[TOareaFan]

I have zero problem with TOLLS on 427, 404, 400, DVP, QEW, Gardner, However I dont think there should be a TOLL on the 401. Many people use it to just get across the city. For instance if you were driving from LONDON to Ottawa I dont think you should get screwed going through northern Toronto.

Well, since almost all of the roads you are willing to toll are owned/operated by the provincial government, why not toll all 400 series highways province wide....since we all seem to be in favour of electronic tolling, the computer can create a formula based on your residency and your travel patterns and allocated the collected tolls to the appropriate transit authority.

(ie. if you live in Brampton and the puter shows that 45% of your tolls are just getting up and down the 410 then 45% of your toll money goes to BT.....40% of your tolls are travelling between Brampton and Toronto...that 40% goes to GO.....5% of your tolls are inside the 416....then the TTC gets 5% of your tolls).

We can use 'puters to simulate war games and pretend we are the Beatles, why not actually put them to use!

 

[hbl33]

Who should be exempted from paying toll fares other than emergency vehicles? Transit buses? I heard that a separate busway is planned along 407 for GO transit.

 

[hbl33]

Well, since almost all of the roads you are willing to toll are owned/operated by the provincial government, why not toll all 400 series highways province wide....since we all seem to be in favour of electronic tolling, the computer can create a formula based on your residency and your travel patterns and allocated the collected tolls to the appropriate transit authority.

(ie. if you live in Brampton and the puter shows that 45% of your tolls are just getting up and down the 410 then 45% of your toll money goes to BT.....40% of your tolls are travelling between Brampton and Toronto...that 40% goes to GO.....5% of your tolls are inside the 416....then the TTC gets 5% of your tolls).

We can use 'puters to simulate war games and pretend we are the Beatles, why not actually put them to use!

What about Hwy 11? 35/115? Queensway in Ottawa? or one in K/W, Thunder Bay and Windsor?

In addition, should the toll be charged according to the type of vehicle?
for instance, subcompacts or kei cars pay the least, followed by small cars. Medium sized should be next and full-size, large vans and sports cars pay the most premium. Trailers and other heavy industrial vehicles get special discounts for extra kms driven in tolled routes.

 

[GraphicMatt]

I'd imagine you'd do it similar to the 407 (but less 'premium'), with cameras charging based on distance between on-ramps and exit-ramps, but you could also sign up for a transponder program that would charge a monthly fee for a certain number of kilometres or an unlimited plan.

Monthly passes could be discounted if the owner drives an electric car or will be ridesharing, etc.

 

[nfitz]

I have zero problem with TOLLS on 427, 404, 400, DVP, QEW, Gardner, However I dont think there should be a TOLL on the 401. Many people use it to just get across the city. For instance if you were driving from LONDON to Ottawa I dont think you should get screwed going through northern Toronto.

Well if that was a real concern, you could easily enough put one detector at Milton, and another at Bowmanville, and if the same transponser (or licence plates) came in and out both sides within a reasonable amount of time, simply not charge them. But most cars on the 401 are not just passing through the GTA!

If one goes the London scheme though, it wouldn't be specific roads that are tolled, but any car entering a certain area. You could charge all the area across the Humber and Don River for example, and perhaps anything south of Eglinton.

 

[hbl33]

Monthly passes and all that frivolous loyalty plan is useless without vehicle categorization.

http://img35.imageshack.us/i/dscn0721q.jpg/

something like this...

 

[sixrings]

It just doesnt seem to make sense that were going to go from not tolling anything to tolling everything. Tolling roads going downtown makes a ton of sense to me. Tolling also makes sense mon-fri. Do we really want to lose downtown shoppers and entertainers on sat and sun?

I use to always think you should get hit with a toll once you enter 416. Whether thats from Brampton, Pickering, Richmond hill or whatever thats where you should get nailed. I never would have thought tho that we would be considering tolling everywhere.

Again downtown Toronto I support and entry points of Toronto.

 

[Fresh Start]

I have zero problem with TOLLS on 427, 404, 400, DVP, QEW, Gardner, However I dont think there should be a TOLL on the 401. Many people use it to just get across the city. For instance if you were driving from LONDON to Ottawa I dont think you should get screwed going through northern Toronto.

Tolling the 401 is actually a genius idea, for that very reason. The level of difficulty it takes to get across the city means that most motorists will be compelled to use it, even if that means them paying a fee. Think about it. If 426,400 AADT all had to pay a flat fee toll of $3.50 each, that's 1.492 million daily or close to $5.5 billion in a single 365 day cycle! So if the the City of Toronto decided to operate a toll tax for five years over its segment of the 401, screw governmental handouts, we'd have limitless funding for mass transit projects all over the city. Then we could eliminate the toll and revert things back to normal as our needs would be met. Sad for motorists in the meantime, but it'd be a necessary evil if ever we're to build crosstown rapid transit on a comparable scale to private vehicular commutes.

---
TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE
November 11, 2009 5:04 a.m.

Road tolls ‘the elephant in the road’ in Ontario
Congestion is expected to cost the Toronto region up to $15 billion annually by 2031.

But one of the most obvious and unpopular answers to the problem — road tolls, also known as congestion pricing — remains a largely verboten subject in Ontario, even though user fees are already used or under discussion globally.

