The Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel issued its recommendations on December 12. I have written a short review of them for the Torontoist, and will add more extensive comments here in coming days.
Steve Munro
Transit & Politics
The Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel issued its recommendations on December 12. I have written a short review of them for the Torontoist, and will add more extensive comments here in coming days.
Steve Munro 
I think the question is pretty straight forward: does the government want to build a modern transit network or not?
I think that given the history over the past few decades the answer is pretty straight forward too – no they do not.
At the end of the day, Ontario will always do what it does best – fund endless transit studies and consultants while keeping the actual construction to a minimum.
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I found myself wondering why the Transit Panel came up with two options (A & B … one without HST, one with). Now I know the interesting reason why … politics. Of course the whole story behind the Transit Panel (and Metrolinx itself) was that we would get independent, professional recommendations. Too bad the decision making is still left to politicians whose primary focus is their poll position.
Back to the Transit Panel and their ‘expert’ recommendations … Personally I am more supportive of option B because reliance on fuel taxes is not an effective strategy over the long term. There is enough evidence from the US and Canada to show a long term decline in vehicle miles/km traveled, and cars are getting more efficient at using fuel with lighter materials, newer engines (hybrid and direct injection technologies) and transmissions (CVT, 6 speed and hybrid transmissions are becoming more common on vehicles and 4 speed automatic transmissions are being phased out).
Moreover, drivers currently waste 20-35% of their trip time idling … meaning a corresponding waste of fuel (unless they turn off the vehicle when waiting more than 10 seconds). Stop – start technology will become more common over the next decade, further reducing fuel wastage (and fuel usage … and tax revenues).
I think that the panel should have looked at road tolls or HOT Lanes and the parking levy since these can be implemented more easily than suggested … especially if judiciously planned … and lead to more efficient use of space.
Finally I think that an expansion of GO Bus and rail service is obviously necessary for the GTHA … Ideally GO Transit could offer long – distance limited stop bus services along corridors (like Dundas) until the Big Move projects are built and the local agency can take over.
I had hoped that we would see major changes to public transit since 2006 but all I’m seeing is capital investment for projects that predate Metrolinx. The transformation that the GTHA needs (and Metrolinx appears to promise through the Big Move) is just not happening.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: The panel did not dismiss tolls, they merely said “later”. The concern is that tolls would fall only on those using the tolled roads and traffic would shift causing even worse congestion elsewhere. Also, tolls are generally implemented on new roads, not retrofitted to existing ones. As to the decline in gas consumption and hence tax revenue, this too was acknowledged. In the short term, the growth in population and the number of cars will offset any decline through reduced usage and improved fuel mileage.
The panel was not empowered to redraw the Metrolinx network, and if it had done so, this would have launched a massive debate that would distract from the basic requirement of getting new revenue. They confined their recommendations to an example of how a subset of the Next Wave, an already approved set of projects, could be funded and built on an accelerated timeline. This has not been stressed enough in their publicity — all of the routes in their list would be completed by 2027 including the DRL, and that’s a faster pace than Metrolinx would have undertaken.
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I was worried when they started talking about the Big U and Little U because it suggested that they were leaning in that direction of questioning the Big Move … which many people seem to want to do these days.
Steve: They quickly backed away from that because once you start changing one part of the net, you open up the whole thing, and proceed to do exactly what they recommended against: drawing a map without proper analysis.
I’m concerned that their publicity is not as strong it could be. Further, there is a lot of different information coming out … a few media outlets are still using the $50 billion figure rather than the $34 billion for the Next Wave projects. I’ve also noticed some media outlets implying that the Transit Panel wants up to $0.10 increase in gas tax *plus* the 0.5% increase in the HST … When clearly that is not what the Panel reported.
Steve: Yes, I fear that the balance in the message is not what it might have been. Some of the media at the press briefing were as thick as a brick asking the same question (with erroneous assumptions) over and over, while others got it right away. Apparently a lot of the out of town press are still pushing the line about how taxes in the hinterlands will pay for Toronto’s transit. That’s another example of poor messaging because the amount of new money available for the “outside GTHA” area was not pushed strongly enough (approximately $1.5 billion annually).
I realize that road tolls and parking levies are more complicated to implement but I hope that they will be introduced in the future to fund the added cost of transit development (as the $2 billion per year won’t be enough) and replace revenue potentially lost as people drive less.
