Premier Kathleen Wynne’s decision to scuttle Toronto’s road toll proposal hasn’t just deprived the city of a revenue source to pay for its infrastructure needs; experts say it has also eliminated a key tool to fight congestion and may undermine the province’s own policy directives.

At a press conference Friday morning Wynne withdrew her support for the plan to charge drivers for using the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway.

Just two months earlier she had signalled she would support the regulatory changes requested by Mayor John Tory and council to make tolling the city-owned highways possible.

Instead, on Friday Wynne promised the Liberal government would double the funding that municipalities receive from the provincial gas tax by 2021.

Read more:

Tory challenges Wynne’s leadership after she rejects road tolls, but 905 leaders celebrate

How premier Kathleen Wynne betrayed Toronto mayor John Tory on road tolls: Cohn

City should reconsider things it undertakes given Province’s reluctance to support them: Keenan

Premier Wynne has slapped Toronto in the face by nixing road tolls: Editorial

For Toronto that would mean an extra $170 million a year.

The city was expecting between $160 million and $336 million in annual revenue from tolls, depending on the amount of the toll charged.

Toronto’s chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat said Wynne’s decision has robbed the city of a vital means to alleviate congestion, a problem that costs the city billions of dollars in lost productivity every year.

Keesmaat called Wynne’s announcement “disheartening.”

She argued that provincial and city plans to build more transit won’t succeed unless more people are induced to leave their cars, and road tolls would have played a key role in shifting people to other modes of travel.

“Tolls, of course, are a really good fit with our larger public policy objectives,” she said.

“Currently, for example, you pay every time you get on the TTC, but you don’t pay every time you get on the road.

“And yet we want more people using the TTC and less people getting in their cars.”

Keesmaat noted that the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the provincial land use policy for the region, directs municipalities to implement traffic management plans in order decrease the reliance on cars. The growth plan specifically lists road tolls as a traffic management tool.

According to Keesmaat, Wynne’s reversal on the issue “makes the province’s own policy statement seem like gobbledygook.”

She suggested that Toronto should consider taking the province to the Ontario Municipal Board for violating the Growth Plan, although she conceded that she wasn’t certain such a move was possible.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Asked about Keesmaat’s criticism, a spokesperson for Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said Friday’s announcement “aligns closely with our government’s policy priorities, which include investing in transit and transportation across the province through our $31.5-billion Moving Ontario Forward plan, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and tackling gridlock.”

The spokesperson said that doubling the gas tax revenue would provide “significantly more stable and reliable funding” that cities can use to improve public transit: “We are taking real action that will make it easier and quicker for you to get to work or to school, and get back home again safely to your loved ones.”

Lindsay Wiginton, a transportation analyst for the Pembina Institute, stressed that the premier isn’t proposing to raise the gas tax, but merely to direct more of its proceeds to municipalities.

That means that drivers won’t be paying more than they already are, and so the new arrangement won’t provide an incentive for them to switch to other transportation modes.

Wiginton argued that undermines the province’s plans to expand public transit.

“The two things go hand in hand. It’s providing disincentive to driving, and incentive or new options for alternative modes of transportation,” she said.

A 2015 Pembina report found that, in conjunction with transit improvements, road tolls on the Gardiner and DVP could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 700,000 kg. a day by 2025.

Murtaza Haider, an associate professor at Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management, agreed that Toronto will eventually need some form of road pricing to ease gridlock.

But he argued that Wynne was correct to put the brakes on Toronto’s toll plan because drivers currently have few reliable alternatives to using their cars.

According to a city staff report, tolls could have been implemented within three to seven years, while major planned transit projects, such as GO Regional Express Rail and the relief subway line, aren’t projected to be completed for at least seven and 14 years, respectively.

“Look, we can’t put the cart before horse,” Haider said.

“If you want to do tolls — and tolls are the right thing to do — you have to build public transit in advance.”

Read more about: