The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Is Toronto Ready for Congestion Pricing?

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Since it introduced congestion pricing in January, New York City has seen some impressive results: fewer cars on the road, faster travel times, and millions in revenue. As Toronto faces its own congestion crisis, is it time for Ontario's capital city to reconsider its take on tolls? To discuss we welcome Jennifer Keesmaat, CEO of Collecdev-Markee, and former chief planner of the City of Toronto; Matti Siemiatycki, Professor of Geography and Planning and Director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto; and Teresa Di Felice: Assistant vice-president of government and community relations at CAA South Central Ontario.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renew your 2.0 TVO with more thought-provoking documentaries, insightful current affairs coverage, and fun programs and learning experiences for kids. Regular contributions from people like you help us make a difference in the lives of Ontarians of all ages. Visit tvo.me slash 2025 donate to renew your support or make a first first time donation and continue to discover your two point TBO. Since it introduced congestion pricing in January, New York City has seen some impressive results. Fewer cars on the road, faster travel times and millions in revenue. As Toronto faces its own congestion crisis, is it time for Ontario's

capital city to reconsider its take on tolls? Let's ask. Jennifer Kiesmaat, she's the CEO of Collect-dev-Mar-Key and former chief planner for the city of Toronto. Matti Simiotiki, professor of geography and planning and director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto. And Teresa Di Felice, Assistant Vice President of Government and Community Relations at CAA South Central Ontario. And it's great to have you three back at our table here at TVO for what could be a very timely discussion for our capital city, but let's see.

Sheldon, we're going to bring this graphic up here because congestion pricing came in in January in New York City. It now costs about nine bucks a day to enter New York during peak hours. The results are in, this is only for January 2025, let's see what has happened. A million fewer vehicles entered the most congested part of Manhattan. Travel times, 10 to 30 percent faster at inbound river crossings. Bus service was faster and more reliable. Ridership on the weekend express bus service grew by more than 20%.

In the first 27 days, this program generated apparently almost 50 million bucks, which will go to the region's transit system. And it's on track to hit $500 million by the end of the year unless President Trump gets his way and he comes in and cancels this. Stay tuned everybody. Okay, Jennifer, if there's fewer cars on the road now, what happened to all those drivers?

Where'd they go? Well, they're taking the bus. You just saw that in your stats. They're getting on the bus. More people are carpooling. More people are walking to their destinations. And people are changing their travel patterns. That's really one of the most significant things that happens with congestion pricing,

is that people think differently about how they're going to commute, when they commute. It's interesting to be implementing this at a moment when most people do have the option, many people do have the option of working from home. So you start to see a big shift in how people think about their commute and when they commute and when they get in their car. You know years ago when we were advocating for this in the City of Toronto, I was on the CBC and someone called in, you know we were talking about the power of pricing and congestion relief zones, and someone called in and said, if you do this, I'm going to have to start carpooling.

That's the answer to your question. And that is what you want. That's the answer to your question, is that you change behavior by putting a price on something. And look, 20% increase in the number of people taking the bus in New York City, that is a really significant and transformative shift in modal split that transportation planners spend a lot of time trying to figure out how

to tweak routes, how to improve service, how to get the pricing right in order to see that kind of a transition. So I think what we've seen, and we've already seen it for decades in London and we've seen it in Singapore and we've seen it in London UK in Singapore in Stockholm is that when you introduce pricing that you start to mix up how people think about using road infrastructure and that's really powerful. We should just say modal split is what people like you call those who drive versus those who take transit.

Just a little translation there. Is this a good or bad news story? The New York story is a great news story. It's working and it's also changing minds and attitudes. When it first came in, people in New York City were generally opposed. You're starting to see the favorability go up. People see that it works and that's been the pattern all around the world. London, Stockholm, Milan, Singapore.

