Advocating Environmentally, Socially & Economically Sustainable Transportation

Ontario's Minister of Transportation, the Hon. Tony Clement, proudly announced in his 1998/99 Business Plan, "This year's funding provides the largest highway capital budget in the ministry's history." Therein lies our province's big problem.

Since the 1950's, successive provincial governments have been expanding Ontario's highway system. As the system expanded, so did its costs. As more roads were built, more were needed. "Build it and they will come," is the adage, and come they did, in droves.

Coupled with the increase in highway spending has come the downward spiral of the sustainable modes of urban and suburban transit and intercity bus and rail. The recent downloading of transit funding onto the municipalities, and the planned deregulation of intercity bus service is the predictable culmination of years of neglect. Reduce funding and service is reduced and fares raised. As service goes down, and fares go up, riders desert transit for cars, so service is reduced, and on it goes.

For an economy to flourish, it must have the support of a sound, balanced transportation system.

The need is particularly acute considering the forecasted growth of car and light truck registrations. - 5 1/2 million in 1989 to a projected 6 1/2 million in 2005. Where will we put all these vehicles? How many more highways can we build without depleting our public budget and inviting grave environmental consequences?

An unbalanced transportation system with its overdependence on the private mode makes no environmental sense. The health impact of toxic emissions from tailpipes and the ecological impact of runoff from highways is well known. Equally well-known is Canada's commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels during the 2008-2012 commitment period. (Since transportation, the single largest source of these emissions, is projected to grow faster than any other sector, that goal will be very difficult to meet. )

• According to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, the indirect costs of motor vehicle injuries and fatalities (hospital stays, ambulance, insurance, policing, etc.) in our province in one year is $9 billion.
• The taxpayer subsidizes the car owner to the tune of $2000 annually.
• The Canadian Automobile Association has estimated that the cost of owning a late model car can be upwards of $8600 a year.
• One fully loaded tractor trailer can cause as much damage to the road surface as 29,900 cars.
• The approximate cost of a typical highway interchange in Ontario is $14 million; one freeway cloverleaf intersection costs $90 million. To purchase one GO train including the locomotive, cab car and 9 coaches costs about $16 million.
• The widely-held opinion that road building produces economic benefits is now suspect. A World Bank study on 37 cities around the world indicated that cities with significant sustainable transportation systems are more economically efficient than those that build freeways and promote sprawl.

• In 1998 The U.K. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions issued a White Paper on Integrated Transport. Among its many proposals was the creation of a Strategic Rail Authority to encourage a shift of freight to rail, the design of an integrated transport policy, better land use planning to support more sustainable travel choices. To support the new policy direction, an extra 1.8 billion pounds will be made available for local transport, bus services, road maintenance and railways. Related legislation is the Road Traffic Reduction Act, 1997 and the Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Act, 1998.
• Very high-speed trains are operating in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan. High-speed trains are under construction in Britain, the U.S., Australia, Korea, Sweden, and Taiwan. Tilting trains which have the potential for higher speeds are in operation in Germany, Finland, Switzerland and Spain.
• Paris opened a state-of-the-art, automated subway line on October 15, 1998.
• A 1998 change in U.S. Internal Revenue Code 132f4 allows for various tax incentives for employee use of public transit including a tax-free transit pass.

• Curitiba, Brazil has become a legend as a city planned around an inexpensive, bus-based

public transit system. It has one of the lowest rates of ambient air pollution in the country and a healthy, expanding economy.

• Barely over 3 years old, the West Coast Express commuter rail service in the Vancouver area reported its 5 millionth passenger recently.
• Ottawa and Portland, Oregon have developed planning policies that require building "in, not out" in order to increase transit-supportive population density and curb the growth of urban sprawl.
• Quebec has established the Agence metropolitaine de transport. Its mandate is to promote, support and coordinate public transport in the Montreal region.
• Quebec has also reduced the tax burden on rail with a refundable tax credit equal to 75 per cent of its right-of-way property tax.
• San Francisco closed the Embarcadero Expressway. No extra congestion was experienced on the remaining roads in the area. This outcome has been replicated in other cities.

