There are times I pick up my morning Globe & Mail and wonder who selects their articles, especially in the Report on Business where investigative journalism does not exactly reign. A few days ago, right on the top of page B2, they had a piece of drivel by Brian Lee Crowley entitled “Sick of congestion? Build roads, not transit“.
Is the Globe playing for the Ford Nation readership? Is their soon-to-be-neighbour on King East, the dwindling Toronto Sun, rubbing off on the Globe’s brand? Will being at the mercy of the King car give them second thoughts about downtown? After all, they’re also unable to plump for mayoral candidates who might be seen as part of the downtown elite even thought they might actually be competent for the position.
Crowley argues that building more roads is the secret of success far more productive than building new transit lines. This is the orthodoxy one expects from someone who views Wendell Cox as an informed, unbiased source of information. On the issue of concentrating resources on transit construction, Crowley writes:
As urban geographer Wendell Cox likes to say, this idea that road construction only worsens congestion is like believing that building more maternity wards will cause more babies to be born.
This argument is a total non-sequitur because the issue is not cause and effect, but capacity and latent demand. The existence of a new, comparatively uncongested road will induce more driving simply by making this a more attractive option. More maternity wards do not, of themselves, make having a family more attractive. To continue the analogy, it would be like a construction program fixated with on ramps.
Cox is no “urban geographer”, but an apologist for anti-government, anti-transit arguments going back decades. There are enough transit boondoggles in the USA for anyone to show how vast resources have been spent to build new lines of dubious value. The USA, like Canada, has a long history of spending on capital projects as a job creation scheme regardless of the intrinsic value of what is actually built. Pork barrel politics bring billions to cities and to the construction industry that feeds off of them.
That does not make all transit a waste of money any more than recent subway debates would invalidate any transit spending plans for the GTHA. What those debates do achieve is to undermine the credibility of those who ask for more money when voters are suspicious that nothing of real value will be created.
Only when one is well into Crowley’s piece, does one find the real heart of his argument — lower density cities with spread out jobs and populations, and lots of road capacity, are actually less congested and have shorter commute times than the more traditional configuration of downtown-plus-suburb we know so well. His poster children are Phoenix and Houston.
Certainly, if one has a city with ample room to grow, a history of leaving wide swaths of land around main roadways, and a development model that favours decentralization, one can easily have uncongested roads. We saw exactly this in much of the 905 until growth caught up with road capacity and, suddenly, those quick trips through suburbia became a commuting nightmare. The problem is not just “downtown” but throughout much of the GTA.
Crowley pulls a “bait and switch” on his readers giving the implication that he has a solution to congestion when, in fact, his answer is to not build denser cities in the first place. One can easily argue that there are many other benefits of density and that the effect on commute times is a trade-off we make for a more “urban” environment. Our problem in the GTA is that we only half-heartedly embrace a truly “sprawling” city. We already have a dense core, and the idea of keeping housing and jobs spread out all the way from Steeles Avenue to Lake Simcoe is not a model the development industry cares to follow.
Crowley ends by exhorting planners to think of sprawl as part of their toolkit to make better, less congested cities. This is complete nonsense. He starts with the premise that where sprawling cities do exist, there is little or no congestion, but then reverses cause and effect to imply that sprawl can be used as an antidote. No, it doesn’t work that way. Our congestion already exists, and more sprawl won’t make it vanish. Neither will road building, at least on a scale we can afford and tolerate within our already-developed city.
If anything, our problems are compounded by the demands of the industrial sector who want to see less congestion for their trucks and, by implication, a shift of road priority away from individual motorists by spending on alternatives like transit.
Simplistic analyses like this may keep Ford Nation warm at night dreaming of more expressways (provided the roads and traffic don’t go through their neighbourhood). For the debate about Toronto’s transit future, Crowley’s empty and misleading thesis is a useless distraction.
Links to Other Articles in Response:
Steve Munro 
There is probably some truth in this article. Most cities which have a successful transit system have severe traffic congestion problems. So for example NYC, Paris, Mexico City, Beijing, and Shanghai all have very high population density, have traffic congestion which makes Toronto seem good in comparison, and have very heavily used subway systems. The exception would be cities like Singapore which heavily tax car ownership.
The issue is that transit tends to be a slow way of getting around, so people will only use it if traffic is bad. For instance if you have a choice of using the DVP or the subway to get from Don Mills & Sheppard to downtown, if it is rush hour the subway is faster, during off peak the DVP is typically congested but is still faster, and late at night the DVP is much faster. This is because a subway is slower (about 30km/h) than a highway (90-100km/h if the traffic is decent).
Widening the DVP, if experience from other cities is correct, would make traffic somewhat better but not very much, while stealing ridership from the Sheppard and Yonge subways, and there is only very limited room to widen roads in Toronto.
However, it is pretty clear that sprawling development patterns in US cities like Los Angeles or Washington or in GTA suburbs like Mississauga work very poorly once a city reaches a certain size, and the suburban office park developments only lead to long commute times and traffic congestion problems. A large city simply cannot function without a good transit system because the traffic problems will be even worse than if it does have a good transit system, as highways, even very wide ones like the 401, cannot carry very many people compared to a subway or commuter rail system.
That does not mean we should neglect the road system though, and I do think the DVP needs to be widened (especially at the bridge over the 401) and the Gardiner should not be torn down, even though there is only minimal room to expand the road system in Toronto which means that transit expansion is needed to handle population growth.
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Steve,
It is distressing that the transportation (particularly public transit) debate is so polarized, that the few people really knowledgeable about transportation issues & the vast majority without an analytic basis for their certain opinions (i.e. w/o any facts, figures or understanding of history) can virtually be lumped into two classes: pro- or anti-car and its converse: anti-/pro- Public Transit & Active Transportation (walking & cycling).
The truth is there is no one universal transportation solution for many contemporary NA urban centers that mix high-density (downtowns: Vancouver, Toronto, NYC) and low-density (suburbs: Burnaby/Coquitlam/Surrey; Mississauga/York Region/Durham; Brooklyn/Queens/Yonkers) built forms.
