Doug Ford’s Highway 401 tunnel vision will only make congestion worse

Ambitious. That’s the word that Premier Doug Ford used to describe his proposal to build a tunnel under Highway 401 potentially stretching from Brampton to Scarborough.
Financially reckless and ineffective are other words that come to mind. There are far better options worth exploring to tackle Toronto’s traffic gridlock.
In his remarks, the premier lamented the terrible state of traffic in the region and called for bold solutions. I’ve been stuck on Highway 401 like everyone else. It’s awful. We need real solutions.
Unfortunately this proposed tunnel will not solve the problem, it will only make it worse. For decades, cities trying to solve their congestion problems by building bigger highways have experienced the phenomenon of induced demand.
New highway capacity encourages more people to drive and spurs auto-oriented development. More people then choose to commute by car because there is additional road capacity, and they choose to travel during the rush hour period rather than at off peak hours.
All of this ultimately leads to a return of gridlock, just with more vehicles flooding onto surrounding highways, arterial roads and neighbourhood streets that will not be increased in size. It’s like creating a bigger funnel without increasing the size of the spout.   
Nor do suggestions of adding a transit line to this tunnel improve its merits. Transit works best for riders when the stations are on main streets surrounded by shops and dense housing, not in the middle of highways.
While there is ample evidence that expanding lane space through a new tunnel will be ineffective at solving gridlock long-term, the risks of building this project can hardly be overstated. Tunnelling is hugely expensive at the best of time, prone to massive cost overruns and delays. Building one of the longest urban highway tunnels in a dense city environment under a wide, operating freeway only increases the degree of difficulty.
Many people will point to the Big Dig in Boston, a particularly notorious tunnelling project to replace an existing elevated freeway that was eight years late and skyrocketed in cost. The ballooning costs and delays on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT highlights local difficulties with tunnelling.
As the proposed tunnel idea is being spearheaded by the provincial government, all Ontarians would be on the hook for paying for this tunnel project and should be concerned about the risk of how much it will cost.
The premier’s announcement was to conduct a feasibility study. We’re a long way from construction getting under way.
In the spirit of early investigations of big, bold ideas to solve congestion in the region, it would be far more productive to conduct a robust study of the impacts of implementing road tolls on the most congested highways in the area. The road tolls would be required to go hand in hand with a massive expansion of existing public transit service at lower fares.
What are the benefits and the costs of implementing road tolls on Highways 401, 427, the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway that together make up the inner ring of freeways in Toronto? And can road tolls be implemented in concert with transit expansion in such a way that they don’t exacerbate existing inequalities or unaffordability?
This is not about implementing luxury lanes so the wealthy can move more easily, but rather about making travel faster and more reliable for everyone.
I know the chances of this suggestion being taken up are slim to none. Road tolls are loathed by Doug Ford and are not popular across the political spectrum. But they have proven effective in reducing congestion in cities like London, Singapore and Stockholm.
Since we’re thinking big about how to solve Toronto’s nightmarish congestion, why not at least take a serious look at road tolls that have been effective in other cities.
Given the scale of the congestion problem, no stone should be left unturned.