Toronto tolls could ease gridlock, but only if done right, experts say
Others worry drivers will flee into local streets to avoid paying.

thestar.com
By Ben Spurr
Nov. 24, 2016

Concerns that tolling Toronto’s expressways will lead to traffic chaos on surrounding streets are overblown, according to transportation experts who say that the road pricing scheme - done correctly - could actually help the city alleviate gridlock and encourage public transit use.

While some have praised Mayor John Tory’s decision to endorse tolling the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway as a progressive way for the city to raise badly needed revenue, skeptics have warned that drivers who want to avoid the tolls will infiltrate adjacent neighbourhoods and clog local roads.

Among those who have raised concerns is David Pritchard, chair of the Mimico by the Lake Business Improvement Area. “If that’s going to divert a lot of traffic off the Gardiner it may be a problem,” he told the Star. “In the summer, when they were doing the Gardiner construction, people were coming down Park Lawn Rd. . . . and it was just jammed.”

“It doesn’t take much traffic to really just block the streets,” he added.

The city report on revenue tools that will be debated at a meeting of Tory’s executive committee next Thursday acknowledged that tolls could cause “local traffic infiltration.”

According to the city’s preliminary modelling, depending on the cost of the toll, between 13 per cent and 29 per cent of drivers who use the expressways would be diverted off the Gardiner and DVP. Some of them would take public transit, but a majority would find another route on the surrounding road network.

“This would result in increased travel time and vehicle volumes on local roads as well as increased potential for local traffic infiltration,” the report said.

Drivers who decide to pay the toll would benefit, however. The report said their travel time would be reduced between two and eight minutes during morning rush hour.

While the report contemplated a charge of between $1.40 and $5.20 per trip, it was silent on whether tolls would be charged at a flat rate or would change depending on the hour of the day or according to traffic conditions.

Baher Abdulhai, director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Centre at the University of Toronto, said the threat of local traffic infiltration could be greatly reduced by setting tolls that rise in price when the roads are most congested.

He recently co-authored a six-year study of road pricing in Toronto that found a “dynamic” toll system that, for instance, gradually increased from no charge at 7 a.m. to 15 cents per km at 8 a.m., and then dropped back to zero by 9:30 a.m. would encourage some drivers to take trips outside of rush hour, maximizing efficient road use.

With a flat toll the only option drivers who want to avoid the charge have is to take nearby streets, “which can backfire and be counterproductive,” Abdulhai said. But with dynamic tolls some drivers will leave earlier or later, and “the roads will be at capacity all the time, in a good way, in the sense that demand will always be matching the capacity of the road.”

Abdulhai’s study found that variable tolls have the potential to reduce gridlock from current levels, and drivers on the Gardiner could cut their commute time by up to 25 per cent.

The study focused on traffic management, however, not revenue generation, and the models used would raise less than the $160 million a year the city is hoping to reap in order to fund major infrastructure projects.

Assuming the toll was set at a high enough level, however, the revenue could be used to accelerate the construction of major transit lines, providing alternatives to driving that will alleviate congestion, according to Eric Miller, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Transportation Research Institute.

“In the long run, this is the way we can fund our transit,” he said.

The city report stated it could take between three and seven years to implement the tolls, depending on how they’re phased in. That means that drivers could start being charged before the completion of new lines like the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, scheduled for 2021, the relief line subway (2031) and Tory’s SmartTrack project (2024 or 2025).

Without a robust transit network, frustrated drivers would have fewer alternatives to paying the tolls and continuing to crowd the roads. “There might be a transition period where everything is being stressed, like we’re being stressed now. But we have to be thinking long term,” Miller said.

Jonathan Hall, an assistant professor at U of T who specializes in transportation and congestion, said if the toll were successful in reducing congestion, it would make public transit on the tolled expressways more attractive.

“There are people who would be happy to ride the GO bus down the Don Valley Parkway,” he said. If “there’s no traffic, their trip down the DVP on this GO bus is actually pretty fast.”