The debate is so polarized by this black & white divide and the exaggerated claims of both sides, e.g. @Metrolinx/@CivicActionTO: Big Move will save you 32 (minutes commute time) actually means the BM won’t extend your average commute from 77>109 minutes, as would happen without it being built (by 2031).
Now tell me how anyone knows this with any certainty, based on transportation models that woefully predict NEXT year’s traffic/PT usage but are accepted as the, gospel truth—18 years into our transportation future?
Similarly, mean-well organizations like the Toronto Board of Trade, which proclaimed GTA congestion & gridlock is costing the GTA $6B/year due to the longest commute (80 minutes) in NA, quietly backed off the latter claim (rated 6th worst commute in BLC’s G&M article) due to incompatible statistics between Stats Can & US DoT that made the data sets apples & oranges comparisons.
Throw in frequently turning over politicians, often more concerned about riding issues or their own or Provincial or Federal parties’ re-election, and any hope for good governance (fact-based analysis & historical context) on the transportation file goes out the window. It is a political (not-just Ford) football (witness 25 years of GTA public transit expansion plans and little building of the same), witness the recent flip-flopping Scarborough LRT vs. “Subways, subways, subways” debate.
I’m not sure what the best governance solution is, just that I recognize a dysfunctional transportation file, that is in desperate need of a more fact-based, analytic, cost-benefit decision-making process with a detailed understanding of the history & facts of transportation, the dynamic role both high & low density plays in it; and as much as is possible is stripped of the many layers of political expediency that currently overwhelm good transportation decision-making.
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All of your analysis (and his) ignores the simple fact that the GTA is simply too large now. It has been shown time and time again that once metropolitan areas go over the 2 million mark, the party is over.
The only transit plan I ever saw that could have possibly made a dent in 400 series highway congestion was GO-ALRT. Unless you can magically start double-decking the existing expressways a la Embarcadero and add new access points, there really is no way out now. Transit with an emphasis on local trips won’t do it, and the existing GO rail network won’t do it either. More emphasis needs to be placed on telecommuting and staggered work hours.
Steve: I ignored this “simple fact” for the “simple reason” that the GTHA and many other urban areas passed the 2m mark years ago, in some cases a century ago when commuting by car was not even an option (London, Paris, New York). No city, or near city, will put a fence around itself and say, as they approach a 2m population, “enough”. Sheep would be grazing in Mississauga, and that arrogant burg, Vaughan, the City Above Toronto, would be a one-horse town.
I suggest that you take your argument to the OMB so that they can reject all new developments now in the pipeline and wait for several million Torontonians to die off and make room.
As for telecommuting, you forget that in many jobs the physical presence of the worker is needed to get things done. Even jobs that lend themselves to a dispersed workforce require major organizational changes, and businesses won’t make them because “there’s nothing in it for us”. I believe that this idea is very oversold by people whose work style lends itself to independence and comparatively hands-off management, but when they go out to a shop or restaurant, they want a real person to serve them, not an automat.
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Houston?
Houston?!
I used to live in Houston, and it is a nightmare to get around in a car, with nearly continual traffic. Because of its sprawl the city has no real focal area, it is hard to get to places outside of one’s own neighbourhood, and the downtown largely empties out at night. It is also a mess of elevated freeways, with sometimes four or five levels of lanes passing over each other. Not only is it confusing, but it is an aesthetic nightmare.
If anything, Houston has been trying to undo its car-centric sprawling ways by putting in a light rail line (which is unfortunately woefully inadequate) and increasing development and residential in the downtown core (with more entertainment and arts venues going in) to encourage more people to live there.
Houston is a terrible example — there are many reasons I moved from Houston to Toronto, and the quality of life in each was certainly a factor.
Houston?
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Great analysis Steve. As I said over Twitter, while commute times may be faster by car (from census data I’ve seen for both Canada and the US, this includes suburban and rural areas within the metro, I recall car commute times are about 20-30 minutes while by transit it averages 45-55 minutes) this says more about the urban design and transit’s efficiency and planning.
If we are to take this decentralized approach, we need to consider its sustainability impacts, among the social and health effects a car dependent society entails.
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Well, the ML Institute is right leaning and funded by big corporations, but the thrust of the column was clearly meant to be controversial and to go to an extreme …
That being said, there is an odd correlation – if you take Canada’s big 3 cities and compare them to the US, there is something you will notice: Canadian cities already have much higher densities than nearly all US cities, and travel times to work in Canada are much longer than in US cities.
Sprawl works, particularly in the southern US. Most of the population growth in the last 50 years has been in the south. Unlike Canada, where apart from in the prairies, prime farmland is scare and will be consumed by sprawl, the in US south-east, there is no lack of arable land, and in the south west, sprawl mostly consumes desert.
(The big issue in the south-west is water, not land – so the issue is sprawl leading to wasting water on grass and landscaping).
Sprawl works. Widening arterial roads from 2 to 4 lanes is not that expensive. With sprawl, government need not provide a lot of subsidies to transit, and usually the poor are left out. Jobs are in the “Edge City” type development along the interstate ring highways. Land is cheap, and if you can afford a car, the suburbs make sense assuming that loss of farmland and high energy usage are politically acceptable.
At the other end, Manhattan also makes a lot of sense — densely populated with an incredible network of subways and transit, people can exist without cars. As long as you can afford rent, Manhattan makes sense — but like Paris and London, we forget that the subway lines were built by the private sector and initially ran without subsidies — and the lines were built at a time when the car was only something for the rich, or car usage was already impractical. Manhattan makes sense in terms of energy usage and people being able to live lives without the need for a car but to have decent transit and to accept the taxes needed to cover the some of the operating costs. But even in a city like London, the cost and long time for new subway lines makes expanding the system slow (as Paul Reichmann found out with Canary Wharf and the Jubilee Line).
The problem is that in Canada, we think we can have it both ways — dense cities that combine both the Manhattan and suburban typologies. We end up with the worst of both worlds.
I think that there is an argument that if you build more roads, then in general you can reach a point where building more roads does not increase traffic. Traffic is determined by population using the roads, and the amount of road per car/commuter. Building more roads means that some people will switch from transit to cars (or less likely to walk or bike), and also, that some people will be willing to drive/commute farther.
