I never thought I’d see the day…

…when an automotive columnist would call for higher gas taxes. But this past weekend Jim Kenzie, the Toronto Star's senior automotive writer and tester, called for just that.
We subscribe to the Saturday Star, a mammoth paper that has not one but two sections devoted to "Wheels" – cars, trucks, motorcycles. I am far from a car fanatic; in fact, I usually scan Wheels mainly to see the latest silliness in transportation. This weekend I was truly surprised, in a pleasant way.
Jim Kenzie started his column pointing out how the Ontario government's sales tax rebates are both ineffective and unfair. Ineffective because "hybrids make up only an infinitesimal percentage of total auto sales in this province (about 1,000 per year out of 600,000, according to auto industry guru Dennis DesRosiers)" and unfair because there are other high mileage vehicles that don't get the tax break. And because people who drive for economy (slower and more gentle acceleration) don't get any tax break.
He then continued on to point out that the only effective way to get people to use less gas is to raise gas taxes. That way, any solution that saves fuel is rewarded. As Kenzie puts it: "Raising fuel prices shortens your payback time and rewards your purchase. But it doesn't simultaneously penalize the Smart owner, the car pooler or the slow guy."
Kudos to Jim Kenzie for speaking the necessary truth. One thing I would add: take the extra tax revenue and devote it to transit. Lower the price of transit, more people will take it, and even the drivers will benefit from less traffic.
One last point – remember the hue and cry a couple of years ago, when there was talk of adding a couple of cents a litre tax in Toronto to help pay for transit? That was back when gas was around 60 cents per litre. Now we're over a dollar a litre – people are still buying…