The Star is partnering with the School of Cities at the University of Toronto to offer up some big ideas during the run-up to this month’s municipal election. Affiliated faculty at the school have taken on some of the city’s thorniest problems and the Star has presented their solutions to the two main contenders running to be mayor. In the first edition, the case for congestion pricing.
Would you pay $9 to drive downtown?
That’s what U of T researchers Marianne Hatzopoulou and Steven Farber, along with Toronto’s first “Bicycle Mayor” Lanrick Bennett Jr., are proposing as a way to curb the city’s traffic woes.
Congestion pricing, when drivers have to pay a toll to get into the city’s downtown core, could reduce traffic and meaningfully push more drivers onto other modes of transit, the experts say.
But what would it look like?
Success in other cities
Congestion pricing has become a widely used tool across the world. Some of the world’s largest and most congested cities have used it to tackle their gridlocked streets.
Traffic in London decreased by 30 per cent and average speeds rose by five kilometres an hour. Bus ridership in Singapore was boosted by eight per cent. Most recently, in New York, transit ridership was boosted by seven per cent and their congestion levy pulled in $550 million for the state government, according to the School of Cities.
In Toronto, Hatzopoulou, Bennett Jr. and Farber paint a picture of what a congestion charge might look like here.
With a congestion zone of St. Clair Avenue to the north, the Humber River to the west and the Don River to the east — and of charge of $9 to enter that area — the city could rake in an estimated $500 million. That’s without taking into consideration things like dynamic pricing, where prices would go up or down depending on the time of day. There would also need to be some exceptions for lower-income drivers, and a commensurate improvement in the TTC to ferry more riders, the experts note.
What are the benefits?
A congestion price would have two benefits, explained Farber — a human geography professor at U of T. First, discouraging drivers from entering the city and second, collecting revenue that could then be spent on improving public transit.
“The evidence around congestion charging is really clear,” Farber said. “It’s essentially one of the only things that we can do that actually helps bring down congestion levels in dense urban environments like downtown Toronto.”
Toronto isn’t going to be building new highways or tearing down buildings to put in more roads that cut through the middle of the city, Farber said, “Therefore, our only real policy levers are to curb the demand for car use.”
There’s one elephant in the room for any kind of congestion price: the provincial government. As part of its 2025 Bill 24, the province removed the city’s power to toll highways. That means the city would need to negotiate with the province to get approval for any kind of congestion charge in Toronto.
What do the candidates think?
Olivia Chow’s team: As mayor, Olivia Chow appointed “the Toronto’s first Chief Congestion Officer, hiring more than 100 traffic agents, expanding smart signals, shortening road closures and advancing a co-ordinated congestion action plan. She plans to keep TTC fares frozen, introduce a 10 ride per week fare cap, and invest in better service to get people to take transit. Further, the City of Toronto does not have the power to enact this levy, and the province has been clear it would not provide any such powers.”
Brad Bradford’s team: “Brad’s focus is on the levers the City actually controls: construction co-ordination with one person accountable to the Mayor, published timelines and real consequences for projects that linger, traffic agents at the intersections that matter, transit lane enforcement, and a TTC reliable enough that people choose it, starting with a 15-minute service guarantee.”