So oddly, by putting in place the Green Belt etc. and having higher densities, we are not expanding the road system fast enough, even though by having higher densities we are potentially reducing commuting travel distances.
But just as Crowley might be wrong in thinking that building more roads does not lead to congestion, building more public transit does not necessarily do much to relieve it — transit is far less flexible, and if someone already owns a car, they might not use transit except in times when the car is not practical.
A simple formula for congestion would be a ratio of the number of people commuting times the distance, to the total amount of transit capacity. Canada’s population growth is much higher than that of the US, due mainly to higher immigration here — about double that of the US.
We do not need this high level of immigration, which we have had since 1990. Crowley doesn’t touch on this issue that maybe cutting population growth would be better than building more roads, but then, corporate Canada loves high immigration as it keeps wages in check and gives them more power versus labour.
Back to the topic … I think we are naive in thinking that even with the Big Move/Metrolinx projects, that transit congestion is not going to get a lot worse. In pure suburban sprawl, public transit is a few buses serving cleaning ladies and a few schoolkids. At high Manhattan level densities, or those of European or Asian cities like Hong Kong, the capital costs and operating costs are much higher — but people can use transit for everything, not just the daily commute, and so need not have a car at all.
There is a “hump” in the middle where there is worst of both worlds. Transit and cars are both required … densities are not high enough to make transit economically viable to the same extent as Manhattan (or the streetcar lines in Downtown Toronto), yet we are adding so many more cars each year to a fixed road network that cannot expand to over a wider area, and cannot be widened because the road allowances are already maximized.
In effect, the need for the addition of new transit lines becomes exponential — the population in the GTA (inner ring of the GGH) is supposed to increase by 30% over 20 years, but in effect, nearly all of the extra transit capacity will need to be public transit because we are not building any new roads or widening the existing arterial roads, except for in the few greenfield areas left — which will largely be residential areas where traffic originates rather than than being employment areas.
In the end, the problem is that car use is still far too cheap compared to the cost of transit paying for itself — if transit lines could be built and operated entirely from the fare box, as was initially true in New York, London etc., then the problem would easily be solved, at least in areas where density was high enough.
Raising the cost of driving by a very high carbon tax would be a start in this direction … but eventually as car use declines to a point where it levels out and so any strategy of using taxes on cars to pay for expanding transit reaches a limit, and transit has to pay for itself.
But in a city with a general density higher than in the US, but very uneven/spiky density as opposed to a more European style of medium densities throughout the city, making the transition will be impossible without the provincial government having to spend billions of dollars in excess of the current planned lines.
Steve: I agree that the idea that we will somehow reduce congestion with The Big Move is a complete fallacy. Oddly enough, when you look closely at what Metrolinx does say, their only claim is that travel times, on average, won’t get any worse if the entire network is built. This means that for some people, trips will get shorter, while for others trips will be even longer than today. That’s if we build everything, and Metrolinx is really dragging its feet on parts of the proposed network especially the large-scale improvement of GO which is essential to handling regional demand in the corridors it serves.
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This standoff between the pro- and anti-transit forces, as shown in this Globe and Mail article, is precisely the reason why nothing is going to get done on the transit file.
My prediction: we’ll be exactly where we are now on construction of any of the new transit lines at the end of 2014 as we are now, with the exception of the Eglinton Line, and even that may be put on hold for revisions. Toronto is trapped in a hellish transit dead-end, with no rescue in sight that I can see.
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Houston freeways.
Houston commute.
The city is a disaster, not something to be emulated. Only someone with absolutely no knowledge of Houston could hold up Houston as an example of a good commuting city.
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As for Houston (or Dallas, which is similar): The traffic, though not great, is nowhere near as bad as Toronto, even though both these cities are similar in size to the Greater Toronto Area. Housing is also far less expensive in these cities than Toronto; the biggest downside of greenbelt laws in Toronto/Vancouver is that they lead to exorbitant real estate prices, which forces most people to live in condominiums/apartments which are much smaller than houses, and encourages a lot of people to have long commutes. On the other hand, these types of cities tend to have very ugly landscapes (suburban office park developments tend to be very unattractive); they exclude people who cannot afford a car (though lower housing costs offset this to some extent); and high greenhouse gas emissions and low levels of physical activity are a big problem in sprawling cities like Houston.
Steve: I’m not sure you can blame the greenbelt laws. They are a half-baked response to sprawl that was already happening. Toronto real estate has been expensive for a long time, and it’s a function of demand to live in (and invest in) this city.
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A better anology would be if having an inexpensive, government subsidized, high quality child care program causes more births.
One advantage Houston and Phoenix have is that they have 50% more land near downtown then Toronto because they are not located next to a large body of water.
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Further to my post above – perhaps the best way forward now for the Toronto region is for it to elect to build NO new roads and NO new transit – instead, let the economics and physical reality of the status-quo determine how the congestion puzzle sorts itself out.
Putting a stop to all new road and transit construction would allow the city and province to spend their severely limited funds instead on bringing the existing network of roads and transit up to a condition of good repair, and might actually be the most sensible way out of the current transportation mess.
Take the imperfect Scarborough RT, for example – since it’s here and long-since paid for – buy new rolling stock for it based on Vancouver’s latest Sky Train cars and repair the malfunctioning linear-induction system, since it, too, exists – why throw it away? The Scarborough RT’s not ideal by any means, but what the hey – it works, after a fashion. Make it work better by updating it to Vancouver’s standards.
Same goes for the rest of the TTC – run it RIGHT – listen to Steve’s suggestions for once on reforming bus and streetcar bunching – focus on real-life improvements for the riders.
Isn’t it time we spend our time, energy and money on making the most of WHAT WE HAVE instead of on what we’d LIKE to have?
We’re living in an age of very limited resources – let’s use them wisely.
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There is probably slightly more truth to these articles than transit (or density) enthusiasts would like to admit, but it perpetuates the odd preoccupation with ‘congestion’ as the central evil of transportation to the exclusion of other focuses such as travel times and costs.
Any city could have as much or as little congestion as it wants, irrespective of road supply. Congestion is purely a manner inappropriate pricing.
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Further, on the issue of latent or induced demand, it is true that in the long run new demand will consume all or most of any new road capacity constructed. There are two important follow on points.
1.) All things being equal, this is a good thing. More people commuting longer trips is, by itself, a good thing. Ideally we would all be able to travel infinite distances infinitely quickly for free. If road capacity doubles, then road trips double, this is a good thing since we are benefitting people who wouldn’t have been able to make trips previously.
(N.B. road use has certain negative externalities, like air pollution. The socially optimum equilibrium would have to have some kind of carbon tax involved. As a further digression, growing conventional fuel economy and the likelihood of EVs becoming cheaper than conventional vehicles in the next two decades will seriously challenge ‘density+transit’ as the default eco friendly view of urbanism. If road use is emissions free, low density living could easily be more eco friendly.)
2.) Public transport can’t relieve roads, per se, since the net effect of diverting road users to transit is identical to building more road. Any diversion would create more road space, inducing other drivers to take trips they wouldn’t have previously. Again, that could well be a good thing since more people would be able to travel than had nothing been built. But selling something as “reducing congestion” is gimmicky. If it’s cheaper to add transit capacity than expand the roadway then all the better, but it’s not fundamentally doing anything for congestion.
Steve: From an urbanist’s point of view, there is also something to be said for a reasonable degree of compactness and walkability. The premise that distances don’t matter if we could eliminate the pollution associated with travel does not take into account factors such as time spent in travel, the storage required for vehicles at both ends of their trips, or the social benefit of having busier communities. Whether cars are ever eco friendly, the resources needed to build and own them are substantial and beyond the means of many people. Just fixing what comes out of the tailpipe is a minor part of a much larger problem.
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For most people, the Big Move will new include lines that they won’t use. The Scarboro RT/Subway will merely replace the existing RT. The Eglinton Crosstown is not a “new” line and will not add much capacity — it will be faster in the sections where it is underground, but not much better in the other portions, much as the St. Clair LRT was expensive but did not do much to increase speed, or even reliability for that matter.
And yes, the 32 minutes is not a gain, and is merely an average. And we will be paying more in taxes, if it does actually accomplish this modest goal.
As I have said before, the only solution is to slow down the pace of population growth in the GTA for at least 10-15 years by having the Federal government reduce immigration and also direct more immigrants to settle in the 4 western provinces, which have lower unemployment rates. There is no shortage of labour that justifies Canada having double the rate of immigration (per capita) as the USA.
Steve: To which I say “good luck”. The Harper government is bad enough as it is without telling people where they should live. Next you will be wanting to have only one child per family.
Actually, this is a poor analogy – as Quebec has instituted cheap child care policy to accomplish this goal — to prevent the birth rate from declining — and it seemed to have worked, at least for a while.
Many people have small families in part because the costs are too high or child care is not available. I know some high earning types who can afford to have 3 kids or more, and do, or the guys start a second family with the second wife.
The birth rate is high in Alberta because of the availability of good paying jobs — economics and sacrifices required are factors.
Steve: You prove my point for me — just having a maternity clinic itself would not be enough to induce large families, but there must be many other factors at play for people to decide that they can “afford” a large family by whatever measure they use.
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I have been amazed how much low density is popular with outer edge 416 and 905ers. My formal education focused on the need for density and I assumed that most if not all would agree. It would appear that Frank Lloyd Wrights’s Broadacre City is far from dead.
Just as automobile commercials create a virtual reality of what it is like to drive in an urban area, I think that the ideology of those who choose to live in the exurbs is blinding them to what is really happening to what they think is/should be happening. I know my 85 year old father-in-law is one who laments the loss of driving freedom in 905 as it intensifies, but doesn’t understand the cause and effect relationships.
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Anyone who thinks that congestion is contextual is absolutely correct. After spending two weeks in Beijing, congestion and pollution in Toronto seem non-existent. However, two recent car trips into 905 emphasize a problem that to me, needs to be mitigated as soon as possible.
I live in 416 and rarely drive there in rush. However, last fall driving up to a special event in Richmond Hill at about 5:30 took 90 minutes for a drive during non-rush that would have been about 20-25 minutes. Another trip into northern Mississauga had almost the same time comparisons. I assume that some people do this every day. The waste of fuel, time and human resourcefulness is incredible. That people voluntarily put themselves through this and don’t demand a better response is amazing.
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I would tend to think that it would only make the problem worse – more room on the DVP would encourage people to drive into the the downtown core, which cannot support more cars as those roads cannot be expanded.
And how would you discourage people from immigrating to Canada? Yes, the Government could make it more restrictive for people to immigrate to Canada, but if I recall correctly, everyone in Canada is an immigrant or a descended from immigrants (including the First Nations, who happen to be the ‘first’ immigrants to what is now Canada.)
That is how transit should work – unfortunately it does not end up working out that way.
A good point. We really do not know the effect of making transit better (or widening roads) until after it is built and operating. Forecasting is great, but it cannot guarantee how people are going to react.
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Allegedly, an enterprising principal at a school in downtown Fredericton applied for a grant intended for rural schools. He got it on the basis on population density. In short, the capital city of New Brunswick is not in an urban area. As the years go by, it’s a textbook example of what NOT to do.
For example, recently, the city government allowed the former SMTP bus terminal and garage downtown to be razed and replaced by, wait for it, a parking lot. The terminal is now in the outskirts. A Canadian Tire on Main Street has been abandoned. A new one was built in a shopping centre. Single family homes on the north side are torn down for stores like Shoppers Drug Mart with ubiquitous parking lots in front. A 2-lane bridge across the Saint John River was replaced with a massive structure with clover leafs, contributing to the degradation of the downtown and sprawl.
I grew up there. It’s sad.
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Doug Holiday says the reason for choosing subways over LRT is so that the extra, currently unused road width that would be used by LRT would be reserved for future automobile traffic. Thus, this is a variation of the idea of building more roads to relieve congestion. (However, it does not explain why we are paying $1.5 billion more to replace the SRT with a subway instead of LRT as the SRT ROW will not be paved over for autos.)
There also seems to be fantasy financing to pay for subways. Hudak and Holiday will sell off surplus assets such as the headquarter buildings of the LCBO, Hydro One or OPG to provide money for subways. Holiday seems unsure of this financing. When asked whether the downtown relief line would have a western as well as an eastern arm, he said it depended on how much money would be available.
