Paige
Wow. Nice. Congestion charges literally go towards improving transit. Also government in Canada are already spending record amounts on building transit. If you need to go into a zone that would have a congestion charge in Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver) you would have at least a park and ride option.
The TLDR is that the city isn’t focusing on getting costs down on things that have produced good (Metro) or promising (Automated Light Rail) results. It is focusing on things that didn’t end up being great investments (BRT) or that we haven’t done (Trams).
Based on the experience in Quebec City, trams are expensive AF to build here. RapidBus is something the city should look into, it sits between a BRT and a buslane. Easy to roll out quickly. When routes hit capacity, skip the tram and go straight to metro/REM.