The ongoing battle to manage Toronto’s traffic congestion woes is now taking on a long-teased promise to better manage construction projects, with a new fee structure aiming to cut down on the amount of time contractors occupy live lanes of traffic.
Every six months, the city’s transportation division updates its congestion management plan and this April’s iteration continues to build on areas in which it has seen success.
The plan includes the traffic warden program, which is steadily increasing the ranks of high-visibility staff ensuring intersections aren’t unnecessarily bogged down.
But going from the 22 agents currently deployed up to 60 by the summer will only do so much. City officials have their eye on a much bigger fish when it comes to keeping the city moving.
“The No. 1 cause of traffic on our roads is construction,” said Mayor Olivia Chow at news conference Wednesday.
A big part of the plan began at the start of April when the fee structure changed for what’s known as the Road Disruption Activity Reporting System, or RoDARS.
Get breaking National news
Previously, a contractor needed to pay a permit fee, but now they will be charged a daily fee calculated per metre they take up. The rate changes depend on whether it is an arterial route or not.
Chow pointed to a utility contractor that was charged less than $5,000 for the two lanes it took out of service on Lake Shore Boulevard for nearly a month. Under the new system, the mayor said that same contractor would be charged $280,000.
“The faster they do the work, the less they pay,” said Chow.
The plan has its detractors, including Michael Giles from the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, which represents residential builders.
Speaking at the city’s Infrastructure and Environment Committee, Giles warned the additional costs will be passed on to potential homebuyers and could add another chill to housing starts.
“While it may seem like a small amount, it’s simply another fee that’s being added onto the cost of building,” he warned.
Still, the head of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, which has been advocating for better traffic management for more than a year, said the ideas presented in the plan were a step in the right direction.
“I think we’ve seen some progress and that’s great, but we need to see a lot more,” said Giles Gherson, the board’s president and CEO.
The city’s director of traffic management, Roger Browne, said the new fee structure appears to be doing the trick in getting contractors to look closer at their timelines.
Browne said a utility company recently contacted the city, saying it had work requiring an eight-week-long lane closure, but when informed of the new fees, the company revised its plan and knocked it down by a week.
Previously, the city would try to negotiate the length of closures with contractors, often without the results they wanted.
“We really, in the past, weren’t left with any other kind of leverage or incentive. However, now with the RoDARS fees being introduced, we are starting to see a bit of a trend,” said Browne.
Barbara Gray, the city’s head of transportation services, added that the money the city raises from the fees will go towards covering traffic management.
This summer, the city will also be installing automated enforcement cameras to begin measuring other road-related infractions, like drivers who “block the box” at intersections. Issuing tickets still needs provincial approval, which the city has been lobbying for, so the cameras will only be gathering information.
Comments