Want to drive on Hwy. 407? These provincial parties have a campaign promise for you
As the focus of Ontario’s election shifts from threats south of the border to issues at home, some parties are trying to woo voters by promising to ease their daily commutes by making Highway 407 more accessible.
The largely privately owned highway has been a hot topic of conversation for months, as the parallel Highway 401 becomes increasingly snarled in traffic. The idea being that removing tolls for trucks, or all drivers, would spread that congestion onto the often well-moving 407.
In early January before he called the election, PC Leader Doug Ford told CBC News “we’ll hopefully acquire that.” On Wednesday, his campaign made a stop at a 407 ETR facility in Pickering.
“My friends, the era of road tolls on provincial roads and highways, they’re done, they’re over,” he said, before announcing his re-elected government would do away with tolls on the Ontario-owned portion of the highway.
The key word in Ford’s pledge is “provincial.” He would be removing tolls on the provincially owned part of the highway in Pickering and Oshawa, while they would remain on the privately held stretch that crosses over Toronto in Markham and Vaughan, before heading through Peel Region to Burlington.
Doug Ford’s government is reigniting speculation that Ontario could buy back Highway 407. CBC’s Lane Harrison has more on what that would mean for drivers.
According to the highway’s online toll calculator, someone driving a car the entire length of the provincial portion during evening rush hour would pay about $20. Someone driving the length of the privately held portion at the same time would pay about $80.
A Ministry of Transportation report in 2021 projected tolls on the provincial portion would generate the province around $72 million in revenue in 2024-25.
“It’s not the government’s money, it’s their money,” Ford said when asked about that lost revenue.
NDP promise to remove tolls for entire highway
The announcement from the PCs follows a promise made by the NDP days before the election was officially launched. Leader Marit Stiles promised to eliminate tolls for all vehicles on all portions of the highway in her first 100 days in office, by negotiating with the 407 ETR.
Ford expressed little interest in attempting similar negotiations when asked about the NDP’s promise at his own announcement. He stressed that all the 400 series highways will be at capacity in the next 10 years.
“Taking tolls off the 407 as the NDP mentioned, where’s the capacity?”
At an event at Toronto Metropolitan University this week, Stiles said removing tolls across the highway could help people who don’t yet have other transit options to commute.
“Doug Ford’s focus is more highways, some fantasy tunnel under the 401, instead of actually saying how do we use the highway we have better,” she said. “If we want to relieve the congestion immediately, then get tough with the company and actually negotiate something so that we can remove the tolls.”
Asked how much her plan would cost, Stiles said she wanted to keep figures close to the chest so as to not jeopardize potential negotiations with the owners.
The Liberals have yet to make a campaign promise surrounding the highway.
“I certainly will look at what we will do with the 407 with respect to truck only lanes, my priority is ensuring that you have access to a family doctor,” Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said in response to a question on the highway this week.
The Green Party, meanwhile, wants to see more use of the 407 to avoid the construction of Highway 413, which has raised numerous environmental concerns.
“We need the government to find ways to incentivize trucks to come onto the 407 and relieve the pressure on the 401,” Sandy Brown, Green candidate for Dufferin-Caledon, said this week.
What about buying it back?
Ford had previously mused about buying back the 407 ETR, which Mike Harris’s PC government sold off in 1999 for $3.1 billion. Ford called that move a “big mistake,” but on Wednesday seemed cool to the idea of buying it back.
Buying the highway would not “add more capacity,” Ford said.
What it would do is cost the province a lot of money. A purchaser would have to pay about $30 billion and assume a debt load of about $10 billion to take over the highway, said Maxim Sytchev, managing director of industrial product research at National Bank.
Another thing complicating any potential sale, Sytchev said, is the ownership structure.
The highway is owned jointly by the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, transport company Cintra and AtkinsRealis, with the pension owning a majority stake.
Another potential barrier to any sale is that the highway provides predictable revenue and would be very difficult to replicate, Sytchev said.
“The alternative to the 407 is the 401, the 401 is one of the most congested roads in North America. So you have this irreplaceable value attached to the 407,” he said.
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