When these charging programs are first introduced, they're often unpopular, people are worried about how they are going to get around, if they're going to be priced off the road. And over time when they see the results, that's what's so key about this. It's not just a new tax, it's actually improving and changing people's lives and experiences in cities. And when they start to see the positive results, then the favourability goes up and people in polls and even in elections. In Stockholm they had an

election after it got brought in, charging got brought in as a pilot and afterwards they had an election and it won and it got it got maintained. So you can really start to see how people view their lives changing for the better and these programs are working. Theresa same question is this a good or bad news story? I think the New York story is a very interesting because often we hear people say, oh that's London or that's Singapore and and but I think a lot of people in Toronto can feel more like-minded with New York City, right? It's a busy bustling city bigger

than Toronto even but and so I think people are gonna once they once they hear about it, I don't think a lot of people in Toronto actually know about New York's congestion program. And then I think right now too it's early. So people want to see some proof and I think it's an interesting telltale for what could or could not happen in Toronto. That being said, there are some things that need to happen before you implement something like this. So let me ask the obvious follow-up, which is you're here representing the Canadian Automobile Association. So do we assume that drivers are not happy about having to pay this money to go into the city?

Well, you know, I think at CA, you know, at first we always focus on safety, but we talk to our members about some of these issues like congestion pricing, how people get around. So our members get around by car, they get around by bike, they take transit, they walk and we've definitely seen a huge shift in some of those ways of getting around since the pandemic. And but in generally, if you ask people if they're supportive of tolls or congestion charges, no, they're not. Right. And I think that that's something that we've talked about over a number of years is what has to be in place because otherwise it's just seen as very punitive and currently we've got a lot of transit being built which is really a precursor to how you get people to change their transportation behaviors or how they get around but we don't have it where it needs to be yet in order to even bring in something at this point.

Matty, does this pick on drivers? I don't view it that way. I think it makes life better for those who continue to drive, and it gives others other options. It gives it funding, and it creates more space. At the moment, you can't run a viable bus service up the DVP or on the Gardiner Expressway. There's too much traffic.

But lots of people would really benefit from being able to take public transit in those areas. And so a road charge gives the people who are on that road a faster and smoother and more reliable trip, which is really valuable, and it enables public transit, it encourages carpooling. So really this extends the range of options that are available. I think it actually makes it better for drivers, not worse. And for those of us who do drive, when you're sitting in traffic, just think about how frustrating and how much of a waste of time and money that is, and just think how much you would benefit if that trip was reliable, if you didn't have to leave two hours early for a

trip that should take an hour because you were worried about being late. That's just putting time back in everyone's day, and all of the goods and services in this region are more expensive because of the traffic, because all of that material is stuck in traffic as well. We can make all of that smoother. We can actually address affordability by starting to bring in a road charge as well. Does it pick on suburbanites and does it favour those who live in the city? I was hoping you would also ask me this question about it picking on drivers and picking on

suburbanites is a really critical question. I think that Teresa in some ways answered that question, which is that we like to think that there are transit users and drivers and people who walk and people who cycle and In a big urban center most of us do all those things There's no such things as drivers and transit users We have a whole variety of choices and we use those choices. We use kind of the best mode at the best time. You know, getting down to a Raptors game, you're going to jump on the TTC.

I think it's a bit different for suburbanites who live in environments where there isn't a lot of transit and where their assumption has been, the assumption has been, that they are going to use a car for every trip. Then it's a completely different question. So I think in the core of the city, where we have lots of choices, including the choice of walking, and this is one of the things that I think is really underappreciated,

is how much in cities like London, England, where there's amazing transit, but the biggest increase as a result of the congestion charges and the ultra-low emission zone has been people are walking longer, and they're cycling more, and they're taking more buses. Those are all things that are behavioral changes that are pretty easy to do. You don't need to build a big tunnel underground in order to get more people on the bus. Let me talk to you about the politics of this because then you obviously at City Hall were neck deep in the politics of this issue.

People do view this issue, I suspect, as creating winners and losers. And you had first-hand experience on this almost 10 years ago. Want to tell us about that? Yeah, well for sure. What happened, you know, we spent several years, my team is leading transportation planning for the city, spent several years and the infrastructure that's being built today, the shovels on the ground, that's all the work that we did because we saw the promise of delivering on the new transit infrastructure as needing to fit hand in glove with the congestion pricing. Of course, it takes much longer to get the transit built,

but delivering on that promise was absolutely critical and combined with bringing congestion pricing forward. So we spent a couple of years with our then mayor, John Tory, and I will tell you it was not intuitive for him to support congestion pricing, but he kept saying, bring me the data, bring me the analysis. And the great thing about congestion pricing, but he kept saying bring me the data, bring me the analysis.

