Billions Lost, Pennies Spent: Toronto's $11 Billion Traffic Cost Gets Only $3 Million Band-Aid
"Nothing is certain except death and taxes," wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1789. But if you live in Toronto, you know of at least one other certainty—traffic congestion.
Toronto has congested arterials and freeways and a transit system that struggles to keep up with the growing demand for mobility. The City's worsening traffic congestion stems from infrastructure limitations, ongoing construction, and municipal policy decisions that spend too little on a problem that costs the City and the region an estimated $11 billion annually.
Recent data from INRIX, as cited in The Globe and Mail, makes it clear that Toronto’s congestion crisis is not solely due to increased motorization but rather a steady reduction in road capacity caused by years of delayed construction projects. Roads that once handled significant traffic volumes are now bottlenecked by construction zones and detours, disrupting commutes and spiking congestion across the city.
Mariya Postelnyak's excellent coverage in the Globe?this week?identifies the problem correctly. The transport infrastructure in the city and the surrounding suburbs is insufficient to cater to the demand for mobility. The inadequate infrastructure causes painful delays, as?evidenced by traffic queued up for miles around bottlenecks.
Where we diverge from the Globe's view is in how to manage traffic congestion, not in the notion of "eliminating" it. Congestion has been a fixture in Toronto for decades and will continue to be, as long as the city thrives as a dynamic economic hub. Toronto’s appeal draws hundreds of thousands of new residents each year, many of whom naturally transition from transit to faster private vehicles as their standard of living rises. Indeed, even with congestion, cars still offer quicker trips across much of the region than transit alternatives.
Traffic congestion in Toronto, however, is hardly a recent phenomenon. Roughly 76 years ago, Ross Perry, writing for the Globe and Mail, chronicled the plight of "Suffering Acres"—Toronto’s downtown core of the 1950s, bordered by Simcoe to the west, Jarvis to the east, and Dundas to the north. At the time, the area was inundated with cars from the suburbs, and parking was scarce. "More Than 105,000 Cars Jam Downtown Area, Park Lots Hold 16,500," declared a Globe headline on July 7, 1948.
The congestion issue may not be new, but it’s growing in scope—underscoring that traffic woes remain as quintessentially Torontonian as ever.
Construction on freeways and arterials and capacity constraints are the single largest source of traffic congestion. Tens of thousands of vehicles try to enter or leave the City's downtown every day from just three single-lane on- and off-ramps. The ramps connecting the City's road network with the Gardiner Expressway are the permanent bottlenecks that will deliver mile-long queues by design and default.
Beyond construction, Toronto’s municipal policies and event planning further strain road capacity. Lane restrictions for festivals, for instance, have a substantial impact on downtown traffic. Take the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as a prime example. Each year, TIFF transforms parts of downtown into restricted zones to accommodate crowds and events, drawing tens of thousands of attendees—many of whom (especially celebrities and groupies) arrive in private vehicles rather than public transit. Entire city blocks are partially or entirely closed off, limiting road capacity as the city’s population swells with visitors.
Policies that support these road closures try to manage the tradeoff between what makes a city attractive and how to transport people to destinations.
It’s not just event-based road closures that are at issue. Toronto’s policy decisions around congestion management reflect a broader lack of serious commitment to addressing gridlock. Congestion reportedly costs the city $11 billion per year in lost productivity. However, the city’s budget for congestion mitigation remains minuscule in comparison, allocating just $3 million annually toward the congestion management plan. This stark mismatch between the economic toll of congestion and the resources dedicated to it suggests a reactive approach that far lags the resource commitment it deserves. Toronto’s leaders need to acknowledge the scale of the problem and allocate funds commensurate with its impact on productivity and quality of life.
While some transportation experts advocate for increased public transit as the solution, this ignores Toronto’s sprawling geography and its transit system’s structural limitations. Toronto’s transit network is heavily concentrated in the downtown area, while most residents commute to jobs outside the City's core. This disconnect means that even with improved transit options, many Torontonians would still need to rely on cars due to the dispersed nature of workplaces across the Greater Toronto Area.
For public transit to meaningfully reduce congestion, Toronto would need a multi-modal strategy that includes flexible, surface-based solutions like Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). BRT systems can provide efficient, affordable transit without the prohibitive costs and lengthy timelines of expanding subways or light rail.
