Transit problems getting out of hand across the country.

[denfromoakvillemilton]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-politicians-to-address-issue/article1957897/

Commute times in Canadian cities are no longer just a source of rush-hour irritation, but a national liability affecting the economic performance of our urban centres and requiring immediate intervention from Ottawa.

............................

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

personally I think the feds need to set money aside for this.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Another problem is the there is a lot of transit planning, but nothing happens. Usual reason is that different politicians come on board and don't like the previous politician's plans so it gets dropped, or there it is a very low priority for the new politician. We saw that in Ottawa, and now in Toronto. Other cities also have plans, but will something come out of the plans?

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Exactly. We never get anything done because we all just do not care.

 

[CITY_LOVER]

Hi,

I have been wondering about one possible solution for cities across the country to try to resolve their transportation woes and that is to have a MST - Municipal Sales Tax. Let cities and towns determine what they want to tax their residents for infrastructure and transportation only!!! Perhaps it should be called MTST - Municipal Transportation Sales Tax. This is the only viable way, I feel (unfortunately), for cities to get the funding they need to meet their requirements (current and future). The provincial and federal governments will NEVER give importance (or enough importance) to urban transit, especially in Ontario. They have too many other things to worry about like the continuously rising health care and education costs, debt and deficit, and apparently even military (why does Canada spend so much on military?)!!!

In Toronto, or GTA, what benefits and implications would we have if a 1% MTST was implemented solely for transit?????????

Please discuss, advise, provide your pros/cons, etc.

 

[GTS]

I agree, CITY_LOVER, all of Canada's city's need more investment in there respective transportation networks but introducing a new municipal tax is not easy; it is kind of a Catch-22 situation. Some people saying introducing a new tax is going to chase away business in certain areas- here in Toronto Ford basically got voted in because he promised to do away with some taxes, such as the vehicle registration tax! And relying on the Feds to help transit has been sporadic at best- they do funding here and there but no long-term sustained funding that the different municipalities I have lived in so far can do any long-term planning when the funding from the feds is so infrequent- lots of planning in every city I have lived in- but that is as far as it gets a lot of times.

Now we say the Feds should do more for each municipality- a lot of people point to Spain and what they have done the last couple of decades. Massive investment in transit in almost all of Spain's large urban areas but the Feds are broke in that country and they flirted with getting a bailout like Portugal just got from the EU. Most people want better transit of course but no one wants to pay for it- that is the Catch-2 I think.

 

[sjc]

I think local transit is exactly the sort of thing that the federal government has no business getting involved in. It is a purely local and/or regional issue and therefore the business of the province/municipality. Why should other parts of the country be subsidizing transit in Toronto when they have their own transportation issues to deal with?

 

[gweed123]

Hi,

I have been wondering about one possible solution for cities across the country to try to resolve their transportation woes and that is to have a MST - Municipal Sales Tax. Let cities and towns determine what they want to tax their residents for infrastructure and transportation only!!! Perhaps it should be called MTST - Municipal Transportation Sales Tax. This is the only viable way, I feel (unfortunately), for cities to get the funding they need to meet their requirements (current and future). The provincial and federal governments will NEVER give importance (or enough importance) to urban transit, especially in Ontario. They have too many other things to worry about like the continuously rising health care and education costs, debt and deficit, and apparently even military (why does Canada spend so much on military?)!!!

In Toronto, or GTA, what benefits and implications would we have if a 1% MTST was implemented solely for transit?????????

Please discuss, advise, provide your pros/cons, etc.

Interesting idea. Although I think I would avoid the word "transportation" in there. That could lead to a lot of negative backlash against it, because it's perceived as only going to one group. I agree with the idea of an MST, but I think the funds raised should be split up for several in-need groups (libraries, parks and rec, etc). This will avoid having them play favourites.

The question is though, would the money raised be better suited to go to the capital budget, or the operating budget? Both are in desperate need of a funding boost, so the question is which one is more important.

I would tend to go towards capital. A new or updated City park with a billboard up that says "paid for by the MST" would give people the sense that their tax dollar is actually going somewhere. Same if a transit station gets a refurb, or God willing, a new transit station opens. People see the operating budget as kind of a black hole, whereas the capital budget, you can point to a tangible thing and say "THIS is what we built with the tax dollars you put into the MST".

 

[gweed123]

I think local transit is exactly the sort of thing that the federal government has no business getting involved in. It is a purely local and/or regional issue and therefore the business of the province/municipality. Why should other parts of the country be subsidizing transit in Toronto when they have their own transportation issues to deal with?

If you devised a funding formula that gave all cities across the country an equal amount of funding based on population ($X/person), with these funds to be used specifically for transportation, I don't think many cities would complain. Toronto would get the exact same amount per person as South Porcupine would.