“I call it the elephant in the road, because for some reason we can’t talk about it,” said Martin Collier.

He’s a founder of the Transport Futures Conference, which will gather an international panel of road pricing experts in Toronto Thursday.

The second annual conference is one sign that, after years of knee-jerk opposition, a serious exploration of the impact of user fees may finally be foisted upon Toronto-area drivers and politicians.

European road pricing

• Stockholm implemented a congestion tax in August 2007, with proceeds funding road building. Tolls, from about $2 to $3.50, vary by time and day of the week. Maximum daily charge is about $10. The system uses electronic gates similar to those on the 407 ETR.
• Milan implemented its Ecopass system around an eight-square-kilometre area of the city centre as a car-control and anti-pollution measure. Charges depend on each vehicle’s emissions level, and exemptions are granted for lower-emission vehicles. Drivers are charged up to 10 euros, recorded electronically at 43 gates. The Ecopass system is up for renewal at the end of this year.

 

[Juan_Lennon416]

Tolling Highway 401 might be a genius idea but it will never happen!! And I agree with Sixrings...we should not be looking at tolling everything

 

[Fresh Start]

Of course it'll never happen. We Canadians are far too spoiled to realize that it takes a little thing called money to get things built and to sustain the infrastructure we already have which we abuse without second thought of how to fix it. The gov't's broke and we don't exactly abound in natural resources with which to self-generate the funding. For what costs less than a Timmie's or Starbucks per day the abusers of the system can actually give something back. Some whom live in the GTA would even convert to mass transit once it's available and able to penetrate more markets. Those whom travel longer distances could recieve some form of gas subsidy with which to recomp the expense. And remember I said flat fee, it's not accumulative so any travel distance would be covered within the Golden Horseshoe, although Toronto gets first priority followed by Mississauga/Brampton and Hamilton, then Oshawa based on city population.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Again, I don't think it should be limited to a single highways or highway. Large arterial roads should be tolled too, and there's two reasons: It helps even the weight around everywhere (TO residents are also punished for driving even if they don't take the DVP/Gardiner and instead take Avenue Road or Eglinton or something) It also ensures that people don't just take an arterial road to avoid the highway toll. Great example of this is the Highway 7/407. Cars will avoid the 407 all the way to Kennedy, McCowan, I've even seen Markham Road, so they can avoid tolls on the 407. As a result, the highway does not do as good a job of relieving local traffic as it could. I could see the same with the DVP on Don Mills or Avenue Road, the Gardiner on Lakeshore or the Queensway, 427 on Highway 27 and Kipling, etc.

But I think that a person who takes their car to work each day should end up paying a good $1k a year, maybe more or less depending on the distance or if they use their car for other things. That'd bring in a huge amount of money for Metrolinx to use for Transit improvements, probably over $1 billion a year.

 

[sixrings]

So now were suggesting to toll all roads completely. I am a Subway user. I use it at least twice a day and am a big transit advocate. What you are proposing would only increase the value of my house because I live close to downtown st clair and bathurst. All things would make it seem that I should agree with this. BUT I DONT. Toronto has been (and I agree wrongly) built out not up. Now to charge tolls on every road seems to me to be militant. Tolling roads going downtown makes sense because there are transit alternatives. However how does someone from scarborough get to the airport. Or How does one family member from one side of the city visit another family member on the other side without a LOOOONG transfer ridden ride. The only way I would agree with this ludacris lets toll every single road (Im assuming you would count Finch, Steeles, Lawrence, Eglinton, Jane, Keele, Warden, Kennedy, Victoria Park, Kipling, Islington) is if you had SUBWAYS on each of these routes. At the very least a DRL, EGLINTON, Sheppard, Lawrence, FINCH, Queen. PLus all you are doing is giving the TTC a monopoly over getting from point A to point B. How will this lead to competitiveness. And are Tolls going to go up as much as the 407. If so you are going to have a bunch of people in the fringes whose houses are going to plummit.

 

[kEiThZ]

It's one thing to have a congestion charge for downtown and quite another to toll all roads. I'd like to see a politicians try that one.

Keep in mind, that today, cross-town travel is difficult, cumbersome and time consuming by transit. And local travel by transit is both expensive (from the flat fare) and slow. Until transit develops across the board and has a more regional focus, there is no way GTA residents will accept blanket road tolls on all roads or even all the 400 series highways.

 

[sixrings]

Tolling all roads sounds like a idea from either A) a hippy bike ridding transit going person who doesnt own a car at all and doesnt ever go more then 20 mins away from his house or B) someone UBER rich who doesnt care about price as long as he has no traffic for his own personal race track.

Could you imagine the TTC unions how much theyd be asking for if they knew they were the only option?

 

[Second_in_pie]

It's one thing to have a congestion charge for downtown and quite another to toll all roads. I'd like to see a politicians try that one.

Keep in mind, that today, cross-town travel is difficult, cumbersome and time consuming by transit. And local travel by transit is both expensive (from the flat fare) and slow. Until transit develops across the board and has a more regional focus, there is no way GTA residents will accept blanket road tolls on all roads or even all the 400 series highways.

That's a good point... but something should be done to get the road tolls out. Perhaps it's just because the 407 has such ludicrously high tolls that people would rather take Highway 7 than pay the toll.