/
1x
Advertisement
Proudly Canadian, obsessively Toronto. Subscribe to Toronto Life!
City News

What smart, innovative cities are doing to combat gridlock (Toronto not included)

By John Michael McGrath
Copy link
A vanishingly rare occurrence (Image: Half my Dad's age from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)
A vanishingly rare occurrence (Image: Half my Dad’s age from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)

Believe it or not, Toronto isn’t the only city dealing with traffic congestion (paging Los Angeles). Big or small, old or new, cities around the globe are afflicted with the same issue: too many cars and too little road. Earlier this week, the Globe and Mail explored some of the more interesting and inventive ways that other cities—including Singapore, Zurich and Bogota—are dealing with their respective traffic problems. Unfortunately, most of the ideas the nation’s newspaper looked at are non-starters in Rob Ford’s Toronto.

From the Globe:

Around the world, cities have implemented extreme solutions to their congestion woes, from taxes to tolls to cable cars that soar above the vehicle-clogged streets. “I think a lot of the measures are built on the very real assumption that there’s no more room to build new stuff,” says Tom Vanderbilt, author of the bestseller Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. “So if you can’t add capacity, how do you manage the demand?”

Many of these solutions will eventually become standard practice for large municipalities around the world, he believes. There was a time in New York, Mr. Vanderbilt points out, when paying for on-street parking was considered untenable. “Now it’s just considered the norm,” he said. “I think a lot of these things, the longer the policy is there, the more it will be accepted.”

As Vanderbilt hints, many of the proposed solutions to traffic congestion can be summed up under the umbrella of “drivers paying more.” Whether its taxes, parking fees, licence fees (Singapore charges the equivalent of $48,000 just to get permission to own a car) or removing on-street parking spots (which are a huge hassle for traffic engineers). These are all interesting examples, but it’s a fair question whether any of them will be coming to Toronto anytime soon. Mayor Rob Ford has explicitly ruled out some of them and, given the current political climate, others are likely non-starters. But no worries—that Sheppard subway extension is coming right along, right?

Cities get creative with solutions for traffic congestion woes [Globe and Mail]

NEVER MISS A TORONTO LIFE STORY

Sign up for This City, our free newsletter about everything that matters right now in Toronto politics, sports, business, culture, society and more.

By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.
You may unsubscribe at any time.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Big Stories

Trump's Loss, Toronto's Gain: Meet the artists, professors, scientists and other luminaries ditching the US and moving north
Deep Dives

Trump’s Loss, Toronto’s Gain: Meet the artists, professors, scientists and other luminaries ditching the US and moving north

Inside the Latest Issue

The May issue of Toronto Life features the artists, professors, scientists and other luminaries moving north to avoid the carnage of Trump. Plus, our obsessive coverage of everything that matters now in the city.