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Gurney:

Well, probably not if you put it to them like that. Especially if they were already in a bad mood because their 20-minute trip into work had just inexplicably taken an hour due to a light drizzle. But I do indeed believe that if you were able to convince people that if road tolls would go directly and transparently into improving transit, you’d find some support. Back in the campaign, I had serious reservations about Sarah Thomson’s toll plan, which would have dinged people $5 to use the Don Valley Parkway or the Gardiner. It seemed to me that people would just clog the other surface routes. But if you applied a congestion charge or some form of electronic tolling system, and then very publicly and visibly poured the money into subways and other transit, it could fly. I’d go for it, and I think a lot of my fellow commuters would, too.

Goldsbie:

If anyone could sell skeptical suburbanites on a road usage charge, it would be Rob Ford. But he won’t. This is the man who reversed his position on the plastic bag levy after hearing from a handful of holiday shoppers. Of course, he also premises his Sheppard subway obsession on similar one-on-one feedback. But, goddamnit, he promised he would complete the project without public money, and he will sure as hell try, even if it can’t be done. He’s already listing the line as among the accomplishments of his first six months: “We said we were gonna build subways,” he proclaimed at Council. “We did that.” The confused merger of past, present, and future is easier to accept once you understand that he is accustomed to reality bending and reshaping itself around his will, like a bullet in The Matrix. He doesn’t deal well with choices, especially those of a binary nature: Lower taxes