Rob Ford's Toronto

[Tulse]

Well fine, that's easy....change that to congestion fees....wherever they make sense.

But that makes them toll roads instead, which I think makes more sense (and may be more sellable politically).

In other words, charge for the volume of traffic on a given route, rather than in a given area, which is what congestion charges do.

 

[freshcutgrass]

But that makes them toll roads instead, which I think makes more sense (and may be more sellable politically).

You can call it a peanut butter sandwich for all I care.

But there's a reason I prefer to charge a congestion fee to "areas" like downtown that are completely congested during certain times of days is that because if you just toll one or two main arteries, you just encourage people to use secondary streets and residential streets as arteries, which is already a problem.

Residential streets were never designed or intended to be used as arteries. They are for local use only (including parking).

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Another sobering lesson on leadership, or lackthereof when ones know the cost of everything and the value of nothing - from the Globe:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-for-infrastructure-upgrades/article13182053/

AoD

I'll just plagarize this comment from D_Barbour on the Globe. Sums up my opinion on this perfectly.

At some point people in Toronto, you know who you are, are going to have to get over this notion that they're over-taxed.

Oh, I'm not saying every dollar the city takes in is well spent. The city's budget needs to be examined and expenses need to be cut in some areas. But rather than handing that money back to taxpayers, it needs to be directed to these long term capital expenses. Because if we don't start ploughing more money into infrastructure now, we're going to end up paying more later. Your choice, Toronto taxpayer, because it'll come out of your pocket one way or another.

And don't be surprised if sewers aren't the only muni infrastructure facing these issues. There are probably dozens of other examples of this throughout the city.

 

[JWBF]

I couldn't agree more. The TTC is already the least subsidized transit system on the planet, so charging the users more makes no sense. We need to start encouraging people to use PT by taxing more heavily individual car use.

First thing would be to bring back the VRT...only triple or quadruple it.

Public parking in Toronto is either free or ridiculously cheap. There should be no parking at all on major arteries (especially when there is a surface transit route). Are our arteries for getting around or is it a parking lot????? 1/3 to 1/2 our streets are used as parking lots....that's insane. If we are going to use public property for parking cars, then we have to start charging for it. $17 a month for street parking is stupidly cheap (and free parking is just lunacy). Compare that to private parking...it's more like $17 a day.

Congestion fees for downtown make sense. If it works elsewhere, it will work here.

Public transit surface routes that are in mixed traffic need to be given priority, which will generally mean giving it its own ROW. This is especially true for streetcar routes, which carry huge ridership. The only way to increase capacity for moving people on these arteries is to increase capacity for PT...we can't increase car capacity by making the roads bigger. PT needs to win and the car needs to lose in the battle over road use...plain and simple. Right now...everybody loses.

Tolling entry points to the city's major arteries means 905'ers start paying for infrastructure they use that they pay nothing for at the moment.

Toronto needs to spend a minimum of $1billion/year on transit infrastructure. You can actually start building subways with that kind of funding.

Stop listening to Rob Ford and his imaginary free "subways, subways, subways". He campaigned on building a $4 billion completed Sheppard subway looping with the BD line and the YUS line. It was to be built and operating by the Pan Am games, and be paid for by existing provincial funding and private sector development fees along its route....no cost to Toronto taxpayers....FREE!!! Future subways?....well, perhaps when another "free" ones comes along.

A: it could not have been built for only $4billion
B: it could not have been completed and operating by 2015
C: it involved imaginary private funding
D: it doesn't exist
E: you're an idiot if you fell for it

So Rob Ford only likes subways when he doesn't have to pay for them. Which means, Rob Ford will never be responsible for any subways, let alone "subways, subways, subways" (which is like...mega subways or sumpthin). Rob Ford would like to simply ignore public transit all together....just like anything else he doesn't like.

Wake up Toronto...we aren't progressive at all (we had our moments in the 60's and 70's)....we live in a blazingly ridiculous car culture city.

Nice points, I agree.

Well, we could charge people for access to the suburbs too.

Exactly right, we have to limit contact of elitists with our children.

 

[bobbob911]

City Manager report is out for the B/D extension. The recommendation is a 1.1% - 2.4% tax increase over the next three years to fund it.

Your move, Rob Ford.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Report:

http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2013.CC37.17

Funding it through a property tax increase seems like too much of a one-off to me.

AoD

 

[scar_resident]

As an aside, Toronto should consider something more radical.....switch how public roads and public transit is funded. Have roads with user fees and public transit fully tax subsidized.

This doesn't address how to to increase capacity in public transit or the challenges of introducing tolls or road usage fees to pay for it. In order to accommodate increased usage on public transit you need to add capacity to the system before people get out of their cars, we are at capacity now and the system cannot handle additional passengers, what happens when it rains or snows?

It is poor planning to shift overcapacity from one system (singe passengers in vehicles) to another system that's overcapacity (public transit). The city has to add capacity to one system or both very quickly before in can implement the strategy you are suggesting and it needs to come up with a way to pay for it.

The best course of action is to tax something people actually use and want to use without affecting these areas that are overcapacity so that you have predictable revenue to pay for the capacity, then implement policies to acheive a target goal of increased public transit usage.