Steve: The intent is that road tolls would come in at a future date when they are more palatable, especially after or as a way to fund major improvements in GO capacity.
Debt financing is also something that they mentioned as a source of revenue. I hope that this would only be used to raise money so more projects can be completed sooner.
An accelerated timeline would be great to have…especially since the previous premier managed to delay construction of projects that were pretty much shovel-ready.
Steve: Yes, that is the intention. The debt would be paid down quickly, not held on the books with a dribble of repayment each year. There are tables at the end of the report showing how this works, and I have asked for a detailed project level breakdown to show how it all would fit together.
It will be really interesting to see if the government is able to have a set of concrete proposals and something under construction by this Spring … because otherwise there is a very good chance they won’t make it past the Spring budget vote.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: No there won’t be anything from the Next Wave under construction that fast. That’s the purpose behind the first two years of “kick start” money for the municipal systems so that they can make some improvements to local services while the work on the Next Wave projects ramps up.
Anyone who thinks they are going to see lots of shiny new projects before we start to pay for them is dreaming, or is possibly named “Ford”.
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Personally I am against the 10 cent gas tax. The provincial government already makes a killing off gas taxes that we have now – for every $1.00 people pay for gasoline, Queen’s Park receives 22.7 cents in taxes (14.7% provincial fuel tax, and 8% from their share of the HST), and the province wants to raise the taxes on gas again?
A lot of people relay on their cars to get around because they have to. Queen’s Park should stop wasting money on endless reports, and the other areas it ‘wastes’ money, and move some of the money they already collect in ‘gas taxes’ and put them into Transit.
I would support an slight increase in gas taxes, maybe a couple of cents, but not 10 cents. It’s simply not the best option.
Toll roads, making people pay for the choice of route they choose, is better in my opinion – especially the Gardiner/QEW where people have a good alternative to driving – i.e. GO Transit’s Lakeshore Line.
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Raising my taxes now in exchange for a promise to build transit later, which may not directly benefit me depending on where I live, isn’t much of a deal.
I would prefer they take on a certain amount of debt to build a project, then raise taxes to pay off those project bonds once construction has begun. The taxes would expire when the bonds are paid off.
Anything else requires us to trust the consistency of politicians. A smart Ontarian, who has been reading the news over the past few years, would not do that.
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TorontoStreetcars wrote:
To play devil’s advocate (i.e.: pointing out a weakness in this argument so that it can be fixed to eliminate something minor that someone could use to flush the rest of the argument down the toilet), Queen’s Park receives about 18.85 cents per $1.00 in gasoline purchases, based on the $1.252 per litre price today. Still a hefty amount, but not 22.7 cents.
First, Queen’s Park receives the 8% part of the HST, but when one pays a total of $1.00 for gasoline, that includes the HST, so the $1.00 represents 113/100 of the cost of the gasoline. That makes their share of the HST only 7.1 cents out of that dollar.
Second, Queen’s Park receives a fixed 14.7 cents per litre in their excise tax, not a percentage. Since the $1.00 represents about 0.789 of a litre, the tax collected is about 11.75 cents.
Steve: And that fixed per litre excise tax has not changed for two decades.
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General HST increase, property tax increase, or income tax increase, or corporate tax increase that are designated for transit are the only ones I’m supporting.
This is community infrastructure and it should be paid for by everyone.
Maybe Metrolinx and others think they have a better chance of passing a tax increase if they target a specific group like drivers or employers whose employees drive, but I’m definitely opposed to such taxes.
People would take transit if it is a viable alternative. Even rich bankers and lawyers take the subway to their job in downtown because it really is ‘the better way’.
Meanwhile, someone in Rexdale might take their car do a warehouse job in Brampton.
Even after all the transit is built, there will be people whose work won’t be on the transit line and they will drive.
But I suppose, they had a very expensive committee to write a report to scheme away instead of using the age old tested way of raising general taxes and using debt to finance long term infrastructure.
Steve: You may have missed it, but the committee recommends using debt, but issued and paid down fairly quickly, in order to accelerate construction of projects rather than waiting for the long drip drip drip of annual revenue to fund pay-as-you-play, or debt that lasts forever.
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