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To the comment about the mayoral race – the Globe says much that is wrong in that piece but has a point about finding somebody who might listen better to the inner suburbs. That they exclude Chow and Tory from this race using the idea of them being from tonier neighbourhoods says much about the Globe’s inability to understand what makes a good leader.
Like the article on roads and sprawl, the media in this city prefer the easy narrative provided by simple black and white answers.
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While I do agree with what you have to say about the article, I don’t think you have to drag Ford Nation into this. Mayor Ford may have his dreams of subways everywhere, he did not advocate for more road and expressway construction. If Ford Nation does advocate for more roads, then we can say that their ideas are not well founded.
The problem with Crowley’s argument is that he assumes that increasing road capacity will not increase the need for parking. If you don’t believe me, just think about Boxing day at major malls and how hard it is to find a parking spot. All those cars will have to go somewhere (like his decentralized employment areas), and they will need parking. Parking is a poor use of land, having no value to anyone except car owners, and property owners don’t get any extra money just by having more parking. In fact, I think you can find places in suburbia where the amount of parking is equal or more than the square footage of the store(s) it serves.
If Crowley’s argument is to work, the GTA would have to implement a parking tax (a toll road does not cause people to not use it during peak periods). To ensure that parking would not consume valuable land in the GTA (in fact, I think that a parking tax will make cities think more carefully about land use and transit planning).
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A maternity clinic alone is not much of a change – day care is a major factor.
One big change or a combination of smaller changes can have an impact. There might not be any specific tipping point. The lack of child care or the lack of a decent stable and high enough income are things that prevent many families from having as many children as they would like. High housing costs might be another factor since extra children requires extra space.
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Not quite.
The situation now is 6 lanes — or 3 lanes in each direction — one of those lanes is HOV during rush hours. The HOV lane is used by some cars or for turning right. There are also left turn lanes or a median.
An LRT essentially takes the HOV lanes, moves them to the centre of the ROW. Any buses, cars with multiple occupants or cars turning right are now forced to use the 2 other lanes. Plus, turning left becomes more difficult and there need to be longer signals because of separate signals for left turns and the LRT, like on Spadina. LRT stops are farther apart than bus stops, and LRTs still need to wait at most traffic lights.
A subway means that you can get rid of the HOV lane — except that since subway stops are now 1km or more apart, you still might need bus service. In any case, fewer buses mean more room for cars, so a subway can reduce surface congestion even if the number of people taking transit instead of the car doesn’t change.
A subway is faster because of having fewer stops spaced farther apart, but also being completely freed from surface traffic and all stop lights or stops.
There is a downside to going underground — it kills the storefront retail — just look at Danforth or even parts of Bloor. People travelling underground no longer are aware of what is at grade (new stores, displays, etc.), will not stop to shop and would have longer walks to and from stores if they did decide to get off and shop.
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Congestion is a result of two things: #1 widespread car ownership and #2 free roads.
Sprawl does not address either cause.
Instead of increasing sprawl, we need to apply technology to price roads based on location and time of day. Road pricing is natural; capitalism demands it. After all, giving a valuable resource away at no cost to all comers is exactly the recipe for the disaster that we call congestion. Road pricing can be revenue neutral and nevertheless effective. The cost of administering road pricing would be a fraction of building new roads. Faced with (revenue neutral) road pricing, road users would instantly find ways to rationalize road consumption: car pooling, time shifting, public transit. Road pricing would instantly give us excess capacity where we now have severe scarcity due to excess demand. Excess demand and ever increasing congestion is the inevitable result of zero (marginal) road pricing.
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The easy answer is to increase the points required to qualify, or require a solid job offer. I am sure that many people would love to immigrate to Japan, or Switzerland, but these countries have very restrictive policies. Our policies used to be far more restrictive until Mulroney changed them in the late 80s. Under Trudeau, immigration levels were tied to unemployment — we had about 90,000 immigrants for a few years in the early 1980s.
Forcing people to live in a specific province is more difficult, in that once people have landed immigrant status, they are free to move where they want. A better approach would be to let people who apply for immigration to Canada to be allowed to have temporary work visas — pre-qualify people in areas where there are actual skills shortages, and if they can get and hold a job in their field of study, then allow them to apply for landed immigrant status from within Canada. Those who cannot get or hold a job that requires their full education or skills would not be allowed to stay when their work visa ends — if all you can get is a job at Tim Horton’s or driving a cab, you can’t stay.
This would be fairer and better than a system which has tens of thousands more people applying for immigration (because they have more than the minimum 65 points) and then submitting their application, waiting years for the application to be processed, and a backlog growing bigger because the points system is too lax for the number of people who want to come.
Canada actually has the highest percentage of population in the OECD with post-secondary education … we actually do not have a shortage of people with university degrees.
An odd thing has happened — most economic immigrants have degrees and are competing against Canadians with degrees … the payback on university degrees had declined. Originally, the system was that Canadians went to university and got the jobs requiring degrees, and there was a shortage of unskilled labour … then the kids of the unskilled labourers did better than their parents etc. — upward mobility!
These days, immigrants do either extremely well, or extremely poorly … and the young kids born here who went to university find themselves unemployed or unable to get a good first job (hence free internships). Our labour market is a mess.
There are also environmental reasons for wanting Canada and other wealthy nations to have slow population growth, given the levels of resource consumption and waste added with each person we accept.
The future problem of an aging workforce and low birth rate are not solved by letting in lots of immigrants now — the problem might not materialise — we are not very good at projecting our need for certain skills or the unemployment rate in 2-3 years from now, yet alone 10 or 20.
Steve: All this is an interesting argument, but we are not going to solve congestion problems that already exist by choking off future immigration. At best, we would only slow the rate of growth of travel demand. The built form of the GTHA and the capacity of its transportation network are out of whack, and we need to focus on this problem.
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Toronto’s traffic is bad, but I do find suggestions that it is worse than the poster-childs of American traffic congestion is odd. I own a car. I’ve driven in Toronto. I’ve seen the traffic in New York, Detroit, Chicago and Omaha. New York was clearly worse — which is to be expected given that the metropolitan area is now at, what? 16 million? Chicago was worse, and its population is comparable to Toronto.
