Congestion fee coming to Toronto?

torontosun.com
BY JOE WARMINGTON
May 15, 2017

London’s congestion charge is 11.50 pound (C$22) daily for driving a vehicle into the British capital’s downtown core, between 7 a.m.-6 p.m., Monday to Friday.

Not to worry, though. Not in Toronto.

At least not yet.

In light of a proposed pilot project being floated out of City Hall Monday, potential mayoral candidate Doug Ford says he is, in fact, worried.

He called the new initiative “a joke.” Unfortunately, the TTC is dead serious.

According to the one-year trial - which still has to be approved by city council - every car on King St. would be forced to turn right at every intersection, between Bathurst and Jarvis Sts., in an effort to reduce congestion and all more room for streetcars.

Cars will not be able to use King as a thoroughfare anymore.

“It’s just the war on the car,” said former councillor Ford, who lost to Mayor John Tory in the 2014 election. “Just call it for what it is.”

And let’s look where it could be leading, he said.

First, they stop cars on the roadways in favour of streetcars. Then comes a downtown congestion charge?

After Tory’s failed attempt to toll the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway, nothing would come as a surprise.

“There have been people talking about (a congestion charge) for a long time,” said Ford. “All of it is insane. It’s just messing things up like they have done at Yonge and Bloor, Yonge and Eglinton and along St. Clair Ave.”

But TTC spokesman Stuart Green sent out a release saying “King St. isn’t working - for the TTC, pedestrians and car drivers. The city and TTC have a solution that puts people and transit first.”

He said “details will be shared at a public meeting on May 18.”

Green, who worked in former mayor David Miller’s office, also sent a TTC graphic which says “streetcars are slow and erratic...Sometimes walking be faster.”

It shows an “average pedestrian” can walk along King at speeds of 5 km/h-7 km/h while the “typical streetcar speed, Bathurst to Yonge, weekday afternoons” tops out at 8 km/h.

Since people walk at the same speed, perhaps a better, healthier and more economical idea would be for the city to rid King St. of streetcars and ask people to get to work or school on foot.

“This is about finding a way to make King St. work,” said Tory’s spokesman Don Peat, who insisted the plan has nothing to do with a congestion fee.

“Mayor Tory supports the public consultation currently underway around this idea,” he added. “As the mayor said...the objective here is to move the 65,000 people who use the King St. streetcar better, faster and more efficiently and to make sure, at the same time, that the 20,000 vehicles that use King St., including the delivery trucks, can still get around.”

But Ford warns it could “kill” businesses.

“We have seen what happened on St. Clair when they put the trains through,” said Ford. “What street will all the cars on King St. go to now? This is a bad idea.”

And, he predicts - if allowed to go through - it will eventually ensure Toronto has something new in common with London.

“A congestion fee.”