Globe editorial: Vancouver inches towards tolls to end its traffic nightmare

There is no polite way of putting this: Commuting in Vancouver is hellish.

According to one private-sector index, Greater Vancouver is the most congested urban area in Canada and the fourth worst in North America, just ahead of New York.

The typical Lower Mainland car commuter spends about an hour a day on the round-trip to and from work, according to Statistics Canada. Public-transit users stomach 90-minute rides on average, partly because the region experienced the sharpest growth in transit use of any major Canadian city between 1996 and 2016.

The system is groaning under the strain, and something must be done. This is where the Mobility Pricing Independent Commission comes in.

The multi-jurisdictional panel is looking at ways of using tolls and other fees to manage the demand for roadspace, and it recently issued a preliminary report on its findings.

The Vancouver commission is proposing two broad categories of pricing: distance-based tolls; and "congestion point charges," which would apply to bottleneck zones. It is also considering complementary measures like vehicle registration levies, fuel taxes, parking fees and "area licensing" – a flat fee for driving in a given section of the city.

The commission has put forward interesting, worthwhile options. Measures like these will demand a fair bit of technological innovation, but that shouldn't be a barrier to action.

Then again, the problem in Canada has never been a lack of workable ideas. The problem has always been the complete absence of political will to implement them.

Canadians have a stubborn addiction to "free" roads, thanks to decades of irresponsible policy decisions. Toll-less bridges and freeways are considered a birthright.

Whenever politicians try to put a price on driving, populist voices, usually from the car-reliant suburbs and transport companies, rise up to beat them into submission.

That's what happened in 2014 when Ottawa unveiled plans to build a replacement for Montreal's aging Champlain Bridge and said there would be a price to use it. Ditto when Ontario's government made sympathetic noises about Toronto Mayor John Tory's proposal to impose a toll on the Gardiner and Don Valley expressways in 2016.

Both ideas died in infancy, thanks to the uproar from drivers and populist politicians who insist that public roads should be free to travel on. No one took the time to convince them that mobility pricing is an efficient and proven way of reducing congestion, which is good for drivers and has the side benefit of raising money for transit expansion.

We can only hope that B.C.'s minority NDP government will show courage and patience when looking at the commission's proposals in its final report due in the spring.

Premier John Horgan promised to eliminate bridge tolls during the election campaign, so he'll have his hands full supporting mobility pricing. But he also knows that the Green Party favours road pricing and that it holds the balance of power in the legislature.

As well, nearly two-thirds of people polled by the commission say they are in favour of at least studying ways of using mobility pricing to improve their commuting lives.

The commission is purposely tailoring its work toward pricing options the public has indicated it is willing to accept. Its members understand that drivers will be opposed to tolls at first, but will accept them if they feel they are implemented fairly, and then come to embrace them when they discover their drive home is noticeably less congested.

The stars may be aligning in B.C., but the problem is not limited to the West Coast. According to TomTom, the Dutch GPS maker, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa are among the 15 most congested cities in North America, on a par with Chicago, Boston and Atlanta.

The stakes go beyond commuting times. There are climate-change issues, and health ones, too – the World Health Organization has established a link between atmospheric pollution and heart disease.

We need to have fewer cars on our roads for lots of good reasons, including for the benefit of exasperated drivers, and the best way to achieve that is through tolls.

In 2008, British Columbia introduced the country's first carbon tax and demonstrated that cost can be the most efficient tool for managing consumer habits. Here's hoping it repeats the lesson with mobility pricing.