General Road and Highway Discussion

[ijmorlan]

GRT needs to pay its capital as well as operating costs so any shortfall must be covered by the subsidy.  There are no other funding mechanisms other than subsidies and fares.  (ION has additional subsidies but that's a whole different kettle of fish.)

In any case, the comparison is far too simplistic.  Too many assumptions about costs, and it doesn't consider the fact that cars provide both local and distance transportation whereas GRT is local only.  A serious comparison would take some significant work, though.

And the fact that with the climate we have, you can't expect that everyone to spend time waiting for a bus or LRT in -10 or -20.

Just a disclaimer: I'd actually prefer a properly implemented public transportation over cars.  Clearly 1 person per car with hundreds of thousands of car on a highway is environmentally bad, not to mention very expensive infrastructure. But we also have to be practical and realize that given where we are today with respect to our public transportation system and that we have climate that is not favourable to using public transportation, we have to accept that most people will continue to prefer cars except for places like Toronto and Montreal.  I am personally looking forward to electric cars maturing, getting cheaper, having higher range, charging faster, etc.  That'll be a big part of the future to get rid of fossil fuel.

I’m going to try to avoid getting deep into this again, but let me just say that I would like to see an entirely self-funding superhighway network. That is, all superhighways in the province would be operated like the 407 (except without the Harris giveaway to private owners). I’d probably be OK with the system being operated on a non-profit basis, i.e., any profit in a given year would be banked and stay within the system to fund future expansion, repair, or lower tolls, rather than contributing to government revenues in general. We could have a robust debate on whether it’s OK for toll profits to fund transit construction.

The point, however, would be to make the choice of whether and when to use the highway a true economic decision based on the cost, rather than the way it works now, where using the highway is free to the user. Simple economics says that this would almost certainly lead to a significant change in the amount and timing of the use of the highways, and would allow people to choose for themselves whether to spend their money on highways or on other goods.