And the great thing about congestion pricing is there is multi-generational data at this point that we can go to and every case in every city is almost identical. To Maddie's point, people oppose congestion pricing before it exists. Once it's brought in, it slowly has an uptick. The majority of New Yorkers now support congestion pricing. Why? Because they've seen how it's improved their quality of life. But it takes political courage to bring it in. It takes political courage and it took two years for us to kind of get John Tory there. He finally supported it. He lobbied City Council in order to get

the votes to get it passed. And then of course at the pressure of suburban voters Kathleen Wynne who was then the premier flipped. And I've never forgiven her for that because you know today people say oh look at the traffic in the city it's you know an absolute it's an absolute mess. And you know I kind of sit there say, yeah, we knew this was going to happen. That's literally why we were arguing for congestion pricing. We're adding a ton of ton more people. We can't add more cars.

On the chance that the former premier is watching this program, she would want me to say, Maddie, that yes, I wasn't going to allow congestion pricing to come in until we had adequate alternatives in place, adequate transit in place for people to use if it was a disincentive to bring your car into the city. Is that a reasonable argument? I think it is, and I think we can be investing in the transit quickly. We're building the big mega projects. Those take time.

Those take years. In this city, they take decades. But what we've seen in places like London is they brought in bus service, improved bus service right away, 300 new buses right away. They dropped the fares. They made it much easier. We could also be doing much more around carpooling. So we have to get away from this idea that there's always going to be, if we can just

get the transit in place. I was in a class yesterday and someone in the class was talking, they're from Paris, and they were talking about even in Paris they think that they don't have enough public transit. Well, if Paris doesn't have enough public transit, then where in the world do they? That has got to be one of the best public transit systems in the world. And I think for us, we're building out, we're in the midst of the biggest transit building boom in a generation. And I think that's positive.

We have to be thinking now about pricing as the other side of that coin that enables us to pay for that transit and encourages people to use it. I must confess, I thought you would be more violently opposed to this idea. And you don't seem to be unless you're couching it very carefully. Well, I think that, you know, it's not our role to sort of pick winners and losers, as you talked about earlier. I think there are a few things that we can't ignore, right? There's an affordability issue right now. There, you know, we're in a difficult economic situation, so these conversations do not go over well. The political will isn't there. It is actually law.

The current Premier and the Ontario government brought in laws about not implementing tolls on Ontario highways and what was Toronto highways, the Gardiner and the DVP. I think that the current government is looking at bringing in all the different solutions in terms of how people get around and then the conversation of how do you change behavior is something different. I think for us is that we say congestion charge charging has been discussed for a long time. There are lots of tools in the toolbox. Congestion charges alone isn discussed for a long time. There are lots of tools in the toolbox. Congestion charges alone isn't going to solve congestion.

Not solve it, but it sounds like if New York's a good example, it will improve things. Definitely. And I think we've talked about the other examples that have shown that there are improvements to be had. But again, all of those jurisdictions put things in place first, things that we've been reluctant to put in place.

And as Maddie said, that you can improve bus service. There are better, more efficient ways to use the transportation system now, whether it be ramp metering, technology. Recently the Toronto Region Board of Trade, it talked about technology at intersections around blocking the box. And we know the City of Toronto has implemented

a number of measures and is in the process of updating their congestion management plan. Okay, let me pick up on that with another Jennifer here, because I was going to quote Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvey, who said the city's not in favor, the city staff are not in favor of congestion charges, and that the city instead is going to hire more traffic agents for the city's busiest intersections.

Start with this. Why would the city staff oppose this as a recommendation? Honestly, I think it's a very political recommendation. I don't think it's definitely not based on data and evidence, because if you go to the data and evidence, you very clearly see that congestion pricing combined with a series of other critical initiatives such as investing in bus service such as concerted car share programs which are very easy to do now with with technology there's an app for that you know that it's that is the truly the only way to reduce the volume of cars on city streets.

