Less than a month after New York City kicked off its congestion pricing plan, roads are already clearer. The first week saw a 7.5 per cent drop in traffic representing 43,800 fewer vehicles per day, along with an uptick in subway ridership.
While experts say major cities in Canada could similarly benefit from road pricing, political pushback has so far prevented all attempts from reaching the finish line.
Toronto and Vancouver have considered congestion pricing plans, where drivers are charged a fee to use roads in high traffic areas to reduce traffic. But both were abandoned, even though it’s “empirically clear” congestion pricing reduces traffic — and therefore emissions — according to Nate Wallace, clean transportation program manager with Environmental Defence.
“It's an evidence-based solution that actually works, but it has a difficulty in creating the political and public will for it,” Wallace said, “particularly in the context of rising costs of living.”
In 2017, Toronto city council approved a congestion pricing plan that would charge tolls on city-owned highways, but the Liberal government of the day nixed the proposal. Then-Premier Kathleen Wynne promised instead to double the size of the city’s transit funding program, which collects money from the gasoline tax. That plan, too, was quashed when Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives came into power the following year.
Vancouver’s chance at congestion pricing suffered the same fate. After years of studying how it could reduce gridlock and boost the economy while raising money to fund public transit (up to $1.6 billion per year, one report found), council voted to stop looking into it in 2022 after Ken Sim was elected mayor.
However, New York City’s plan — the first in the United States — also met with fierce opposition. The city’s congestion pricing model, which charges drivers $9 during peak hours and $2.50 off-peak to enter Manhattan, faced a last minute court case and was trimmed from the original toll of $15 after public complaints. Now that Donald Trump is president, the New Jersey governor has asked him to intervene and “reexamine” the city’s plan.
To sell congestion pricing in a major Canadian city, the benefits to drivers would need to be clearly communicated, Wallace said. People would have to be convinced that alternatives, such as widening highways, inevitably makes traffic worse in the long run. It would also have to be clear that money collected from congestion pricing is funnelled back into public transportation to make travelling into dense areas quicker and cheaper for commuters.
Congestion pricing is an easier argument to make in cities with strong transit ridership to begin with. In New York City, about 85 per cent of people were already travelling into the tolled area by public transportation, whereas in Toronto, only 23 per cent currently rely on public transport.
“Congestion pricing is pretty unpopular at the beginning, but once people actually experience its effects, the popular support rises significantly — and that's basically happened in every jurisdiction that it's been implemented, whether you're looking at London or Stockholm,” Wallace said.
“But the thing is, it's tough to get over that initial hurdle unless you already have a significant amount of people … who aren't driving. Which to me says, we really need to focus on growing that share of people who don't drive.”
The transportation sector makes up 31 per cent of Canada’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, so getting people out of cars and onto public transport is key to slashing emissions, and would bolster the case for congestion pricing, Wallace said. A 2024 study by Environmental Defence and Équiterre laid out how Canada can double public transit ridership by 2035, reducing GHGs by the equivalent of the annual emissions from 20 million cars.
The cost of sitting in traffic
Sitting in traffic is bad for the environment and takes an economic toll on individuals and cities. A report from the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis found congestion cost the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area nearly $13 billion in 2024, which shows how “the impacts are radiating all throughout our economy and our society,” said Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto.
“There's the cost of lost productivity and the cost of sitting stuck in traffic. There's the cost of goods and services that are all more expensive because of congestion, because it's taking longer for things to get delivered,” he said.
“When someone's coming to your house to fix the tap…that's costing more because they have to get to your place. And they can do less … in a day because they're stuck in traffic. Then there's just the frustration of this and the unpredictability.”
The invisibility of those impacts contrasted with the very visible nature of tolls makes it hard for people to grasp the concept of a congestion charge, said Siemiatycki. However, international examples chart a hopeful path. In Stockholm, up to 70 per cent of people were initially against the city’s 2007 congestion pricing pilot project, but the program stuck, traffic dropped by about 25 per cent, and investments have funneled into the city’s public transportation system.
There isn’t one way a congestion pricing system should or could work in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. New York’s model has a pricing system affecting a specific area of the city, but another option is to toll specific highways, Siemiatycki said. The latter would likely make the most sense in Toronto, specifically, “an integrated road tolling” on the most congested highways: the Don Valley Parkway; The Gardiner Expressway; the 427 and the 401.
Importantly, any congestion pricing model can’t “be about roads for the rich or ‘Lexus lines,’” said Siemiatycki. Road congestion alleviation measures must be paired with bolstering public transit and encouraging carpooling, he said. There are other, complex ways to address equity concerns, which is why all congestion pricing models require years of study and planning, he added, while stressing that the investment is worth it.
“It works,” Siemiatycki said. “It's supply and demand. When something is underpriced, it tends to have the impact of it being overused. And that's what congestion is.”
Comments
Excellent article. Thanks. Obviously congestion pricing works. Focusing on the political struggle, as this article does, and pointing out who is pushing back on these GHG reduction strategies is important. Increasingly we're seeing the climate struggle shifting to municipalities, where the rubber hits the road.
The comment in this article about the political response to congestion pricing - ie the fear of politicians to introduce anything that might dissatisfy voters - is so valid. This is why the "carbon tax" will likely be discontinued, as another example. But, behind voters' preferences is the rarely-covered subject of our entitlement. To put it simply, we have become acclimatized to a high standard of living and we want more and more: we definitely revolt at anything that might detract from our artificially-high standard of living relative to elsewhere on this planet or even within our own country. We believe that we earned this standard of living/quality of life regardless of others' plight - this is entitlement manifesting. Some would argue that, if the human species is to avoid the unfolding existential crisis, the standards of living must equalize, which will mean those with the highest standard of living accepting less. The how to achieve this is debatable. Our current trajectory is unsustainable, as the environmental feedback is showing us, and I believe that this concept of less must be socialized now and loudly.
Couldn't agree more. If we can afford to drive a car into the centres of our increasingly congested cities, we should be willing to pay for the privilege. It's not just the rapaciousness of our entitlement.........its the invisibility of our penny pinching selfishness that has to be called out.
Still, so far, its the billionaires like Musk who seem to be calling the shots; the anti-union scabs like Amazon who seem to be getting the free ride. Self conscious citizens would be in the process of boycotting both...but I'll not be holding my breath.
Hard to believe we still can't get our acts together and see how pricing pollution in all its forms is going to result in net benefit for all. The car culture has grown exponentially in the last few years, as public transit hasn't kept up with expanding cities. Taxing those who wish to continue private transportation, putting that money into expanding public transportation could be a win for all of us.
Unfortunately, money still talks and the inconvenience suffered by those who don't have that kind of 'free speech' remains invisible. CO2 emissions are invisible as well....initially, but their growing cost is changing the quality of life for all of us.
Time to move faster on real solutions; time also to stop voting as if we were billionaires. Those few have 175 times the carbon footprint of the lowest earners among us. Why shouldn't we all pay for the luxuries we take for granted???
Congestion pricing differentially impacts people with different incomes. The rich don't care while people on low incomes get stretched. The congestion price should be exponentially keyed to income, so it bites for everyone in the same way.
We're working on fare-free transit here in Thunder Bay and to show City Council what the $3 cash bus fare means to people on ODSP, we calculated the proportional fare the president of the university would need to pay - about $70.
(https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/action-highlights-unequal-impact…)
So, yes, congestion pricing and heavy investment in public transit would be good, but we've got an inequality crisis in this country that needs to be addressed or we'll never raise support for climate actions.
Raise taxes on those who have more than enough, build fantastic bike lanes and public transit, put in traffic calming measures, then consider congestion pricing keyed to income.