Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[ijmorlan]

I would support occupant-based tolling for passenger cars on the 401 (three and it's free, or something like that), and wear-based for transports. That would likely reduce the number of cars substantially (and improve our CO2 emissions while we are at it) but it would be a very hard sell politically.

I can’t stand HOT (High-Occupancy Toll), meaning low-occupancy vehicles pay while full vehicles don’t.

Just charge an appropriate toll per vehicle. That gives people the incentive to carpool without the — how can I put this delicately? — enforcement challenges of HOT. The congestion and road wear caused by a vehicle do not depend significantly on the occupancy of the vehicle so there is no valid rationale for charging differently.

But we don't have a rail network that can take over the goods transportation. Have you ever observed the rail shipments coming into Kitchener? We need better trains, more parallel tracks, better crossings -- and a denser network in the first place. And it would still be difficult to displace the trucks coming from Michigan or Quebec. I simply don't think we have the capability or capacity that many other countries do.

Right, we don’t have the rail network. That’s because we haven’t built it. Essentially you’re saying we have to build highways because we don’t have a good rail network. Do you ever slow down and consider that maybe there is a problem with that thinking? In fact, you just gave the main argument why this highway investment is a malinvestment — because it should be spent on the rail network, both passenger and freight.