It's a complete absurdity. I'm sure you've covered induced demand on this program in the past. It's a complete absurdity that you can move cars more quickly and somehow that would reduce congestion because you'll just add more cars. The only way is to control the number of cars on city streets. And if you do put more traffic agents at busy intersections, will that do anything?

Well, the irony is that if we better respect pedestrian flows, and we have enormous volumes of pedestrian flows in the core of the city, it should slow down traffic even more, because you'll be giving more time over to pedestrians and to pedestrian flows, and there's a bit of a battle going on right now on our city streets between pedestrians and cars so great you're gonna get three more cars through the intersection woohoo like that's not changing anyone's commute time. That don't impress me much as someone once said.

That's right it's not changing any commute times I like it because it'll make things safer, but we should have no illusions that anyone is getting anywhere faster. Now on the flip side of that, I do think honestly it's almost negligent on the part of the transportation department at the City of Toronto, which really needs a very big shakeup in my opinion. As you can see on the city streets, things have just gotten worse and worse under the leadership that we have right now. There needs to be a big fix and some serious leadership. And by the way, John Tory brought in those traffic controllers many years ago. Just did it make a difference? Absolutely not. It made zero difference anywhere in the city. So I

don't, there's no data or evidence that that is in fact a solution. So I'm going to make Maddie the king of it, king for their day here. If you could bring in a congestion pricing system for the capital city of the province of Ontario, what would it look like? So let's start with what we were just talking about. I think some of these smaller measures, these are table stakes. We should be doing them as a matter of course. Of course we should be cleaning up the intersections.

Construction. We need to make sure that the construction is going a lot faster. There's so much frustration. Technology, yes, let's use technology. But as Jen said, these are around the margins. We have too many cars and not enough space and that is not going to change with these measures. So the measure that's been used in other cities is a cordon type of charge where you draw a boundary around the downtown core and cars every time they come in they pay a charge. I'm not totally convinced that that's the right approach for Toronto. I think we have broader

issues around the whole region especially on our major highways. So I would be looking at bringing in a common charge on what I think of as the inner ring of the highways. The 401, the 427, the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. Bring in a charge so that it's even, so that it doesn't favour one area or another. It's not just targeting suburban commuters who are coming into the downtown core, but also those coming across the top of the city. It helps with truck movements, which are major coming through the 401 corridor, and I think that could achieve many of the benefits that we're talking about, about unclogging our major arteries and also making it easier to get around. Just a dumb logistical question here does

that mean we all have to have a transponder in our cars now and there's a sensor that picks it up and dings you as you drive through? So there are different ways of doing this one is a sensor there's increasingly satellite technology which is being used in Singapore I know there are concerns about privacy but let's be totally honest we're all walking around with a spy balloon in our pocket with the cell phones. We're being tracked everywhere already. So to think that the congestion charge or the, you know, that's a privacy issue now in 2025,

I think that issue is much less. We should be aware of it. We need to make sure it's being taken care of. But I think at this point, we can guard against the privacy issues and make sure that this is implemented well. Okay, I'm transferring the crown from your head to Theresa's head. I'm going to make you the king or the queen for the day, whichever title you prefer. What do you think of the idea she's put on the table?

I think that that is less likely to happen because that is where the biggest opposition is. Turning existing highways into toll lanes, ourlled highways is highly opposed by Ontario drivers. Politically it's not viable. I think that what needs to happen first is some of these measures. I think there needs to be constant communication about this issue. You know, what they did in New York was have websites that talked about the projects that the money would fund. But again, leading up to that is there has to be a clear understanding, recognition

that there's a problem. People know they're sitting in congestion or their commute times have changed or are longer. The way we talk about congestion and commute times is a little bit different to the general public. And I think that before you start going talking to people about something that they see as punitive

