Congestion in Toronto is a persistent issue of public concern. According to a report published by Toronto Foundation of Vital Signs in 2015, an estimate of $6 billion is wasted every year on productivity loss since people spend a lot of time stuck in traffic. The city is tremendous and navigating through a congested city takes a lot of time (Dunne, 2012). The traffic index ranks Toronto in 47th position of the most crowded cities in the world. In North America, it is ranked eighth and in Canada second among the highly congested cities (Rouhani & Niemeier, 2014). Due to congestion, Toronto residents are delayed for 87 hours in a year. In reducing the impact of congestion in Toronto, this essay discusses the use of toll roads, fuel taxing, and parking taxation as deliverable measures in reducing congestion
Fuel taxes are an important tool for increasing revenue for transportation infrastructure development and expansion. The current provincial diesel fuel tax need to be increased from the current rate of 14.3 cents to deter motorists from using cars to town. Rouhani & Niemeier, (2014) suggests that an increment of about 22 cents per liter is necessary for discouraging the significant number of cars entering and leaving Toronto every day. Alternatively, Dunne, (2012) proposes fuel tax indexing in line with the rate of inflation for the next five to seven years. Revenues from fuel tax should be dedicated to improve transportation in Toronto. With an increase in the fuel taxation, few Toronto residents will have the purchasing power to sustain exorbitant expenditure on fuel and therefore, most road user will opt for alternative means of transport such as public transport or walk to work (Rouhani, 2014). Besides, people may shift from the use of private cars to public transport. In return, higher taxes reduce traffic congestion. Special taxes apply to parking facilities based on either the surface area or the number of spaces. These taxations support specific planning objectives such as applying a levy only on unpaid parking to attract property owners to priced parking (Dunne, 2012).
Parking fees is another alternative useful in controlling city congestion. Parking rates can be charged on the bases of time of the day; duration covered during parking and the average occupancy. Collection of parking levies is even made simpler due to technological breakthroughs in mobile money transfer and applications that can assist users to find available parking space in the city. The revenues obtained from parking taxes may finance the local transport management authority. However, there are different types of parking taxes (Sporns & McIntosh, 2014). One of them is the commercial parking tax. In the implementation the commercial parking tax, there must be operators and collectors to facilitate collection of the revenues. The taxation reduces the number of user paid parking and targets the disposable incomes of motorists. Consequently, many car owners without the intent of paying parking levies opt to leave their vehicles behind. In fact, people may choose to use public transport, while others may be attracted to the unpaid parking away from the central business district (King, Srikukenthiran & Shalaby, 2014). Increasing the annual cost of parking reduces the total number of parking supply and discourages the desire among residents to drive to town.
The city should implement road pricing to control the traffic on highly congested roads. The road pricing should be flexible to varying situations and technology. For example, Highway 407, which stretches across Toronto to Pickering, is a barrier free toll highway. A driver pays C$18.87 to drive its full span during peak times. Heavy single vehicles pay twice this amount while heavy multiple unit trucks pay three times the amount (Rouhani & Niemeier, 2014). The highway operators use electronic tolling, which appears to be cheaper and more reliable since the drivers can pay without stopping over. Road pricing charged on tolls stations may be either spot-based or facility-based. Spot-based plans include cordons where the automobiles pay charges upon crossing the cordon. Facility based tolls are only applicable when congestion is in localized hot spots (Mekky, 2007).
Motorway pricing is inspired by the need to control congestion and serves two primary roles: to generate revenues and to initialize external costs. The essence of using tolls to control congestion is to make travelling unattractive especially on social errands. Design charges found in toll stations serve various functions. In case of road damage, heavy vehicles should be charged on tolls based on axle roads. For insurance, the vehicles should be charged according to the distance covered. More importantly, pricing in the roads enables road users to adjust to the acceptable road behavior like the number of trips, route, destination, vehicle occupancy and time of the day (Sporns & McIntosh, 2014).
Tolls encourage the use of public transport because of the high cost of driving privately owned cars. As roads become clear with less traffic, public transport vehicles become a better option because it would take them shorter periods to ferry people to the town and with minimal wastage of time. The revenue collected from toll roads should mainly serve the purpose of maintaining and expanding road connectivity to ease traffic in Toronto. It is important to note that with proper management of resources, incomes obtained from congested tolls may exceed the efficiency advantages by a larger manifold. On the other hand, road toll pricing has limitations. The toll pricing systems lacks proportionality and equity, which are components of a good tax system. For this reason, a small proportion of citizens (the road users) bear heavy taxes for using public goods, which otherwise, should be provided by the government free and non-excludable (King, Srikukenthiran & Shalaby, 2014). Finally, the other obstacle to motorway pricing is the acceptability by the public. The public recognizes that even though the pricing is efficient in controlling congestion, there can be no schemes to satisfy taxation regimes befitting all citizens.
In conclusion, the solution to the Toronto congestion menace requires multi-faceted interventions. The governments needs to intervene with introducing toll stations to tax road users for using certain designated roads but also raise revenues to rehabilitate and construct more roads. Besides, fuel levies and parking fees are an indirect tax regime that serves the role of discouraging use of private-vehicles, but just like toll station taxes; the regime raises funds for constructing and expanding more roads.
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