But spare a thought to Omaha, which has sprawled spectacularly over the past two decades. The city operates on the American grid system, and used to extend only from the Missouri River to 72nd Street back in 1990. They’re now developing shopping malls at 200th Street and the metropolitan area population is pushing a million (it’s over 800,000). There has been zero investment on transit, and lots of investment on roads.
Do you want to know which city’s traffic is scarier to navigate? Omaha’s, hands down. And that’s before thinking of how I’d navigate these streets as a pedestrian. At least in Toronto we have plenty of pedestrian friendly places to walk after we park our cars. Omaha? Not so much.
The big problem with Omaha is there’s nothing to constrain it. It’s the Missouri River, and then nothing but open prairie. As a centre for telecommunications (being near the centre of the continent, most of the 1-800 numbers can be found here), it’s seen a significant influx of jobs, and their development has been senseless, and it’s starting to outstrip the ability of the city to manage the infrastructure. Roads are not being ploughed in winter, for instance. Garbage collection is getting a little complicated.
And as a city which has built plenty of roads and no transit, it would seem to be a prime example of the approach this Globe article advocates. And it’s a bad example. A proof of the failure of the theory. You can’t sprawl your way to success.
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Jarrett Walker’s end quote is applicable to many of the issues where thinking people are at odds with Ford and his “Nation”. Too often Ford has set the agenda and then the debate has been misdirected to whether or not various alternatives meet that agenda. In most cases that means the only criterion is “what is cheapest” with no concern at all for what is best or even best value or even avoiding false economies that cost more from a global perspective. I think Jarrett Walker’s concept should be the number one (political at least) New Year’s Resolution for progressive thinkers.
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I think probably the biggest issue is thinking that planning is only about density.
Planning is and needs to be a lot more than that.
I do think a lot of the push for more density will make traffic far worse. On that he has a point. All across Toronto, we’re building condos and increasing density. We supposedly need this to support higher levels of transit and of course providing more money to build the transit. The transit to support this … oh you know … maybe we’ll build it in the next 50 years … and that’s a big MAYBE.
Rather than talk about sprawl, lets talk about less dense areas. Single family home areas and town houses. They’re just not that evil. Any of our suburbs can exist quite happily along side an efficient transportation (roads and transit) system. With a proper focus on keeping businesses along major transit routes, you wouldn’t really have the big city-city traffic jams that are the real curse of commutes. The real problem with respect to traffic in suburbia is the dispersed work locations.
In terms of immigration. I’d probably agree we need a new cost/benefit analysis.
Do new immigrants bring in more than they cost in healthcare, education, entrepreneurship, increased infrastructure costs … What is the ‘right’ number to bring in.
I’m an immigrant myself and have done quite well. But I suppose that was before globalization was so prevalent, before India/China grew their own big industries, before a lot of the out sourcing that lets work be done overseas …
But anything that smells like a ponzi scheme is generally something to be wary of. And transit arguments focused on density normally smell like ponzi schemes.
We always need more density and more immigrants for tax money to pay for the transit of yesterday. Then the new density and new people just bring more congestion and a need for more transit money …
Build density and transit for it’s own sake. But this need for new immigrants to fund past deficits (infrastructure, transit, pensions …) can only go so far and in my view is not very healthy for society.
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Pedestrians are getting less and less time to cross traffic signaled intersections to catch buses, at opposite corners to where they are. It used to be that people crossed on a green light, still is where there are no pedestrian signals. Then pedestrian signals came along, and in general they were WALK at the same time as the car’s green light. Then came the flashing hand and the countdown. It became illegal for pedestrians to start their cross on the flashing hand or countdown, even if there was still a green light for cars. The pedestrian now had (legally speaking) less time to cross the intersection to catch their bus. In fact, in many, many intersections, the pedestrian signals are almost always stop or don’t walk.
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Phoenix was one of the worst hit areas in the US in the Great Recession. As a result, less people are working and travelling there now than in 2007 (populated peaked in 2004 and been trending down for the last decade). Businesses are relocating to the core downtown area due to financial struggles. New home construction has plummeted (2008-2013 combined has 10% more than 2007 did or 50% less than 2004 or 2005).
To use Phoenix as an example of the benefits of sprawl is comparable to using Detroit. Both have slashed their budgets in recent years due to the loss of population and lowered labour expectations. If you build for future growth and end up with a decline, is that the best model for either building the best system or using taxpayer money wisely?
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To Mapleson: Phoenix and Detroit are not good comparisons for Toronto in so far as their economies and populations have been in decline — that is an underlying economic issue, and of course, Detroit has a whole series of problems. Atlanta or Denver are probably a better comparison over the last 50 years.
Canada is different in that we have so little arable land and sprawl will eat up most of it in Ontario, Quebec and BC in particular — whereas in the prairies a lack of water will be the issue (like in the US) as opposed to the other criticism or impacts of sprawl … there is no shortage of land for growing wheat. If all our cities were in the Canadian Shield then we wouldn’t need to be so concerned about how much sprawl there is because the loss of farmland is not an issue there — but in the GTA, it is a zero sum issue in terms of farmland plus the issues of the moraine and Niagara escarpment being special.
To Yamin: I think you have hit on a few things. But in terms of a cost/benefit analysis, it is nearly impossible to predict what the costs and benefits will be of a 35 year old immigrant coming today, being in the workforce for roughly 25 years, and then having to support them in retirement. Unless they have a job skill that will fill a job that will otherwise go unfilled, the long term benefits are hard to predict, just as the long terms costs are hard to predict. However, the short terms costs are big — we have to provide transit and other infrastructure for them immediately upon their arrival, meaning a huge up-front public investment.
That being said, there is likely a higher cost/benefit analysis to putting more money into educating people already here — recent immigrants included as well as the kids of past immigrants, to become doctors, nurses, electricians or whatever else we need. Educating somebody already here takes a low income person and turns them into a high income person, rather than adding more people who will earn a high income while doing nothing for people who are not getting proper training.
There is an argument that a rich country like Canada should be educating its own people, rather than taking precious educated people away from countries that are poor and ultimately need to retain the people, and the investment they have made, in the people who want to emigrate.
