Ontario needs more toll roads

Surveys show Ontarians aren’t keen on toll roads, but they should welcome construction of another 65 kilometres of pay-as-you-go highway in the Greater Toronto Area. Despite their unpopularity, tolls represent good policy.

That’s especially true for a $1.2-billion expansion of Hwy. 407 announced by the province this week, with a fixed-price contract for the project awarded to a consortium called the Blackbird Infrastructure Group.

Construction is expected to start this fall on a 23-kilometre section of toll route pushing work on Hwy. 407 eastward, from Harmony Rd. in Oshawa to Hwy. 35/115 in Clarington. There will also be a new 10-kilometre north-south route, just east of Oshawa, connecting the 407 and Hwy. 401.

Unlike the initial stretch of Hwy. 407, completed in 1997 and recklessly leased away by the government of then-premier Mike Harris, tolls generated on this section of the 407 will flow to the public purse. They’ll be used to fund infrastructure and transit projects across Ontario. That’s entirely as it should be.

Charging drivers a toll for using a major thoroughfare makes a lot of sense. Simply put, allowing “free” use of Ontario’s highways costs too much. It fuels gridlock, which saps the economy of billions of dollars each year in lost productivity, mainly through missed delivery deadlines and employee lateness.

Meanwhile, ever-longer commutes are robbing people of time they could be sharing with family or de-stressing after a strenuous work day. Loss of sleep and heightened aggravation weaken commuters’ health. And the environment is sickened, too, as cars idling in stop-and-go traffic pump clouds of greenhouses gases into the atmosphere.

Tolls can provide a welcome corrective by boosting the cost of highway driving — encouraging motorists to switch to public transit — and by raising money that could be used to fund more trains, subways, streetcars and buses.

It’s unfortunate that tolls aren’t being more broadly applied. A brave effort by Premier Kathleen Wynne to fund expansion of public transit through new “revenue tools” died amid steadfast public resistance. Among proposed approaches, few measures generated more hostility than the spectre of road tolls or “congestion fees.”

One factor in that intense opposition was the public’s bad experience with tolls on Hwy. 407. The Harris government squandered billions of dollars of future revenue by rashly leasing away the highway, for 99 years, to an international consortium.

The Conservative government boasted of earning $1.6 billion on the $3.1-billion deal. But, as reported by the Star’s Martin Regg Cohn, it was subsequently estimated that this holding was actually worth more than $12 billion.

Worse than that, the 407 consortium was able to jack up tolls dramatically, tripling them to the outrage of hard-pressed motorists. That money will flow into investors’ pockets — not public works — for just short of a century. No wonder people continue to be outraged.

The latest Hwy. 407 expansion is, at least, a change of direction from that earlier bad deal. The province will set and regulate tolls on this stretch of the highway; it will charge less than the 407 consortium, and resulting revenues will remain in public hands, to be spent for public purposes.

It will mark the second major provincially run expansion of Hwy. 407. Phase One involves building 32 kilometres of toll road, and construction is well underway on a stretch running from Brock Rd. in Pickering to Harmony Rd., where the next stage of work is set to start.

Drivers could be motoring on this newly completed section of provincial pay-as-you-go road by the end of this year.

Ontario would be well-served if there were more such highways easing gridlock and generating revenue. People may not like them, but we need additional toll roads.

New toll roads are great if the money generated flows back into public works