In this month's Toronto Life, Phillip Preville pens a fascinating article Toronto's congestion problems, including an interview with Metrolinx chairman Rob MacIsaac. The piece is ostensibly about congestion, but quickly leaps to the means of reducing it: road pricing. One of the more interesting methods being considered by Metrolinx goes well beyond traditional road tolls or congestion pricing. A Toronto company called Skymeter Corporation has developed wireless satellite systems that make it possible to record a vehicle's every move, including its parking times and locations, making both toll booths and parking meters obsolete. Skymeter's system ...

With the announcement of the 2008 budget earlier today, it's worth examining what funding, if any, the Conservative government has allotted for cities and for Toronto specifically. While the city's One Cent Now campaign was never seen as a likely prospect, there was some hope for funding for Toronto's six main cultural institutions as well as some much needed municipal infrastructure upgrades. In the end, urban issues were placed on the back burner in favour of funds to assist Canada's manufacturing and auto industries and various adjustments to Canada's tax structure, many of which were ...

BOSTON -- The most widely publicized attempt to rejuvenate a city scarred by an elevated expressway concludes today: Boston's Big Dig has officially come to an end. The underground tunnels replacing the above ground I-93 are now fully operational. To give you an idea of the scope of this kind of project, Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate who lost spectacularly to George H.W. Bush in 1988, was ending his term as Massachusetts governor when the Big Dig started. As an Associated Press article describes, it was a construction project to rival anything an urban environment has ...