Commuter tolls unreasonable

A lot of my family and friends live around suburban Saint John and suburban Greater Saint John (Rothesay, Quispamsis, Hampton and so on).

While they might enjoy the benefits of living by a city - coming into SJ for work (in some cases), for the occasional junior hockey game (which they pay to see, and whose municipalities help pay facility costs for), or to visit local businesses, they should not receive some other tax for the privilege.

I live uptown. In fact, I’m an uptown evangelist, and encourage folks to enjoy what living in the city centre can offer.  Still I recognize that folks live where they live for any number of reasons: neighbourhood features, housing costs, perceived savings.

Making Saint John more viable isn’t going to happen by trying to punish those who don’t live here. 

If a business staffing local professionals is located in Saint John and staffed by mostly KV residents, there isn’t all that much stopping the business for locating in KV.  While being in the city might have some perks, if you start making the cost of working in the city too high, workers and owners will reconsider if the benefits outweigh the costs.

Our city needs to think about what would make living in the city, particularly the city’s urban communities, more attractive.  This will help increase quality of life and tax revenue.

Carrots people. Not sticks.

Here’s a CBC article about the commuter toll idea discussed by some folks around City Hall: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2012/01/04/nb-saint-john-road-tolls-534.html

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An alternative way of charging a commuter fee is by raising the cost of parking. As someone who supports the idea of a strong transit system (admitting that I do drive myself in a private car too often), at first blush I can get behind higher parking fees.  Higher parking fees could change driving behaviour.  Maybe people would drive less if it cost more than the alternatives.  Either that or they would drive to different places. 

There are certain people who don’t like to shop uptown because of the parking situation. The cost of parking and the convenience are already cited by some as a reason to stay away from uptown. 

I find that it’s often a further walk from a parking stall at McAllister Place mall or the grocery store than it is from available parking spots to the shops and services I visit in the city centre. But I get it, people don’t like searching for spots and having to parallel park or back into spots.  I think throwing additional costs on top of these concerns will only dissuade some from doing business in the city centre.

As for longer term parking, I expect prices will go up when supply changes.  If those who own surface lots see economic reasons to develop them with other uses, then parking rates will go up on their own. If the City seriously wanted to up parking rates, they should have thought about that when deciding to flood that market with a lot of spots by way of the Peel Plaza parking garage.

Again, the city will be better off if more people choose to be downtown for living, and doing business.  This isn’t going to happen if locating downtown is too hard or costly.

Carrots people. Not sticks.