Our immigration policy is a type of Ponzi scheme in a way in that many of the skilled jobs that go unfilled are in construction of homes and infrastructure. We bring in immigrants, but usually people with university degrees get points while actual skills get no recognition. Adding more people drives up the demand for additional housing and construction, yet can end up making the shortages of labour in construction worse!
And in the long run, it is a Ponzi scheme if our economy is based on the construction and real estate sectors (based on an ever increasing population) as opposed to building an economy that exports high value goods and services.
Immigration can be beneficial, but as with anything, there can be too much of a good thing.
I see that in Spacing magazine, Dylan Reid is critical of the Avenues policies as not working — here I would agree in that density is slow to develop along the Avenues in the suburbs. The planners are allowing density in the areas around Downtown — on streetcar lines that are already well used, when the Avenues policies were originally meant to direct land to places where there were big brownfields and strip malls with massive parking lots.
Steve: Whether one calls it an “Avenues” scheme, or simply the Official Plan, it is clear that development goes where there is a market in the absence of any overriding control. The OMB tends to give developers whatever they ask for, and there are some who argue that downtown is not yet dense enough (e.g. Mirvish development and others). I think that the basic flaw is that the combined density of all of the land throughout the 416 is considerably greater than the demand for new residential and office space, at least in the medium term. With an excess of supply, construction will occur where it is most economical — where people want buildings and they can be sold to a ready market. It would be interesting to know just how much transportation demand a “fully built out” version of the Official Plan would generate.
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Sometimes I guess the Globe’s editors don’t get something suitably click-baity from Margaret Wente so they go farther afield.
A few thoughts:
1. In my experience, traffic is worse in much of the 905 during the day, and even during rush hours, than most of the 416; the exception is in or out of downtown in the appropriate peak hours. One evening a month ago, I found myself stuck in a 1-km backup caused merely by a traffic light, even though I was on a 70km/h six-lane road in an area with plenty of four and six lane roads, as well as the 403, 401, 410, and 407 (I was on Dixie Road; the tieup was getting through Derry Road). If we are to follow Crowley’s logic, it means that Mississauga is too dense, as it obviously has plenty and more than plenty road lanes everywhere.
The only time it’s clearly faster to drive in 905 is evenings and nights, when the long distances between major intersections means you can drive for kilometres without stopping at a red light.
2. There’s a good reason why the greater Toronto area is continually being developed further, and that’s because of the proximity of the lake. Drinking water and sewage is very important, and the lake is pretty much an infinite source and sink. I encourage people to read Sewell’s The Shape of the City and The Shape of the Suburbs to get an understanding of why growth is where it is. Behind the growth of Peel Region, York Region, and Milton, are Big Pipes that connect these growth nodes to the lake. I expect access to a large body of water is why Barrie is growing like mad, while growth in “nearby” Orangeville and Shelburne is relatively moderate at this point.
3. Of course transit is slower than direct point-to-point personal transportation, whether it’s walking (for very short distances), bicycling (medium distances), or the car (long distances). However, a reasonable transit system can actually get better with greater usage, something that roads absolutely, positively don’t do. For example, if a streetcar route gets too busy for a five minute headway, there’s no issue going to a four or three minute headway. The streetcars are no more crowded, and come more often, which is to the advantage of riders, not disadvantage (as it would be to drivers). Of course, if the route is overcrowded at minimal headways, we do need to either go to a higher-order system, or create a grid system to relieve the crowding (and current subway advocates monomanaically choose the former). But this is no different from building freeways and widening roads. A pity we insist on not doing that …
Steve: Thanks for mentioning water. Not only is it necessary for a city region, it was the original transportation route used by industry in urban areas all over the world. There is an obvious advantage in density close to the waterways, and so a city like Toronto would not naturally sprawl too far away from the lake until other transport modes (e.g. rail) were available.
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Moaz: The complex in which I live and the road it is on (and the amenities nearby) are a prime example of how the built form of a street and the buildings makes a huge difference.
I live on the north side of Dundas St in Mississauga just east of the Erindale Station Road intersection (a transit terminal of sorts … check it out on Google Earth). The complex in which I live is a mix of 78 one level and two level, two and three bedroom apartments, with a few four bedrooms. Our parking is underground and there is a central plaza that is occupied by people. Most of our neighbouring complexes on the north side of Dundas are two-level stacked apartments (4/6/8 stories tall). But right next to our complex is a ‘typical’ townhouse complex … stories high, built above a garage and set back from the road. This townhouse complex has 70 units but occupies more than twice as much space as the complex I live in.
My complex is built along Dundas St. While the buildings in the complex next door are oriented perpendicular to Dundas St. … Further east (and on the south side of Dundas) the road is lined by concrete noise walls, then suburban, car oriented development (plazas, big box stores, etc) until you get to Cooksville where there is a modicum of density.
The point is that dense development has been discouraged along roads like Dundas for the longest time. At the opening ceremony for my complex in 1995 the Councillor attending made a point of expressing how happy she was that it wasn’t another apartment building. The High Park Mississauga development on Dundas east of Mavis Road was to have been two low rise apartment buildings but ended up as 4-storey townhouse-styled apartments … and there has been no development in Cooksville in 20+ years because the city is focused on building the “City Centre” around Square One first.
There is one example of a situation where ‘more roads’ is actually a solution for congestion … When you build a ‘fine grid’ of streets 500m (or less) apart. In much of the 905 the grid is spaced 2/3/4 km apart …
Though the roads in the 905 may be wider (6 or 8 lane roads, often with a median lane) there are fewer km of through lanes, spaced further apart than in a fine grid like Toronto (four lane roads every 500m) Plus, there are fewer alternatives to driving *and* neighbourhood designed around driving.
So Toronto is in a far better position to build density and support it with transit while the inner suburbs and 905 area may be able to redeploy their road space to support transit … but that’s about it.
Cheers, Moaz
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I find daytime traffic can vary outside the downtown core depending on the road chosen. For example, I find Dundas, Hurontario, and Dixie to be busy in Mississauga. But in Etobicoke it’s The Queensway, Dundas, Kipling, and Bloor. Of course one day can be busy, but another will not be too bad.
