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Poll: Commuters willing to pay for reduced gridlock

Posted By: Justine Lewkowicz · 3/2/2013 8:17:00 AM

Another poll shows that many people around the GTA are willing to pay to reduce gridlock around the city, but there are different preferences on how to do that.

The Toronto Star reports that most people agree expanding transit is the way to fix congestion and 35 per cent prefer subways.

The Forum Research poll shows that 42 per cent would be willing to pay a 5-cent-per-kilometre toll on the Gardiner Expressway if the money went to a downtown relief line. Not surprisingly, that option was more popular among Torontonians than regional commuters who would be more likely to use the highway.

Sixty-six per cent said they would pay an extra 10 cents on their transit fare. Even half of those earning $20,000 or less a year would pay the extra fare.

Others said they would pay a "modest annual household fee." The Star reports that 38 per cent said they would pay between $10 and $50 a year, while 15 per cent said they would pay between $50 and $100 dollars a year.

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  1. talent scout posted on 03/02/2013 09:44 AM
    Time to layoff excess government workers and managers at TTC, city of Toronto and the Ontario and we will have a world class transportation system..We have just too many people working in government and too much taxes....Who are these people....? I question the polls when in fact Toronto is one of the most expensive cities to live in Canada next to Vancouver....The poll is a FRAUD.
  2. walter posted on 03/02/2013 12:51 PM
    The poll had a few other conclusions.

    1. People favour subways by a 2 to 1 margin over LRT.
    2. People do not understand how and where Metrolinx will spend the $2B per year they want to collect.

    So build more subways (start with elevating the Eglinton LRT over Scarborough and connecting it with the SRT), show where the various Metrolinx projects will go and how much they will cost, demonstrate that design and construction costs are reasonable - and then people may truly pay more.
    1. burly posted on 03/04/2013 09:47 AM
      @walter Psst - subways in the suburbs don't make money. It's why places like Paris are building LRTs in their own suburbs to connect to their metro lines. Currently the only project that deserves to be a subway is the Downtown Relief Line that'll serve the suburbs and core because there is immense density along the line.

      Subways are much too expensive to be built as a social project unless there is the ridership there. For example, the Bloor streetcar line in the 1950s had greater ridership than the Sheppard Subway line does today, which is why the Bloor line makes tons of money and Sheppard loses tens of millions of dollars. It's simple economics that right and left can, and should, agree on.

      I do, however, agree with the transparency part. If we're going to toll highways and increase costs, they should release a weekly or monthly report of revenues by stream as well as expenditures so that we know that some politician is removing money from the fund for something unrelated to transit.
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  3. proton posted on 03/02/2013 02:40 PM
    Here's a novel idea. How about reducing the grotesque waste of taxpayers' money before asking us to pay. These politicians don't have the guts to address waste because it's so much easier to keep taking more and more and more from the taxpayers rather than respecting their hard work and wasting less
    1. SteveB_10 posted on 03/04/2013 01:17 PM
      @proton Here is a thought, grotesque waste is a part of any economic system, so dealing with reality indicates waiting for the perfect world, wiil ensure your world becomes dystopian.
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