If we paid what Europeans pay for petrol everyone would be living much closer to downtown and using public transportation a lot more.
I'm not sure how expensive owning and operating a car will have to get before it actually illuminates "congestion". Traffic always seems to reach an equilibrium that is "congested" no matter what you do. Cities where it is far more costlier than Toronto to own and operate a personal car still have congestion...and usually worse than Toronto. Sure, part of this is do to built environments with less road capacity, but there's always enough people willing to pay the price in dollars and time to cause congestion. There's a limit to this, but what it is I don't know.
There are only two ways to lower traffic congestion that I can think of....
1...Stop attracting so many people. This is achieved by an economic collapse. This won't just solve traffic congestion, but transit over-crowding too. Downtown Detroit has solved it's traffic congestion problem!!
2...Price it accordingly. As long as more people want to use a limited service (roads) than that limited service can handle efficiently, it's priced too low. Start pricing the use of roads to the point where the level of traffic reaches a "healthy" medium (whatever that is...I have no idea).
Option #1 is a clear case of the cure being worse than the disease, so perhaps we should avoid that one.
The only viable option is #2.
While using the roads is not "free", as our municipal taxes cover the costs of operating & maintaining them, there is no user fee for using this city-provided service. But the gap between who is using this limited resource efficiently and those who do not is far too wide to have everyone effectively pay the same fee (free). You have to start prioritizing who is using the road transportation system efficiently (and this includes the sidewalks) and charging accordingly.
Priority #1 would be pedestrians (and cyclists). They don't cause noise pollution...they don't cause air pollution, they rarely cause property damage or injuries...they cause little wear and tear to the road system...they are being healthier, and therefore lowering health care costs..they don't slow down emergency vehicles (fire, ambulance, police)....and sometimes they are very funny to watch, providing a form of entertainment (especially here in Parkdale he he) So...they can continue to use for free.
Priority #2 would be public transit. Since this is by far more efficient use of the road than any other form of vehicle transportation on the streets, and something we actually want to encourage more use of, then this should also be free (since public transit is owned and operated municipally anyway, it makes no sense to pay yourself).
Priority #3 would be delivery vehicles. The economy requires the movement of goods, so these should also be free.
Last priority is private cars. Since this is least effect use of limited road space and the major cause of congestion, injuries, damage to roads and pollution, they should have to pay the highest price.
We were on the right track with the $60 vehicle registration fee (although too small to make much difference), but our new mayor has his priorities mixed up, so that got given back to drivers (at the expense of transit users, who will have to have service cuts instead).
Does it make any sense to 100% subsidize one city service (roads) to car drivers whom we are trying to discourage because of congestion, and then make transit users pay 70-80% of the cost of a city service in up-front user fees when it's something we are trying to encourage more use of?
So...as a city, we are NOT interested in reducing traffic congestion, because we are unwilling to do what it takes to actually achieve this goal.
