Another case where I'm going to have to request you explain this math to me a little more clearly.
My calculator seems to insist on producing a total of $190,000,000 after 38 years, ignoring the net income efficiency. That's not even one el-cheapo $200m km.
I used a 50-week year and 400,000 AADT (peak volumes on the 401 between the 403 and 404) over a 5-day week making 2,000,000 trips per week (1,000,000 weekly AM/PM trip equivalents) and 100,000,000 trips annually. Making my yearly total collected $500,000,000 per year (as claimed by Ms. Thomson) and investing $176,500,000 per year in infrastructure (just under 1-km per year).
$5, $3 ... the important idea is tolling. The size of the toll is a whole other ball of wax, but setting it at a flat rate sounds about as current as running a major subway system using tokens. Surely we'd implement congestion tolling capable technology to price by distance and by congestion.
It doesn't matter how progressive your toll is, if it is not effective. In the end, people will still want to know the median cost per user, if not exactly how much it will cost them personally. There is not much difference between a $3 and $5 average cost per user, but debating a price point of $5 versus $50 is much more relavent when $5 already bites the pocket deeply and fails to provide adaquate funding. In addition, the more progressive a toll system, the more expensive it is to operate.
In my oppinion for any toll system to work effectively, it needs to be a city-wide initative and not limited to the highways. Otherwise, we shift the traffic back to the local transportation network that the highways were meant to attract traffic away from.
I think that part of the funding plan should include a 25 cent levy on the cost of a TTC trip, or something like $10 added to the cost of a metropass. It's unfair to so blatantly charge drivers a $5 toll for subway expansion, while at the same time allow transit riders to contribute nothing.
For the record, I live car free and rely exclusively on the TTC. This just seems a lot more fair to me.
TTC users and Toronto taxpayers already contribute funding for infrastructure expansion. However, I would like transparency on this issue. I would like to see a breakdown of TTC costs by operational personnel expenditures, administrative personnel expenditures, infrastructure expenditures, fleet servicing expenditures, and capital works expenditures.
An increase in TTC fares at the same time as a road toll introduction would ensure more people experience a somewhat diminished level of outraged. The main reason people object to road tolls is that they are now expected to pay for an equal or lesser level of service that they previously gained for free. If measures are taken to solve some surface transport issues along with transit issues, both would gain. Banning on-street parking and providing discounted 'Green P' parking are incentives to work with to make a road toll a less bitter pill to swallow.
