Published in the Toronto Star on May 15, 2013
By Benjamin Dachis
The May 2 Ontario budget promised to introduce new toll lanes to replace traditional carpool lanes on some provincially operated freeways in the GTA. Although New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath wants the government to drop the proposal and Toronto City Council also is opposed, such lanes would give drivers an excellent way to avoid congestion. The government should hang tough and keep high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes in the budget.
A HOT lane is a dedicated lane, separated from the rest of a highway, that carpooled vehicles — usually carrying three or more people — can access at no charge. However, single-occupant vehicles are charged a fee.
Highway operators can increase tolls on an hour-by-hour basis to prevent the lane from becoming congested during peak periods. When the posted price goes up, it is assumed that fewer people would be willing to use the lane, thus making it less congested for those willing to pay the higher price. With pricing maximizing the flow, a HOT lane can carry more vehicles per hour than a traditional carpool lane or a congested general-purpose lane. HOT lanes would increase the effective capacity of the freeways where they are installed, which also would benefit drivers who don’t use the HOT lanes.
The province had previously committed to installing hundreds of kilometres of traditional carpool lanes in the GTA. However, these lanes can decrease overall highway capacity — many carpool lanes are underutilized during peak periods while adjacent general purpose lanes are congested.
How would HOT lanes work in practice? The simplest way would be for carpools to access the lanes for free with an opt-in transponder system. Carpooled vehicles would be pre-registered and the driver would just turn on the transponder when using the HOT lane in carpool mode.
The pre-registration system would reduce the number of vehicles the highway operator needs to monitor visually to check whether or not it is an actual carpool and to fine offenders.
Pre-registration would return carpool lanes to their original purpose of encouraging ride-sharing during peak periods. This would mean that casual or family carpools that would have driven together anyway would no longer have free access to carpool lanes — unless of course they registered.
All other vehicles would be able to use the lane with the highway operator using photo-recognition of licence plates to determine where to send the bill.
The province’s proposal has come under the same criticism that HOT lanes have faced elsewhere: they are “Lexus lanes” that only the rich will use.
But evidence from other jurisdictions indicates that both high- and low-income drivers use HOT lanes only on occasions when their trips are urgent. Further, HOT lanes enable regional and municipal buses to travel faster.
Nor are HOT lanes double taxation. Gas taxes, vehicle licences and other revenues from drivers do not cover the full cost of road operation, maintenance or construction. HOT lanes make drivers pay more of their share of expenses.
The true value of HOT lanes will become apparent only when a full network extends across the GTA, guaranteeing access to congestion-free travel wherever drivers may be going.
The province’s proposal to convert select traditional carpool lanes is a good start. The City of Toronto should consider converting similarly wasted GO bus lanes on the Don Valley Parkway to HOT lanes and consider putting HOT lanes on the Gardiner Expressway.
But HOT lanes are the best short-term option to give drivers an option of avoiding congestion and should not be delayed.
The Ontario budget’s promise to convert ill-conceived carpool lanes into HOT lanes means drivers would no longer be held hostage to freeway congestion where HOT lanes are an option. They should remain in the budget.
Benjamin Dachis is a senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute. He is the author of a 2011 C.D. Howe Institute study Congestive Traffic Failure: The Case for High-Occupancy and Express Toll Lanes in Canadian Cities.
