Toll Roads

[sixrings]

I dont think we are going to stop people from driving at 1 or 2 cents a km. In fact as opposed to tolls as I am for everyhighway (only support downtown routes) if this was the actualy price it wouldnt bother me at all. However I dont believe the prices are going to be that low. And if they are for how long?

OK heres my personal bias. I want to be able to drive to Bluemountain to ski or golf without getng nailed. I used the TTC during the week. I am not to blame for the congestion nightmare this city has become. I have bought a house centrally located. I dont think its right that I should be getting nailed to drive out of the city. Cant wait to hear people upset with me for being honest and holding back their master plan of biking and running and only shopping locally.

 

[afransen]

I dont think we are going to stop people from driving at 1 or 2 cents a km. In fact as opposed to tolls as I am for everyhighway (only support downtown routes) if this was the actualy price it wouldnt bother me at all. However I dont believe the prices are going to be that low. And if they are for how long?

OK heres my personal bias. I want to be able to drive to Bluemountain to ski or golf without getng nailed. I used the TTC during the week. I am not to blame for the congestion nightmare this city has become. I have bought a house centrally located. I dont think its right that I should be getting nailed to drive out of the city. Cant wait to hear people upset with me for being honest and holding back their master plan of biking and running and only shopping locally.

My suggestion that every driver get a certain number of km for free or discounted each month should appeal to you. It's similar to how Ontario has a lower rate for electricity for the first few hundred kWh, before jumping to a higher rate.

Also, compare the suggested rate to what 407 is currently charging: 18 - 19.85 cents per km. That's pretty hefty. If tolls were allowed to float to whatever rate the market will bear, I would gladly allow the gas tax to fall to zero. Of course, gas will inevitably be caught up in whatever carbon tax/cap and trade scheme is implemented. The federal Liberals proposed eliminating the federal gasoline tax and replacing it with a carbon tax in the last election.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Dutch introduce Road Pricing

Click on this link for an article on road pricing in Holland. A comment from the first link:

Such a system will be instantly dismissed here as politically untenable. Unfortunately, the physics of climate change do not understand that concept. Canada – and also the United States – is increasingly out of step with the rest of the “developed” world. Countries like Denmark, Sweden and Norway all saw that something needed to be done about an oil dependent life style back in the 1970s with the first great oil shock. The Dutch had significant reserves of North Sea gas but that has been rapidly depleted. The wiseacres said at the time that they “wasted the opportunity” because they continued to provide a decent level of social services when so many other countries fell into the grip of the Chicago school and slashed public spending and instead gave the rich tax breaks. The Dutch felt that if anyone deserved a break it was poor people, not the rich or the corporate behemoths.

The original link is an Associated Press article:

Dutch drivers to pay tax on road time, not on car

(AP)

AMSTERDAM — Dutch drivers will pay less to buy a car but will be charged tax on every mile on the road, a system the government says will reduce traffic jams, fatal accidents and carbon emissions.

The Cabinet approved a bill Friday calling for drivers of an average passenger car to pay a base rate of € 0.03 per 1 kilometer (5 CDN ¢ per kilometer), beginning in 2012. Drivers of heavier, more polluting vehicles will pay more, and the cost will go up for driving in peak hours.

GPS will track the time, hour and place each car moves and send the data to a billing agency.

But the annual road tax and purchase tax for new cars will be abolished, reducing the price of a new car 25 percent, the Transport Ministry said.

Nearly 6 out of 10 drivers will benefit under the system, the ministry said, but government revenue would remain the same. Public transportation, including taxis, will be exempt.

The ministry calculated that overall traffic will drop about 15 percent, peak-hour congestion will be halved, traffic deaths will fall 7 percent and carbon emissions from road travel will be cut by 10 percent.

The tax will increase every year until 2018 and could be adjusted if it fails to change traffic patterns.

I guess that € 0.03 per kilometer rate is for a two-seater car like the Smart. It will go up from there.

 

[urbanfan89]

GPS in each car? Good luck implementing that.

Wouldn't it be much easier to simply raise the fuel tax and put a portion of fuel tax revenue into an insurance fund, which goes towards reducing car insurance premiums?

 

[doady]

Wouldn't it be much easier to simply raise the fuel tax...?

Exactly what I was about to say, until I read your post... the gas tax already punishes drivers based on distance and fuel efficiency...

 

[kEiThZ]

Is the GPS tracking time or km? I think mileage checks are easier with some kind of onoard odometer that can be read at registration time. There is no way society will accept GPS tracking. Heck, our privacy laws might not allow it.

 

[nfitz]

The solution to car insurance premiums is if Ontario went to a public insurance scheme like other promises ... I'm not sure why we aren't up in arms that people are paying 1/4 of the insurance we are ... if there was public benefit from this money (like transit and roads) I could understand ... but it simply is gone.

 

[Northern Light]

On GPS;

Most higher model cars already have it;

My understanding is GM plans on being standard on every car before 2020.

ON-STAR is GPS. You've seen all those commercials.

Coming to a car near you...... real-time help if your lost or ill; better anti-theft and tracking systems, in-car tolling (in real time) and big brother....

*********

As for car insurance, variations in cost are largely tied to how much insurance you are required to carry; and to medical costs (either automatically paid out or court-awarded)

Of course, variations in accident rates etc. are also a factor.

Example, in Florida it used to be, not sure if it still is the case, that you could carry only $200,000 in liability coverage and no comprehensive or collision.

In Ontario, pre the recent changes, you had to carry $500,000 by law, but virtually no company would sell you a policy w/o 1,000,000 and they generally wouldn't tolerate you not having Collision coverage either.

