mayor a second time, Tory consistently ruled out highway road tolls, but so did the other front-running candidates for mayor.

“We need to make Toronto more affordable and imposing new taxes is not the way to tackle traffic congestion,” he said in 2014. “As your mayor, I will build my 53-kilometre, 22-station SmartTrack line, and provide real transit and traffic congestion relief across the city.”

But earlier this year, Tory’s position appeared to soften.

“A broader discussion around new ways of raising revenue will begin in April when the city manager presents his long-term fiscal plan,” his spokesperson said in March.

“Road and congestion pricing will almost certainly be part of that as one item on a long list of possibilities. The mayor does not wish to pre-empt that discussion but his views on road tolls are well documented: it would not be his preferred way to pay for road infrastructure.”