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What is the Cost of Clean Air?

Can the City of Toronto really afford millions of additional car trips?

Every summer, Environment Canada issues "a significantly greater number of smog advisories." (Source: Ontario Medical Association 1998 Ground Level Ozone Position Paper) Private automobiles are the leading local cause of smog which is choking the city and threatens the health of as many as 1 in 5 people.

• Over 10 years, one car will produce: 44.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide; 4.8 kg of sulphur dioxide; 46.8 kg of nitrogen dioxide; 325 kg of carbon monoxide; 36 kg of hydrocarbons. Cars the largest single local source of smog-causing emissions!
• During summer months when ozone and sulphate levels are elevated, hospital admissions due to respiratory illness are increased by 6% overall and by 15% in children. After a smog day, 11-13% of admissions are ozone related.
• Smog particulates are coated with lead and mercury, toxic metals which kill by causing respiratory and cardiac illness. Every month, 15% of all deaths in Canada are due to heart and lung diseases.
• Pregnant women, children and the elderly are most at risk from smog related illness. Asthmatic children are up to 131% more likely to suffer an attack on a bad air day.
• The OMA calculates that as many as 1,800 people a year are dying in Ontario from polluted air and call this "a preventable tragedy."

Faced with these facts, heath care and municipal planning experts have been calling on our city to promote increased use of public transit. Why are we going in the opposite direction?

Dollars and Sense

Mayor Mel Lastman has said that increased funding for the TTC is impossible because of an overburdened city budget and his rash promise to freeze property taxes. Faced with provincial cutbacks, he would rather transfer costs to transit users than fight downloading. This is despite the fact fares already pay 81% of the TTC's budget - making the TTC the least subsidized transit system in the developed world, and the only one in North America which receives no federal or provincial funding. In similar sized cities like Montreal, Atlanta and San Francisco, fares make up less than 50% of the operating budget for public transit.

So where are our dollars going? To subsidize private automobiles. 97% of the city's $122 million transportation capital budget goes towards projects to facilitate single occupancy motor vehicle traffic. $39 million alone is spent on upkeep of the expressways, such as the Gardiner. (Source: City Budget)

In Ontario, $1.9 billion is spent annually on road construction and repair. Another $1.1 billion is spent in interest payments on debts from previous road building. When you add in other costs, like the $80 million spent in health care for car-related illness and injury, you end up with an unbelievable $4 billion subsidy for privately owned cars.

Pollution Probe's 1991 study The Costs of the Car estimates that each car costs the public $2,000 more than the taxes and fees paid by its owner!

IT'S TIME WE HAD REAL USER PAY!

We expect essential infrastructure like public transit to operate on a shoestring budget, while giving a free ride to car owners. When fewer than half of the trips made by city residents are by car, why are municipal taxes paying the entire cost of Metro roads? Not one penny paid in fuel taxes ends up in the city's coffers. We even pay for highways like the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway which are mostly used by non-residents. It's time to demand a share of Provincial fuel taxes to help meet our transportation budget. We already have one toll highway in the province; let's set up a transponder system on the Gardiner and have true pay-per-use!

The people of Toronto have only a few municipal dollars to spend. Let's be sure to spend them on services that benefit all of us, like the TTC!

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