Add to that, that in Ontario it is ILLEGAL not to offer insurance coverage to everyone, no matter how bad a driver they are; and that certainly forces rates way up.

The only legal reason to deny someone coverage in Ontario is no license/or a suspension)

Rates are higher if you are a bad driver, but they are still regulated, such that someone with 4 at-fault accidents and a drunk driving conviction and 3 tickets can still get coverage, probably for about $10,000 a year. More than most of us would pay, but far less than the damage they are likely to cause. As such the rest of us end up subsidizing that rate.

We're also lousy as a jurisdiction about taking away people's licenses for good; and about enforcing it when we do. If we addressed these 2 points, accidents and insurance rates would both decline markedly.

 

[kEiThZ]

That cars increasingly come equipped with GPS systems does not necessarily mean the public would tolerate widespread monitoring of their movements (which is what you would have to do to toll them). And we are talking about mandatory government monitoring here, not some private service (OnStar) which is voluntary.

I certainly hope Canadians don't take privacy that lightly.

A tamper proof electronic odometer that can download the data at registration time is all that's needed. GPS tracking is over the top.

 

[Second_in_pie]

A huge advantage of GPS over an odometer is that GPS knows exactly where you're going, and when. That means that people taking congested routes during high congestion times get charged more than people running to get groceries or to take their kids to hockey on a Sunday afternoon.

Maybe the government just has to install RFID tags in license plates, to going past chekpoints, like highway onramps or major arterials, could paint out a general picture of where the car's going and what times they're taking what routes, and charging people accordingly.

 

[kEiThZ]

A huge advantage of GPS over an odometer is that GPS knows exactly where you're going, and when. That means that people taking congested routes during high congestion times get charged more than people running to get groceries or to take their kids to hockey on a Sunday afternoon.

Maybe the government just has to install RFID tags in license plates, to going past chekpoints, like highway onramps or major arterials, could paint out a general picture of where the car's going and what times they're taking what routes, and charging people accordingly.

Yes, but that's the issue. What you see as an opportunity to improve traffic management, most of the public will see as an unacceptable intrusion into their privacy. Whether its GPS or a bunch of checkpoints, this is a system that will track, where and when a particular car is going for its life. I can't imagine in what reality that would be acceptable to the average Canadian. And I can't even see that being acceptable as per our privacy laws and regulations.

If we have to go this route, somehow, we'll have to figure out a way to track the mileage a vehicle drives without associating that information with where and when a vehicle was driving. Anything less and you are sure to draw the ire of the public.

If Photo Radar went down in flames (and that had a much better rationale behind it), what do you think would happen to a government that has 'GPS tracking of private automobiles' on its agenda.

I don't think tolls and GPS should be associated in any discussion at all, because it will simply make it harder to implement tolls more fully in Canada.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Well we should shut the 407 down then.
I'm quite sure that it's a very small demographic of Canadians/Torontonians that are worried about tolls tracking their vehicles and finding out what they do with their personal lives, especially since it's not a GPS. It could easily be a RFID tag implanted in new license plates that sends an "I'm here" signal on major arterials. I doubt anyone would be overly concerned with that, at least from a privacy standpoint.

 

[waterloowarrior]

for the Dutch system
http://www.verkeerenwaterstaat.nl/e...ions_and_answers/privacy_and_fraud/index.aspx

Will everyone be able to see where I have been?

No, that is impossible. Only the number of kilometres you have driven will be transmitted, and the rates at which they were driven. That way no one can see where you have been, unless you have expressly given consent to provide more detailed information. This may be because you drive a company car and you want your employer to have certain information. That will then be based on a clear agreement between you and your employer.

 

[kEiThZ]

Well we should shut the 407 down then.
I'm quite sure that it's a very small demographic of Canadians/Torontonians that are worried about tolls tracking their vehicles and finding out what they do with their personal lives, especially since it's not a GPS. It could easily be a RFID tag implanted in new license plates that sends an "I'm here" signal on major arterials. I doubt anyone would be overly concerned with that, at least from a privacy standpoint.

The 407 ETR has privacy issues that have been rasied. But what makes the 407 ETR different is that its use is voluntary and there are alternatives. If you value your privacy you can take the 401. If we are now talking about a system that tracks a car's every move, that's a whole new realm. Even the Dutch system though, is at the end of the day, a system which tracks individual movement in real time.

The key difference here is cultural. Europeans are far more likely to tolerate intrusions into their privacy than North Americans. Look at the Brits; one of the most surveilled people on the planet. That kind of surveillance would not fly in Canada. And involuntary real time GPS tracking is even worse than public surveillance.

My fear is that combining a proposal for road tolls with one that involves something approximating tracking individuals, and making it involuntary in one shot is likely to draw every form of opposition possible. If we want a realistic shot of implementing tolls, we should not be rolling privacy challenges into the effort. People will be revulsed by tolls as it is. The last thing you want to tell them is that they way the system calculates tolls is by tracking their every move.

 

[kEiThZ]

for the Dutch system
http://www.verkeerenwaterstaat.nl/e...ions_and_answers/privacy_and_fraud/index.aspx

That still leaves a lot of questions about privacy. Saying the signal is encoded with something approximating a GSM-SIM card equipped system does not inspire confidence given how easy it is to track movements of GSM phones (ie AGPS). Moreover there is nothing here that says tracking cannot be activated at any point. This is a promise that all they're transmitting is driven distance and zone/toll rates. And even that information could be manipulated (if you know where the zones lie) to reconstruct an individual's journey. Ultimately, any system transmitting geopositioning information in real-time is a privacy risk. There's no way around it.

What can be debated is whether Canadians are willing to accept that risk to collect road tolls. I'd say no. But I could be wrong.