Toronto also needs to catch up in adopting modern, data-driven solutions to congestion. Cities worldwide are leveraging artificial intelligence and intelligent traffic management systems to ease congestion, dynamically adjusting traffic signals based on real-time data to optimize flow. Yet Toronto, rather than investing aggressively in technology, has taken a step back by deploying police officers at problem intersections to manage traffic manually. This low-tech approach needs to be put in step with the technological advances in traffic management in other major urban centres. Traffic constables directing cars with hand gestures can’t match the precision and adaptability of AI-driven systems, which can adjust signals in real-time based on patterns of congestion and flow. Investing in technology would provide a far more effective long-term solution, improving efficiency and reducing commute times in ways that manual intervention simply cannot.
Ultimately, the solution to Toronto’s congestion is as much in a coordinated, strategic approach that includes more intelligent use of existing infrastructure, meaningful investment in surface transit, and a forward-thinking embrace of traffic management technology as in increasing road capacity or building more lanes. First, the city must recognize that it needs substantial, sustained funding to combat gridlock. Congestion is not a seasonal nuisance; it’s a daily economic drain and an obstacle to Toronto’s long-term growth.
Next, addressing congestion must become a cross-departmental priority, integrating city planning, transportation policy, and technology investment. For instance, streamlining festival permits and event management to limit their impact on traffic during peak times could make a difference. The city should also actively pursue advanced traffic management solutions rather than resorting to outdated, manual interventions. At the same time, the provincial and other government agencies involved in road infrastructure rehabilitation should learn from China and other developing countries how to build or rehabilitate infrastructure in less time.
The cost of doing nothing or doing too little is becoming untenable. With congestion costing Toronto billions in productivity every year, it’s time for a paradigm shift in how we approach transportation and urban planning. Adding more roads is not an exercise in futility, as many transport planners, engineers and economists mistakenly believe. Expanding road capacity adds to the transport system's throughput capacity. Even if it does not result in lower average travel times because of more cars joining the traffic stream, it results in more citizens being able to participate in the socio-economic spheres of life, thus resulting in a decline in forgone opportunities, which is a significant component of economic losses resulting from traffic congestion.
However, we must also focus on more innovative solutions that reflect the complexity of a modern, growing city. Toronto deserves an infrastructure strategy that works for its residents, businesses, and future growth. And it's not just adding more rail-based transit, which the City does not have the funds or the know-how to build in a reasonable amount of time—think Eglington Crosstown. Instead, the city needs to invest in road-based smart transit infrastructure and an AI-based traffic monitoring and signalling system for congestion relief.
Anthony Downs, a famed transportation economist, penned the best-selling Stuck in Traffic in 1992, describing the societal and economic losses from traffic congestion. Decades later, he revisited the topic and wrote a follow-up, Still Stuck in Traffic, in 2004. He proposed congestion pricing to mitigate traffic congestion, an earlier idea by Canadian-born American economist William Vickery, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics in 1996.
While some economists and planners champion congestion pricing as a possible cure-all for Toronto’s gridlock, the public and politicians remain wary of tolling roads and highways that have been free for generations. Instead, a pragmatic approach is needed: expand road capacity where feasible, boost high-frequency, surface-based rapid transit on dedicated lanes, and deploy intelligent traffic management systems.
And so we circle back to the certainties of life—or the lack thereof—in Toronto: death, taxes, and traffic. Congestion doesn’t have to be one of them, but it likely will be. The Globe and Mail noticed in 1948 that Toronto was stuck in traffic, and the City is still stuck today. It’s hard to see congestion improving when an $11-billion-a-year problem is met with a mere $3-million annual Band-Aid.
Senior IT Architect, Enterprise Technology Strategy Division, MPBSDP
1 周Here's something the avg speed is only 15kph across #toronto during rush hour. Before all the improvements by city narrowing wrecking streets was 30-40kph. A bicycle will get you across town at 30-40kph. Make ONE WAY streets.
Instructor
1 周I find that most commentators on this problem are to invested in their position to see what the real problems are, and due to this most solutions fail, like that Vision Zero initiative.
..."It’s hard to see congestion improving when an $11-billion-a-year problem is met with a mere $3-million annual Band-Aid." ...for scale, 3M is 0.03% of 11B. I have been acutely aware of Toronto's unwillingness to address congestion since 2002. It is my opinion that neither Toronto nor Ontario has any interest in doing so, as Big Auto is the province's largest industry. A congestion management approach that constrains the use of the automobile – either by public transit, bike lanes, parking pricing, etc - will never get more than a token 0.03%. The Ontario Ministry of Transportation is beholden to Big Auto. Adding car lanes makes more room for cars (+votes). Taking out bike lanes, adding tunnels, and building highways all add votes.
Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University
1 周Love this opening line. So true ?? ??