Within the cities rights to taxation this could include:

Instead of letting retailers keep all 5cents of the plastic bag tax, the city could have collected half of it.
Tax on alcoholic beverages.
Tax on tobaccco.
Tax on nightclub cover charges.

 

[Tulse]

Funding it through a property tax increase seems like too much of a one-off to me.

Perhaps, but it at least puts to the forefront the notion that we have to pay for what we want built. If implementing it means we've had a rational, adult conversation about funding important infrastructure, I'll take it -- it might lead to more thoughtful action on funding in future.

 

[ttk77]

City Manager report is out for the B/D extension. The recommendation is a 1.1% - 2.4% tax increase over the next three years to fund it.

Your move, Rob Ford.

Expect an angry beet red face blathering about private sector money fairies and how he won't support a tax increase to pay for it.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Instead of letting retailers keep all the 5cents of the plastic bag tax, the city could have collected half of it.
Tax on alcholic beverages.
Tax on tobaccco.
Tax on nightclub cover charges.

a) Can Toronto even legally allowed to tax the above, b) if yes, how can the tax be administered and c) how much would it raise, minus administrative charges? I have a feeling it's a drop in the bucket.

Tulse:

Yes and no - personally I would tie any tax increase/new taxes into the debate about raising money for expansion in general. Don't want to have to go through a SRT like debate every single time - it's divisive and counterproductive. Besides, it gives you know who an out - once Scarborough got the subway, any further property tax increase would be framed as "downtown special interest" all over again. No thanks - I think we need some permanence on these decisions and I sure as hell want a burn together or burn separately approach to dealing with it.

AoD

 

[ttk77]

This doesn't address how to to increase capacity in public transit or the challenges of introducing tolls or road usage fees to pay for it. In order to accommodate increased usage on public transit you need to add capacity to the system before people get out of their cars, we are at capacity now and the system cannot handle additional passengers, what happens when it rains or snows?

It is poor planning to shift overcapacity from one system (singe passengers in vehicles) to another system that's overcapacity (public transit). The city has to add capacity to one system or both very quickly before in can implement the strategy you are suggesting and it needs to come up with a way to pay for it.

The best course of action is to tax something people actually use and want to use without affecting these areas that are overcapacity so that you have predictable revenue to pay for the capacity, then implement policies to acheive a target goal of increased public transit usage.

Within the cities rights to taxation this could include:

Instead of letting retailers keep all 5cents of the plastic bag tax, the city could have collected half of it.
Tax on alcoholic beverages.
Tax on tobaccco.
Tax on nightclub cover charges.

All these small taxes would likely cost more to collect than the money they actually generate. That's why the retailers were allowed to keep the 5c to begin with. To get the most bang for the tax dollars collected you either need to tack onto a tax that 's already collected (ie sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc...) or tax at bottlenecks where the collection points can be minimized (ie: road tolls).

 

[scar_resident]

All these small taxes would likely cost more to collect than the money they actually generate. That's why the retailers were allowed to keep the 5c to begin with. To get the most bang for the tax dollars collected you either need to tack onto a tax that 's already collected (ie sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc...) or tax at bottlenecks where the collection points can be minimized (ie: road tolls).

In London, they could not recover the cost of implementing the tolls, they had to increase the price. Increased the price, usage dropped, revenue dropped again. This is the problem the city is having with water, raise water rates to cover infrastructure improvements, usage goes down, less money to pay for infastructure improvements.

I'm sure that tobacco and liquor usage will generate more money than the parking tax city council was floating around so I don't think that it's a drop in the bucket or that administrative charges would be prohibitive.

 

[ttk77]

In London, they could not recover the cost of implementing the tolls, they had to increase the price. Increased the price, usage dropped, revenue dropped again. This is the problem the city is having with water, raise water rates to cover infrastructure improvements, usage goes down, less money to pay for infastructure improvements.

I'm sure that tobacco and liquor usage will generate more money than the parking tax city council was floating around so I don't think that it's a drop in the bucket or that administrative charges would be prohibitive.

In London they were implementing a congestion charge though, and I'm assuming there are far more entry points to their downtown area than there are to the Gardiner or DVP. Imagine trying to toll each and every sidestreet that enters into our core.

The alcohol and tobacco tax might work if we could just add a % onto what the province already charges, have them administer the taxes and funnel the money directly into metrolinx.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Increasing sin tax to me sounds like a way to dump the cost to someone else instead of paying for what an average person should have been paying in the first place. Everyone benefit from transit expansion - the tax should be reflective of such.

AoD

 

[Johnny Au]

Within the cities rights to taxation this could include:

Instead of letting retailers keep all 5cents of the plastic bag tax, the city could have collected half of it.
Tax on alcoholic beverages.
Tax on tobaccco.
Tax on nightclub cover charges.

Why stop at alcohol, tobacco, and nightclubs, if we can extend it to putting increased surcharges for alcohol advertising? The city would raise so much money, especially given the amounts of alcohol advertising in the form of billboards, television advertisements, etc. (yes, that includes the amphitheatre in Ontario Place) in the city.