MACLEANS_DECEMBER 2024_BIG IDEA_GREEN LIGHT CONGESTION PRICING_BY PETE RYAN
illustration by pete ryan

How to Fix Canada’s Traffic Problem

Canadians are stuck in gridlock. Congestion tolls would get things moving.
by reece martin

I can easily pinpoint the origins of my obsession with public transportation. Growing up in a rural part of Langley, B.C., it took me an hour to bike to the nearest corner store; if I wanted to get anywhere fast, I had to hitch a ride with my parents. I longed for more: accessible shops, a main drag for people-watching or even a SkyTrain, like they have in Vancouver. During high school, I spent a lot of time online in transit-focused forums and, by the time I moved to Toronto for university, I’d travelled to Europe and Asia, comparing their networks to the ones back home. In 2016, I started my own YouTube channel, RMTransit. My videos get into the specifics of America’s terrible buses and Helsinki’s excellent trams, but the general message is this: driving everywhere, all the time, isn’t always the best way to get around. 

After a decade spent living in Toronto, I’ve seen Canada’s worsening gridlock problems firsthand—non-stop construction, blocked intersections and stalled transit projects galore. According to TomTom, a digital mapping company that publishes a traffic index of 387 cities, Toronto now has the worst traffic in North America, ahead of Mexico City, New York and even Los Angeles. Vancouver isn’t far behind, and congestion in other major Canadian cities, like Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and their suburbs, has spiked since 2022. 

This isn’t surprising, given Canada’s soaring population. Residential towers continue to rise without an increase in public transportation to absorb the influx of people. (Toronto alone welcomed 200,000 new residents between 2022 and 2023.) Even visitors are affected: this past July, Irish singer Niall Horan went viral after he posted footage of himself, coincidentally wearing a “Slow Living” T-shirt, walking past a sea of stopped cars to his own concert at the Scotiabank Arena. It’s not just pop stars who suffer from congestion, either. When so many individual Canadians insist on driving—even when viable transit alternatives exist—important traffic like delivery trucks and emergency vehicles grind to a halt. According to recent data by the Transportation Association of Canada, congestion has resulted in economic losses of $7 billion within the GTA. (In Greater Montreal and Metro Vancouver, the costs were $1.7 and $1.4 billion, respectively.) 

Some of the proposed solutions to Canada’s seemingly intractable traffic problem have included increasing fines for illegally parked drivers, adding levies for builders who block lanes and even an underground highway—the last one courtesy of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. One of the more effective yet controversial fixes is congestion pricing, where people pay a fee for driving in city centres. The logistics will sound familiar to anyone who’s received a fine from a red-light camera: in areas most affected by congestion, cities set up a perimeter of cameras that track licence plates. (As an example, London drivers pay £15 a day for entering designated zones.) When we share a scarce resource, as urban space increasingly is, using it shouldn’t be free. And with tolls in place, people might think twice before hopping in their cars when they could easily take the subway or a regional train.

Congestion pricing has successfully taken off in cities around the world, the first being Singapore back in 1975. The city had just unveiled a brand-new mass-transit plan, and the fees helped incentivize citizens to use it. Of the many European case studies, London is one of the most famous. After congestion pricing launched in 2003, its positive impact was immediate: according to a report from Transport for London, traffic entering the city centre decreased by 18 per cent right away, reducing the average driver’s time spent in gridlock by almost a third. 

There are benefits to urban dwellers beyond better traffic flow. During the pandemic, the pollution that typically hangs over five of Canada’s largest cities dropped by as much as 15 per cent. Congestion pricing likely wouldn’t have such an extreme effect but, in cities that have implemented it, emissions drop significantly. Recently, London also created Ultra Low Emission Zones, in which some electric vehicles drive toll-free. Already, the city has recorded an eight per cent drop in reported respiratory issues. 

The other big benefit of congestion pricing is economic. It facilitates a better flow of goods—it’s hard to ship furniture or produce via subway—and, potentially, a bigger flow of revenue into city infrastructure. Congestion fees could be funnelled into road improvements, public bike-share programs and even transit, in the form of expanded service hours, technological upgrades and, maybe, a shiny new fleet of electric vehicles. 

For all of its upsides, maintaining political momentum behind congestion pricing has been an obstacle. In New York, city officials have been mulling over congestion pricing as long as London’s had it. Most recently, New York’s plan was to charge drivers US$15 for trips below 60th Street. This past summer, it was barely three weeks away from launching—cameras ready—when Governor Kathy Hochul pulled the plug, citing the increased costs of living. Vancouver hit a similar snag: in 2018, a city-commissioned report found that congestion pricing could collect up to $1.6 billion per year. By November of 2022, city council had voted to suspend all work on its transport-pricing initiative due to a lack of public support.

Despite the fits and starts, I believe Canada can still be a congestion-pricing model for North America. Toronto is the obvious place to begin, but these programs also make sense in smaller urban centres and suburbs. The exact price could be different in each city, of course, but from a national standardization perspective, it would be helpful if the federal government offered financial incentives to ensure widespread implementation. Canadians should expect to pay tolls whenever they travel by car. 

Congestion pricing can take some getting used to. Prior to Stockholm’s rollout in 2007, public support for the program was below 40 per cent. The city initially introduced tolls on a seven-month trial basis and, five years after the pricing was made permanent, public support had risen to nearly 70 per cent. Framing the issue properly is key. Only discussing the potential financial ramifications ignores the fact that all this traffic is already costing us a lot—in time spent idling and in quality of life. The goal isn’t to punish drivers, but to use our shared space more efficiently.

I may be older now but, inside, I’m still that same teen who was totally fixated on optimizing urban transportation. I not-so-secretly hope that one consequence of congestion pricing is that more people live less car-focused lives. My wife and I had a baby a couple of months ago, and we’re in no rush to go out and buy a minivan. If I need to get downtown or do a grocery run, I walk or take the subway. And our child’s pediatrician is only three kilometres away. For the moment, there’s no need for me to add one more vehicle to the gridlock.