• The Ministry of the Environment's "Drive Clean" campaign. Cleaner cars and trucks will not reduce total emissions since the growth in the vehicle fleet will more than wipe out any gains.
• Highway safety programs such as drunk-driving legislation, seatbelt legislation, graduated drivers' licenses, more police patrolling the roads, etc. These are laudable efforts. However, the carnage continues because of the growth in car and truck use. The latest annual figures quoted by the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police from data of the Ministry of Transportation are a shocker: 215,000 collisions across Ontario, resulting in almost 90,000 injuries and 1,000 deaths - one person is killed in a traffic crash every nine hours.
• The "what's the use" attitude. People love to drive and it is futile to lure them on to rail, bus and transit. Cars are convenient and public transit is inconvenient because governments have built a taxpayer-funded infrastructure (roads, parking lots) that support the car culture while at the same time, withdrawing support for transit and intercity rail.
• Travel by train, bus and transit is declining and the increasing subsidies required are not sound fiscally. Feed private transportation and starve public transportation. Guess which one will decline.
• It is impossible to provide public transit and rail to sprawling suburbs. Roads are the only option. True. First come roads, then come subdivisions along those roads, then comes sprawl. Then come traffic jams, then come more roads, more subdivisions, more sprawl....... Sprawl is the enemy of transit-supportive land use planning.

Subsidies. Most forms of transportation are subsidized. Roads are built and maintained by taxpayers' dollars. Free and cheap parking spaces are subsidized. The healthcare costs from motor vehicle pollution and crashes constitute an indirect subsidy to road users. The problem is not that transportation is subsidized, but that unsustainable transportation is subsidized.

Last year the province ended funding for all urban transit and downloaded the maintenance of many highways onto the municipalities. As a result, the cities are burdened with costs they cannot meet through their limited sources of revenue. Subsidies should be rebalanced in favour of sustainable transportation in the following 3 ways:

Task Force on Sustainable Transportation. The government of Ontario should establish a inter-ministry task force headed by the Minister of Transportation. The task force should include other stakeholder ministries such as: Environment, Natural Resources, Municipal Affairs, Finance, Health, Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and Economic Development, Trade and Tourism. It should also include senior staff from Transport Canada, Fisheries and Oceans (Canada) and Natural Resources (Canada). Three NGO's such as Pollution Probe, Transport 2000 and the Sierra Club could act in an advisory capacity and be allotted a budget. The mandate of the group should be to design an overall modern transportation network with seamless sustainable transportation as its mandate. It should be backed by enforceable legislation and have a realistic budget. It should be given specific targets and timetables. Its primary goal should be to effect, in stages, a modal shift that would rebalance the use of sustainable and unsustainable transportation modes on a 50/50 basis.

Intercity Bus. Transport 2000 Ontario is not opposed to the planned deregulation of the industry provided the Ontario government commission a study by an independent transportation research organization into the concept that all communities having a population of 3,000 or more require at least daily bus service connecting to larger centers, subsidized as necessary.

VIA Rail. The Ontario government should press Transport Canada to draft a Passenger Train Service Act which would ensure stable funding for passenger rail in Canada.

Route Banking. The Ontario government should develop a system for banking most abandoned rail corridors for use in the future when the transportation climate is more favourable to sustainable modes. A route banking system would exempt railway rights-of-way from property taxation in exchange for which rail companies would be required to deed many abandoned corridors to a provincial trustee.

Land Management. The Ontario government should amend the Planning Act to require sustainable land use planning in all municipalities. It should require that all municipal official plans adhere to the principles of compact, mixed use development and the preservation of agricultural and ecologically sensitive areas.

Full Cost Pricing of Development. Infrastructure and services for low-density housing is considerably more expensive than medium or high-density development. Sewer lines have to be longer, garbage removal and other services must travel further, new schools, hospitals, etc., must be built. Yet the costs are averaged across a whole region, a fact that constitutes a subsidy by dense neighborhoods to less efficient urban forms. To correct this distortion, and encourage transit-supportive development, the Ontario government should implement across the province a system of cost-based development charges or user fees.

Trucking Industry. The Ontario government, the other provinces, and all NAFTA partners should draft uniform standards for trucks and their drivers. The recent "race to the bottom" in standards must be stopped or highway chaos will result. The current federal U.S. requirement of 80,000 pounds in weight and a maximum of 10 driving hours in a 24 hour period will result in safer travel both for trucks and for the cars with which they share the road.

Greater Toronto Area. The GTA Services Board should be given a mandate by legislation to design a seamless transportation system based on bus, rail and LRT technology. It should serve existing population nodes and not promote urban sprawl by offering service to sparse developments.

Natalie Litwin, Director

43 English Ivyway, Toronto, M2H 3M3

tel: (416) 498-0612; fax: (416) 498-9189; e-mail: nataliel@pathcom.com.