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In case you missed it, the Embarcadero was torn down in 1991 and replaced with a streetcar line.
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Moaz, as far as I can tell, Dixie, Tomken, 410, and Kennedy are all parallel within about 2.5km. It’s actually a pretty fine grid. I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going (actually I was visiting one Walmart after another who were supposed to have an item which, it turns out, they didn’t).
TorontoStreetcars, you are right, The Queensway and Islington (much more than Kipling) can be pretty busy during the day. I still don’t think you get the sorts of tieups at intersections that I see in the 905.
All this being said, I really try to avoid driving in the 905 during the day, much more than I avoid driving in Toronto. But the real point is that, by the standards of the newspaper article, Mississauga is too dense and has too few roads. I find that to be bizarro-world.
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Steve, I don’t know how familiar you are with Crowley, but he used to be with an outfit called the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, which “takes a generally pro-free-market anti-regulation stance on many public issues, including private participation in Canadian health care.”
In short, the source is suspect and having read Crowley’s lame ideological fluff pieces for years in Herald, I’m not sure this article merited much reply. Even so, where are these roads supposed to go? Is he advocating for the revival of the Spadina expressway? I think this simplistic talk Crowley gave a while back about Halifax sums up his thinking, where he suggests that public transport be offered on a “social service” basis. He again uses the example of Houston – bizarrely – and argues that anyone with any kind of wealth naturally will prefer to drive, as this allows them to express their “personal freedom”.
I’m not really a fan of high rise condos (to put it mildly), but there is plenty of room for increased density that allows for a walkable, car-free lifestyle. When I lived in Halifax (and I hope to return ASAP) I never had to drive to work, and I seldom needed to talk transit either. Urban design must focus on compactness, which I might define as the close proximity of workplaces, residential areas, and commercial/retail/services. Part of the problem is that so much development has occurred with suburban subdivisions broken up occasionally by strip malls, rather than allowing for stores and services to be interspersed everywhere. You don’t need to build 45 story condo towers to achieve this, just allow for mixed-use development of varying sizes, but especially built on numerous mid or low-rise buildings up to 6 or 7 stories.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on a fair bit, but the short version is that Crowley is an idiot and has been parroting this nonsense for years. Why anyone listens to these “think tank” blowhards is unclear to me.
Steve: My primary reason for launching a rebuttal was to flag the idiocy that passes for informed comment in the pages of the Globe’s Report on Business. It only takes a few articles like this to destroy the credibility of what is supposed to be “Canada’s National Newspaper”. Crap like this gets quoted by politicians who treat it as gospel (see also the Neptis report – which the Star cites favourably – whose evisceration has awaited my having some free time).
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If they use the congestion ratio (travel time during peak divided by travel time off-peak) as the index of transportation quality, the results can be very misleading.
For example, let’s assume that residents of Aurora can drive to downtown in 20 minutes off-peak, and the same trip takes them 60 min during the peak. The congestion ratio is 3, which is pretty bad.
What would happen if we moved all those residents even further north, say to Barrie? Let’s assume that congestion is not that bad north of Aurora, and it takes 30 min off-peak versus 40 min during peak to get from Barrie to Aurora.
The total travel time from Barrie to downtown Toronto will be 50 min off-peak versus 100 min during peak. So, our congestion ratio “improved” from 3 to 2. Obviously, the residents did not benefit at all; their commute has become much longer both during peak and off-peak. In other words, our index does not work.
A meaningful index of transportation quality should be based on the weighted average of the actual commute durations, somehow adjusted for the city’s area size, population, density, and shape.
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In addition to everything else that has been said, Jarrett Walker (original article linked by Steve above) is complaining to the Globe and Mail about one misleading statistic in the Crowley article.
I think anything published in the Globe warrants a reply. The usual argument that it’s not worth the time of serious people to argue with crazy or absurd arguments doesn’t really work when the crazy or absurd argument is given the imprimatur of a respected media organization.
Others have already said almost anything but I will also add that I find the characterization of car driving as “freedom preserving” and mass transit as the opposite to be offensively ignorant. I feel more free moving around downtown Toronto without a car than with, especially if I have several stops to make and a day pass. Also, what’s with people having no problem with massive road construction (massive as in, let’s build lots more roads than we already have) but disliking a nice efficient subway or LRT line? If the government stopped subsidizing all transportation I think a lot of rail projects might suddenly have profit-making potential due to the absence of a free-to-use competitor.
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I am not sure what new roads Crowley suggests building — does he mean widening roads? In Toronto, there are some road projects which would increase capacity, such as ramming Lawrence through the Bridle Path or connecting the Bayview Extension through to Laird, but just try getting those built! The province is extending 407 east, as well as 404 and 427 will be built, but in already built up areas, roads cannot be widened or new ones built.
But what many people forget is that there are a lot of people out there who like living in the suburbs — having the 2 car garage, the big backyard with a pool and spending time behind the wheel of a large automobile (I like driving and find it is the only time I can listen to music LOUD, or play my Spanish lessons).
Certainly, the Rob Ford voters are not saying how terrible it is to live in Willowdale or Etobicoke and they hate where they live … same with Mississauga. There is a lot of arrogance by certain types of people towards the suburbs. I grew up in Don Mills and while it had its faults, it was a great place to live — but then it was “planned” and many other suburbs in the GTA are dismal or lack amenities or have problems.
Many people do not want to live downtown. Even the most desired neighbourhoods of the city – the Beach, Leaside, North Toronto, the Kingsway etc. are “suburbs” — detached houses with a driveway — but they are suburbs where you can walk to a retail mainstreet, and likely need a car for other things. New urbanism copies these types of neighbourhoods.
Steve: I’m not sure I agree with your definition of a “suburb” as a place with detached houses and driveways. Such places exist right “downtown” with the possible exception of a “driveway” as we know it because the houses predate the automobile era. Toronto did not grow “up” in the 19th century because it had plenty of room to grow “out” from the small original townsite.
And, of course, there are many high rises in the 20th century suburbs like Don Mills where the swimming pool, if any, is shared, as is the garage. The need for a car (or two) is defined by surrounding built form and land use, not by the location.
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