The transportation and transit situation in Toronto is intolerable. A new study released today ranks Toronto's commute as the worst amongst 19 global cities:
http://www.thestar.com/yourcitymyci...ranked-last-in-survey-of-commuting-times?bn=1
Meanwhile, all the talk during this election run up has been about cutting taxes. Cutting the very taxes that pay for an already underfunded system seems insane, to me, unless we are replacing that funding source with something new. Tax cuts get politicians elected, but they rarely solve anything; at best, they delay problems four years until the next election cycle.
One simple fact that keeps getting overlooked is that an improved transit infrastructure benefits drivers as well as riders. Even if you don't personally take transit, every person that does is one less person getting in your way on the highway. None of these problems will go away until we all decide to pay for improved and expanded transit. More roads and more sprawl only serve to worsen the problems in the long run, as the past few decades have proven again and again.
The most obvious hole in the system remains the fact that drivers can use tax-payer built roads for free, while transit riders must also pay to use tax-payer built transit infrastructure. This is wrong. Yes, it's the way it's been for 75 years, but it's still wrong.
Selective, sensible road tolls are the obvious solution. Tolls would feed more money into the system to be used for improving transit (and yes, maintaining roads) and would also help balance the perceived costs of driving with those of transit. One of the main reasons many people don't take transit is that it is often cheaper to drive, due to the fact that the public roads are subsidized at a much higher level. Tolls would also make people reconsider their driving habits, drive less, combine journeys into fewer trips, etc., all of which would help unclog the roads. Driving is all too easy when it is (perceived to be) free.
In the end, tolls seem like they'd be a small price to pay to reduce the millions of hours and dollars wasted by Torontonians stuck in traffic every year. Pay a bit up front, and we all benefit in the long run.
As for the original topic of this thread, I would also be eager to see what forms of sensible and effective protest can be created out of this crisis. Transit riders are no longer simply those who are "too poor to drive". There is a powerful demographic being stomped on here, repeatedly. We need to have our views heard, and these outdated modes of thinking about transit need to be quashed.
