Even if Toronto’s new condo market is faltering, construction in the city is still roaring ahead seemingly everywhere you look, with tons of sprawling new residential complexes on the go, and this year marking a new height for roadwork and other capital projects.
All of the growth has its drawbacks, of course, chief among them being more traffic headaches while the work is underway. And though road and sidewalk closures are often necessary headaches of any given build, the City has been looking at new ways to hold private companies accountable for the delays they cause locals.
One motion adopted in 2023 requires these firms to better maintain the public realm around their work sites, to prioritize “safe, accessible and clearly marked pedestrian routes through them,” and to post signage with details about each project and where members of the public can lodge associated complaints.
And the 2025 budget addressed by council on Tuesday also addresses these concerns with some new fees that, as City Hall pundit Matt Elliott notes, have largely flown under the radar in light of larger news items like the hefty property tax increase.
Toronto is sick of construction companies blocking off traffic whenever they want https://t.co/l3rDeRDFjd pic.twitter.com/O0QacI2aOk
— blogTO (@blogTO) October 13, 2019
In Mayor Olivia Chow’s hulking 325-page doc on how City funds will be allocated this year, there is a chart outlining a new spate of transportation levies for companies that obstruct traffic, which are set to come into effect on April 1.
Developers looking to temporarily close a road around a construction site will now have to pay a $76.51 application fee, which escalates to $375.76 if they want their request rushed within three business days.
On top of these costs to apply, construction companies will incur other related charges for blocking roads — called RoDARS charges, for the Road Disruption Activity Reporting System (RoDARS). These are as much as of $40.71 per 50 metres per lane per day if blocking a main road, and $2.54 per 50 metres per lane per day on a local road.
Table of new fees construction companies will face for impeding traffic starting April 1. From Mayor Olivia Chow’s 2025 budget.
While the figures seem as if they would be pretty inconsequential to large corporations working on potentially billion-dollar skyscraper projects, the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), which works on behalf of home-building professionals, has already written to the City with concerns.
“Additional fees of any kind are not conducive to supporting the construction of badly needed homes, in the midst of the worst housing affordability and supply crisis the province and the City of Toronto has ever experienced,” the group bemoaned last week.
“Unfortunately, due to the short notice, we have not been provided sufficient time to conduct stakeholder consultation with our members or to adequately assess the impact of this new information.”
fotografiko eugen/Shutterstock.com