Just off the top of my head, something like $20 per person in the City. For Toronto, this would be $50M for Toronto per year, every year. This would really help with subsidizing the operating cost of the TTC, freeing up more money for other things. And, for a small town of say 10,000, $200,000 would be plenty of money to fix up Main St.

 

[sjc]

If you are going to take local dollars and spend them locally, then the taxation should be done at a local level. How exactly that would be done would be for each province to decide. This would also let each municipality/region decide for themselves the level of transportation spending they wish to undertake, or whether they would prefer to spend the money on something else (or keep taxes lower).

 

[rbt]

I think local transit is exactly the sort of thing that the federal government has no business getting involved in. It is a purely local and/or regional issue and therefore the business of the province/municipality. Why should other parts of the country be subsidizing transit in Toronto when they have their own transportation issues to deal with?

I used to think that way too but infrastructure as a whole is quickly becoming a national issue. There are very very few locations in Canada which have adequate funds for infrastructure.

Certainly seems like the federal government should be involved in funding municipalities in some manner. Just as HST reduces collection costs (single tax to a single entity) it seems the federal government should be involved in collection of an infrastructure tax (perhaps a 2% sales tax) which is distributed to the municipality it was collected in with specific earmarks toward basic infrastructure (bridges, roads, transit capital, sewer, water, electricity, snow removal capital, etc.)

 

[sjc]

If a sales tax was implemented to pay for local infrastructure, why wouldn't it be appropriate for the municipality or province to collect it? EDIT: or perhaps include it in the provincial portion of an increased HST.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Canadian traffic in psychological gridlock


Mar. 28, 2011

By Siri Agrell

Page 1 of 6: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...fic-in-psychological-gridlock/article1952764/


Elsewhere in the world, major cities show that implementing innovative ways to improve the daily commute doesn't have to be mind-numbingly slow. Visit Paris, London or New York, and you'll most likely experiment with the city's transit systems, hopping the Métro, tube or subway to the Eiffel Tower, Trafalgar Square or Central Park. Holiday in Amsterdam, and it will at least occur to you to explore the city by bike, the most popular mode of transportation.

When Canadians are travelling, their openness to alternative modes of transportation seems to blossom, while back home many cities remain psychologically gridlocked when it comes to how to improve our daily commute. Change also requires the kind of permanent funding that big-city mayors and others believe should be part of a federal urban strategy – and on the table for discussion in the national election campaign.

According to a new ranking of international cities by the Toronto Board of Trade, Canadian urban centres fare poorly on everything from transit ridership to infrastructure spending. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, Stockholm and Oslo topped the transportation ranking, while cities as varied as Madrid, New York and Seattle all outperformed Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, where congestion and transit problems were found to be “crippling” local economies.

Around the world, municipalities bigger and smaller, older and newer than Canada's urban centres have managed to experiment with major new transit initiatives. Hong Kong introduced a transit card that soon became a ubiquitous lifestyle accessory. Madrid built kilometres of new subway lines in record time and for a relatively low cost. And in New York, a transit czar has turned Time Square into a pedestrian haven.

.....

 

[Electrify]

sjc, you need to keep in mind that cities are the economic engines of larger regions. Even if smaller communities were taxed, they would still be subsidized by Toronto and the like. With that said, I don't think I agree with increasing taxes in Churchill, Manitoba to improve transit it Toronto. But a general tax for the Greater Golden Horseshoe and beyond I don't believe is unrealistic.

I think when it comes to planning, we need to put ideologies aside and construct what we need. Building exclusive streetcar (NOT LRT) lanes in the suburbs is not going to be competitive enough to address the problem. As I saw someone put it on another blog, are we trying to get people out of their cars or off the sidewalks on to transit? Another example is the Yonge subway: That subways are only designed for inner-city travel and not to be used by suburbanites, but the reality is that the Yonge line was built to get those in the then suburban neighbourhoods of Deer Park, Rosedale, etc. into the downtown employment districts south of College. The relatively tight stop spacing has more to do with the fact that cities were more compact back then (it was still before the highway revolution), but don't kid yourself that parts of Toronto north of Bloor built in the 1910s-40s were not influenced by the automobile. I'm not trying to say we should do what Ford suggests by building everything underground, but don't try and tell me that we should build rail lines with 400m spacing because it is what our ancestors would have done!

 

[rbt]

If a sales tax was implemented to pay for local infrastructure, why wouldn't it be appropriate for the municipality or province to collect it? EDIT: or perhaps include it in the provincial portion of an increased HST.

Cost, both for the municipality to collect and enforce collection for sales tax (going over business books isn't something they do today) and for the business which could now be audited and has to perform paperwork with an additional government.

It's far cheaper, both for the business and municipality, to have the federal government do it and send down the funds.

Smaller areas would find it essentially impossible to collect a sales tax. The amount collected would be eliminated by hiring a single collections agent and the overhead of doing that job correctly. $30,000 a year to some of these places would make a huge difference in whether that old bridge gets fixed this decade, or not.