What are the the the sort of the carrots that you can entice people to start thinking about either their behaviors? So, you know bring back things like transit pat rebates on taxes, you know Do things that really incent people to want to make those options? Transit has to be consistent and reliable to make those options, transit has to be consistent and reliable. If transit is not consistent and reliable, the view that you can get out of your car to take transit on a regular basis isn't going to happen and then tolls are only viewed as a punishment. What would your congestion pricing scheme look like? Am I a king for an A? Well because it's an important question because there's two different answers as to how to approach

this if you're approaching it as what would I do with my magic wand versus what is politically palatable, because those are two completely different things. And I think it is important to note that New York City started this journey in 1971 as a result of air quality issues. And this has been on the table for, that's my entire life, my entire life in New York City has been trying to figure out how to advance this. It has been on the cusp of being advanced and then it's been cancelled by subsequent

governors. So in some ways maybe we're just at the very beginning of our journey, which is why it's so important to continue talking about it and building, I think, understanding of the potential positive impacts and the various ways that it can be structured. Would you be tolling the highways? Well, definitely. I actually... And the city? You know, no. So it's an interesting question. I really liked Maddie's proposal.

It changed my mind a little bit. But I do think we're a bit of a different beast and in particular with the continued regional sprawl, the vast majority of the congestion in the city right now is 905 drivers. It's not City of Toronto drivers, it's 905 drivers. We discovered this when we did the Young Next in North York study and we discovered that 75% of the drivers coming through the core of North York were coming from outside of the city. Most of the people who lived in the area were getting on transit. So that means you do, it is really a suburban problem and as the region continues to sprawl

under this government, it means it only gets worse and worse. But politically, Jennifer, how do you toll highways and not the actual city of Toronto itself, like the inner core of the city? Well, I think it's very tricky, but I do, you know, and there are places that have done it. Like I think Singapore's system is completely different than London's system,

and New York's system is really fascinating because they have like 1,400 points of entry where they take a photograph of your license plate 1,400 points of entry where they're actually where you where you can potentially get charged But then they do all kinds of other interesting things that are a result of years and years of negotiation For example, if you're low income, you only pay 50% of the toll. If you go over certain bridges, it

reduces the amount of the congestion relief charge because they want to try and redirect traffic to underutilized infrastructure. They're really using it to... And is that working? It's working. It's absolutely working. And residents are supporting it, importantly, politically. And they didn't support it before and they're supporting it now.

And so the question I think for us is, in some ways it's a very technical question you're asking about what should be told. And at this point in time, I'm not sure what the answer is to that question. I think there's a lot of technical work that needs to be undertaken. And it's sort of different, I would say, from what we were proposing probably, I think it was seven years ago now that we proposed this. I think my answer has changed. But I do think there's this balancing act of what is the system that will deliver the

best quality of life outcomes? And what is the system that will deliver the best quality of life outcomes? And what is the system that we can get past? That's the political question. And there's an interplay between those two things. And you have to ask that question in order to advance the solution. The other really critical thing that New York City has done, which is really something they've done over the past 10 years, is they very directly linked the revenue to improvements in transit. So one of the reasons it was cancelled in 2021, it came back in 2024, one of the reasons it came back was because they basically said, look, we

can't make any capital improvements to the subway system. The subway system is falling apart. So very different from 1971, where this was about air quality. It was now our subway system is crumbling without this revenue. And that was how they built political support for it. And in January, they took in $48 million. And they're well on their way to advancing really significant capital improvements in the transit system. So there's kind of this dance that takes place between what is the what is the best in a vacuum if I'm a

king what I would do versus what is going to be politically palatable to get a pilot in place because we know if we get a successful pilot in place, we can begin to build support and I do believe also amongst suburban drivers, you've got to get the pricing right as well. If the pricing is way too high, you're going to have a problem and if it's too low, it's also not going to work. So getting the pricing right and again, that's something that the technical people that Maddie works with are good at figuring out.

But you've got to get that sweet spot in terms of pricing right. One thing that never changes? The clock on this program. And it says we're out of time. That's Jennifer Kiesmaat, the former chief planner for the City of Toronto, now CEO, Collectiv Marquis. Also thanks to Teresa Di Felice from CAA, South Central Ontario, and Maddie Simiuticki from the University of Toronto.

Great to have you three here at our table at TVO tonight. Thank you.