|
Clearing the Way for Transit Low-cost Operational Improvements Could Support Ridership Growth
November, 2007
| |
|
|
|
REDUCING GREENHOUSE GASES, INCREASING WORKER PRODUCTIVITY
By Karen Wilkie,
The average Canadian spends 63 minutes a day getting to and from work. Over a year, this adds up to almost 12 full days lost to commuting.
Toronto continues to have the longest roundtrip commute with an average of 79 minutes. However, Montreal with a reported average of 76 minutes is not far behind.
Teleworking could redefine how many Canadians work and live. Telework is more than doing the occasional overtime from home or working from home when a family member is sick. Telework involves salaried employees who work from home at least one day a week.
As Canadians seek innovative approaches to address climate change, greater attention should turn to teleworking. Telework provides multiple environmental benefits, which include reduced energy consumption, both in transportation and at the office, and reduced greenhouse gases and other air pollutants.
Fewer cars and fewer people to move on public transit would reduce the demand for expensive road and infrastructure expansion projects. Fewer employees in the office may reduce the need for square footage and, in turn, increased rent. Other general office costs can be reduced - even coffee expenses would drop.
Perhaps even more important is the potential for increased productivity, greater ability to attract and retain skilled workers and heightened employee morale. Surveys of companies that offer telework have found that productivity increases 10 to 40%.
In terms of public policy, governments should recognize and capitalize on the environmental benefits that telework can provide. Governments should recognize telework as part of a long-term strategy to address climate change and reduce the greenhouse gases produced by daily automobile traffic and other forms of transportation.
Karen Wilkie is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Canada West Foundation.
|
| |
|
By Anne Golden and Natalie Brender
The challenges of urban transportation - which include congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, car dependency and aging infrastructure - continue to plague cities and large city regions in Canada and around the world. A decade ago, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) warned: "If existing trends are allowed to continue, Canada's transportation networks will become more polluting, increasingly congested and, with urban sprawl, more costly to maintain. The economy and the environment and the quality of Canadians' lives will suffer as a result."
Eighty percent of Canadians live in urban centres, yet road networks are failing to keep up with growing volumes of cars and trucks, and public transit systems are struggling to attract riders. Further exacerbating the urban transportation problems is the phenomenon of "employment sprawl." Traditional commuting patterns were based on people travelling to work downtown, making it relatively simple to plan for transit systems. Today, however, central business districts in Canada account for only 20% of total urban region employment, a percentage that is decreasing as jobs decentralize throughout urban regions.
Urban infrastructure in Canada today is suffering the consequences of a long period of public disinvestment. Between 1955 and 1977, new investment in infrastructure kept pace with Canada's growing population and increasing urbanization, growing by 4.8% annually. Between 1978 and 2000, however, new investment saw a drastic slump, growing, on average, by a miniscule 0.1% per year.
INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT LAGS
Canada's urban areas now face massive public infrastructure investment needs for maintenance, renewal and expansion to accommodate growth. In 2003, estimates of the Canadian infrastructure gap ranged from a low of $50 billion to a high of $125 billion.
More specific estimates for urban transit show a need for approximately $22 billion between 2004 and 2013, according to the 2005 report of the Urban Transportation Task Force of the Council of Deputy Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety. This covers investments in maintenance, renewal and system expansion for conventional transit infrastructure, vehicles and technology, but it does not include costs for establishing new transit systems or for specialized transit.
Investment needs for roads and bridges - whether municipally or provincially owned - are estimated to total more than $66 billion over the same period. Both provincial and municipal governments are responsible for almost all of Canada's roads. However, during the past 40 years the bulk of the responsibility has shifted to municipalities.
In recent years, the federal government has collected approximately $4 billion annually in road fuel taxes, but spent only 10% of this amount on roads. In 2004, the federal government began preparing agreements with each province and territory for sharing federal fuel tax revenues, but there is no requirement that these funds be used to support alternative or sustainable transportation infrastructure.
MATCHING FUNDS SWAY CAPITAL SPENDING
In Canada, urban transit investment has often focused on rehabilitation, driven by the need to prolong the life of existing infrastructure. Most operators have also invested incrementally in specific infrastructure, information technology and transit priority measures at key locations to enhance transit's attractiveness for targeted customers or to improve system performance in well-defined areas.
Public transit solutions that focus exclusively on large capital-intensive projects often lead decision makers to overlook non capital-intensive initiatives. Indeed, a bias in favour of capital-intensive solutions is encouraged by the availability of cost-based matching funds from senior levels of government, which create incentives for inefficient mega projects.
Transit ridership is induced mainly by service, frequency and convenience - all of which can be improved cost-effectively through operational measures (e.g. higher priority for transit vehicles on roads, or collector vehicles to convey passengers from low-density areas to mass transit access points). Municipalities and potential funding partners at other levels of government should assess whether proposed large investments in public transit can increase ridership, enhance access to poorly served populated areas, be coherent with land use planning and control costs.
CONGESTION COSTS
Measuring congestion costs is complicated, but by any estimate they are substantial. A recent calculation conservatively set the aggregate annual costs for Canada's nine largest urban areas at $2.3 billion to $3.7 billion (in 2002 dollars.)
Factors considered include: the values of lost time to automobile users (90% of the costs); fuel consumed (7% of the costs); and greenhouse gas emissions (3% of the costs) under congested conditions.
Improving the viability of public transportation is not enough on its own to guarantee the changes in travel behaviour that are essential to achieving sustainable urban transportation. Incentives to leave the car at home need to be combined with disincentives to use the car.
Efforts to discourage car use can be problematic. The most effective approaches - including regulatory measures such a parking restrictions, and pricing measures such as road tolls - are also the most difficult to sell politically and implement.
Recommendations
1. Provincial and municipal governments pursue integrated land use and transportation planning at the local and regional levels, aiming to accommodate growth through intensification rather than low-density sprawl.
2. Provincial and municipal governments develop suitable governance arrangements for urban transportation in areas of multiple jurisdictions.
3. All levels of government incorporate the improvement of the accessibility and efficiency of airports, rail and other methods of inter-city transport into infrastructure development plans.
4. Provincial and municipal governments use a carrot-and-stick approach to promote a shift from cars to more sustainable modes of transportation.
5. A sufficiently dense and extensive public transit network is a necessary prerequisite.
6. Disincentives to automobile use, including regulatory and road pricing measures will complete the policy framework.
7. Provincial and municipal governments make a greater use of alternative sources and methods of funding urban transportation.
8. Provincial and municipal governments and their agencies consider low-cost operational and service improvements to increase transit ridership and efficiency.
9. Business and all levels of government work together to provide incentives for consumers to buy lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
10. Provincial and municipal governments consider pilot programs and other incentives to promote higher load factors (i.e. operating trucks at full load capacity) for private and commercial urban trucking.
11. The federal and provincial governments undertake full feasibility studies for high-speed rail transit in both the Windsor-Quebec City and Calgary-Edmonton corridors, and quantify the socio-economic benefits and costs for each project to determine the requisite level of government support.
12. The federal and provincial governments work together to prepare a national urban transportation strategy and consider the recommendations arising from the European Conference of Ministers of Transport.
The preceding article is an excerpt from Sustainable Urban Transportation, A Winning Strategy for Canada, a report from the Conference Board of Canada. For more information, see the web site at www.conferenceboard.ca and register for the Board's e-library.
|