February 14, 2018

Quebec Figures Out the True Cost of Driving

pont-jacques-cartier-trafic
Via former City of Vancouver Councillor  and founder of Business in Vancouver magazine Peter Ladner is this CTV news article that researched an important question~what is the true cost of vehicle driving in a Canadian province?  The study undertaken by Trajectoire Quebec ” determined that even non-drivers spend an average of $1000 each year in costs related to the province’s roads.”
What was interesting is that while government spending on highways and roads has been increasing, it does not mean that the infrastructure is getting better or more multi-modal. The study found that public spending for roads from the Federal, Provincial and municipal governments had increased by 70 per cent in twenty years. In the Province of Quebec, that means that 43 billion dollars is paid each year for roads. Imagine~that amount is more than monetary inflation, and is much larger than any population increase in the province. The study found that the average family of four
contributes about $7,000 per year to government services related to automotive transport – everything from road repairs, to health care costs and policing – even if they don’t own a car.” 
And if you own a car, you are spending $13,000 more, meaning that Quebec households are spending over 20 per cent of their disposable income on transportation. That’s higher than the percentage spent on food or on education. Drivers are actually paying for using cars and car networks, and the study shows that public transit is less subsidized than private vehicles.
The report concludes that Quebec needs a sustainable mobility policy and that user-fees are needed to equitably pay for infrastructure used by private cars. Suburban developments also mean more sprawl and more reliance on the car, and the link needs to be made with politicians for “collective transportation” to move people. As the head of the Trajectoire Quebec organization noted  Copenhagen Denmark had a referendum successfully pass  to implement toll roads. “People having seen the way it was before, and the way it was after, and after there was a lot less congestion, so the people voted in favor of tolls.” 
quc3a9bec08
 

Posted in

Support

If you love this region and have a view to its future please subscribe, donate, or become a Patron.

Share on

Comments

  1. Post
    Author
  2. What this study does not seem to consider is that while we all pay for roads, we all benefit from them whether or not we specifically drive a car on them. Roads are part of what keeps a city running. Goods and services and emergency vehicles rely on good roads. So when you walk to the store to buy that food, you have to consider that roads were necessary to get that food there. And if you rode your bike there, roads were necessary to deliver your bike to the store where you bought it. It’s a societal cost for a reason.

    1. Puhleez!
      The amount of road capacity we need to meet our goods movement and emergency services is a minute fraction of the roads we build to support the masses who can’t imagine moving their butts around without a car.
      Imagine, for a moment, the food you eat (daily), the clothes you buy (every few months) and the other things you purchase on generally much longer time scales. Ration them down to the weight and volume of stuff you purchase on an average day and put them in a small box… maybe the size of a toaster at most. Now put that toaster on a truck, thousands of toasters on a truck.
      Now compare that toaster’s demand for road space to some commuter in an SUV. It quickly becomes clear that moving people in private vehicles is orders of magnitude more demanding than goods movement.
      I’m quite sure the study does consider the need for a basic network of roads. But it’s largely irrelevant.

      1. deleted as per editorial policy. Please read policy.
        The amount of goods and services which get around by roads are what drives our economy. Even a private vehicle going to work or to shop, is spending or earning and paying taxes and that is all supporting economic activity. It’s not just about how much space a toaster takes up on a truck.

        1. Part of my comment got deleted, I suppose because I took Ron vdE up on his characterization of drivers as “masses who can’t imagine moving their butts around without a car”. If I can attempt to rephrase, I will just say that I don’t find this perjorative characterization helpful to the discussion. Broad generalizations about people who choose to use a car just perpetuates division and is not constructive.

        2. My comments may have lacked the coddling that is expected of those who cannot see other ways to move but to drive; but they were more enlightening than those who grossly exaggerate the amount of road space needed for goods (and stuff) and services.
          There are those who justify massively over-built ten lane bridges and their associated monster interchanges and highways with the need for goods movement. It is a sham.
          As an anecdote, I know a builder from White Rock who will be building a house in Deep Cove. He will need to be on site at least four days a week. This is absurd. But the absurdity stems from under-priced roads and an unwavering commitment to motordom. I know qualified builders based on the North Shore. I know there is good work to be done in White Rock. If motorists paid the true cost we’d all gain in so many ways.

    2. Yes, roads do provide common good. That being said, other than emergency and other basic services, we should pay for the amount of the roads we use. This includes the movement of goods. Yes, the cost of goods etc would go up, but general taxes would go down. If we had to pay the true costs of buying goods, we might make better decisions and might buy more local goods, instead of having goods transported from halfway around the world.

  3. If we could please stop referring to the movement of STUFF as GOODS. So much of it is not good at all, or even if it is good, should be left in the country of origin. Watch George Carlin’s piece on STUFF for inspiration. If we insisted on the word STUFF, maybe we wouldn’t move so much of it around. I recently saw frozen kale from Ecuador, and frozen bell peppers from Spain. That’s crazy. And there are so many grossly inferior factory baked products from all over – to Canada – one of the world’s greatest growers of wheat. And water or caca colas in plastic bottles – that’s a heavy burden on our roads.
    Re. “masses and their butts”, I’d just add “single occupancy butts”. Count them as they go by – the vehicles are at least 80% one butt each. That’s a lot of metal and fuel to move single butts.

  4. The Mayors’ Council and Translink are promoting the possibility of Distance Based Charges, using Facebook. The latest post went up today.
    There are over 100 responses. After reading more than more than half of these there does not seem to be anyone supporting this idea at all.
    Every comment is against the idea.

  5. One of the worst jobs I ever had was power washing and line painting parking lots in the middle of the night. How many other awful jobs revolve around the care and feeding of motordom – the service bays, collision repair shops, moronic auto sales, advertising, banksterdom, heavy duty infrastructure … lives wasted. There’s no poetry here. A bit of prose perhaps – Ballard’s ‘Crash’ comes to mind, and ‘Mad Max’. Like war, motordom is pretty much a guy thing. Guys need to develop other interests. So much time energy and cash is wasted. Driving is not cool. It sucks.

  6. When legislation was planned to create BC Transit (now TransLink) in the late seventies an economist was hired to look at driving costs. The result was that 42% of total road construction, maintenance and operation (inclusing accident costs) in Greater Vancouver was recovered from taxes. This was used to set an “equal” fare recovery ratio for transit. This fare recovery ratio has now increased to just over 50%. It would be interesting to know what the current road cost recovery is–bearing in mind that roads are also essential for buses, emergency services and deliveries..

Subscribe to Viewpoint Vancouver

Get breaking news and fresh views, direct to your inbox.

Join 7,284 other subscribers

Show your Support

Check our Patreon page for stylish coffee mugs, private city tours, and more – or, make a one-time or recurring donation. Thank you for helping shape this place we love.

Popular Articles

See All

All Articles