A drone view shows cars driving along Highway 403 near the CPKC Aberdeen Yard in Hamilton, Ont. on Aug. 19.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
The main contenders in the approaching British Columbia election have been skirmishing over, of all things, road tolls.
A couple of weeks ago, Premier David Eby, who hopes to get a fresh mandate for the province’s NDP government on Oct. 19, stood next to the massive, 10-lane Port Mann Bridge that spans the Fraser River. He was there to remind voters that the NDP removed the tolls on the bridge in 2017. The Premier claimed his opponent, John Rustad of the Conservatives, would bring them back. In 2017, after all, Mr. Rustad had said that removing the tolls was a “huge slap in the face” for B.C. taxpayers, who would have to pick up the tab for the cost of the bridge.
Mr. Rustad promptly fired back at Mr. Eby. The Conservatives, he said, were in fact firmly against road tolls, which he called “a regressive and punitive measure that burdens hard-working families and businesses.” The NDP, he went on, was telling “outright lies in a desperate attempt to mislead British Columbians.”
It was the kind of overwrought and empty exchange that is so typical of our current politics. Whatever the Premier might say, road tolls are just not a big issue in the B.C. election. In British Columbia, and most of the rest of Canada for that matter, neither parties of the left or the right support tolls. And that’s a pity.
Tolling puts at least part of the burden of paying for roads and bridges on the people who use them. Many cities already charge residents a pay-as-you-go fee for garbage pickup and water use. That encourages people to limit the amount of trash they create and water they consume, which helps protect the environment.
In the same way, tolling roads makes motorists think twice about how often they use their cars. Faced with a toll, they might consider another route or another transportation option, like public transit, if available. Greater Vancouver’s rapid-transit system, though far from perfect, has been expanding steadily.
Countries all over the world impose fees for using highways, bridges and tunnels. Tolling helps pay for the construction and maintenance of these expensive transportation projects, whose cost often runs into the billions. Just as important, they help control traffic congestion by putting a price on driving. Traffic on the Port Mann bridge surged after the NDP axed the tolls.
Road tolls are common in, among dozens of other places, France, Italy, China, Australia and many U.S. states. Cities from London and Singapore to Stockholm and Milan have gone a step further and imposed special congestion charges, billing motorists for entering busy central zones.
Yet here in Canada, tolling roads has become close to taboo. The Progressive Conservative government of Ontario Premier Doug Ford took tolls off two Toronto-area highways, the 412 and the 418, saying they were an unfair burden on hard-working ordinary people. This winter, to make its stand doubly clear, it promised to ban all new highway tolls. The tolls on one road, the highly successful 407 to Toronto’s north, much of which is privately owned, will be an exception.
A previous Ontario government, led by Liberal Kathleen Wynne, blocked a plan by the mayor of Toronto at the time, John Tory, to toll two major thoroughfares: the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway. That took away what would have been a steady stream of revenue for transit expansion and road work.
The federal government, for its part, decided not to go ahead with planned tolls on the new Champlain bridge in Montreal when it opened in 2019, forgoing an estimated $3-billion revenue over three decades.
Only a few dedicated road-pricing nerds now campaign for tolling and they have been largely drowned out in the rush by political parties to ingratiate themselves with motorists by allowing them to drive toll-free.
Both sides of the political divide have good reasons to support tolls. A mechanism that uses prices to influence consumer behaviour should be right in the wheelhouse for conservatives who believe in the power of the market. Putting an extra price on driving makes just as much sense for progressives who believe in promoting public transit, cycling and walking as a way of improving public health and fighting climate change.
That both sides now reject tolls shows how far they have surrendered to the politics of populism, in which parties fall over each other to throw party favours at the voter, principles be damned.
The same dynamic is at play in the crumbling support for the carbon tax, another vital weapon in the climate battle that both sides of the spectrum have reason to support.
A pity indeed.