Growth and congestion go hand in hand. The more roads we build, the more congested
they become. But for decades, traffic engineers have told
elected officials and the public that we need bigger, wider and more abundant
roads to ease congestion. After decades
of experimentation, it’s now become quite clear that the more roads we build to
accommodate growth, the more congested our roads become (see: “California’s DOTadmits more roads means more traffic,” the Atlantic CityLab, November 11,
2015).
Building new roads doesn’t come cheap – but you might be
able to justify the initial expense if there is a strong case that the benefit
of having a new road will outweigh the costs.
As with any new infrastructure project, taxpayers will need to derive a
good bang for the buck, usually in multiple ways. A new road can connect two or
more previously unconnected areas to increase their economic interaction. The presence of a new road could open up
additional lands for development – important in areas of high growth. And of course, a new road might help
alleviate congestion, even if just for a little while. New roads are also often touted as providing
an additional level of safety for road users, although this last claim is
almost always dubious, given that most new roads are built to standards which
facilitate a higher level of speed – and that almost always leads to conditions
which are less safe than other alternatives.
Here in Greater Sudbury, the talk of the town is the Maley
Drive Extension. This new road - running
between Municipal Road 35 (Elm Street) in the west and Falconbridge Road in the
east - is to be developed in two phases,
and will come with a price tag of about $130 million. Right now, the City is seeking funding for
Phase 1 of the project, and the Province has promised to chip in 1/3 of Phase
1’s $80.1 million in costs. The federal
government may very well follow suit with a 1/3 share under the Build Canada
fund in the very near future. That will
leave the City to come up with about $16 million more to add to its $10+
million already in the bank to fund our 1/3 share for Phase 1. Phase 2 is estimated to cost about another
$50 million, and it remains unfunded.
For this $130 million, Greater Sudbury will get a road which
will not connect currently unconnected areas to increase economic interaction
(except perhaps for saving ore trucks a couple of minutes of time); will not
open up any new areas to development (see: “Taking a Closer Look at MaleyDrive, Part 3: Expectations for Growth,” Sudbury Steve May, November 12, 2015);
will not alleviate congestion in the long term; and will not increase safety in
any measurable way.
Fighting Congestion
Regarding congestion, we might get lucky with Maley for a
little while because it will essentially be a highway on the fringe of our City
– similar to the under-utilized southeast and southwest by-passes are
today. But if you really want to fight
congestion, there’s just one tried and true method for doing it: don’t
grow. Better yet, contract. But that scenario doesn’t appear to be in the
books for Greater Sudbury – we are expected to grow by 10,500 people over the
next 20 years.
If growth is in you’re future, you’re going to have to take
congestion along with it. There are
things you can do to alleviate that congestion, but studies have shown time and
again that despite what the traffic engineers tell us about building bigger,
wider, more numerous roads, that’s not the answer (see: “Building roads to curecongestion is an exercise in futility,” Tanya Snyder, Property and Environment
Research Centre, undated). If you want
to mitigate against the impacts of congestion, especially while growing (but
not only when growing), you’ve got to get people out of their cars and put them
on buses, on bikes or on their own two feet.
Right now, transit, cycling and walking options are more
akin to a sick joke in Greater Sudbury than they are a viable alternative to
vehicular transportation for most of us.
And yet – the 2010 Sustainable Mobility Plan identified that up to 1/3
of Greater Sudburians do not have access to a car (see: “Sustainable MobilityPlan for the City of Greater Sudbury,” Rainbow Routes Association, June 2010). Although the report’s economic analysis did
not pinpoint who exactly, on an income scale, these car-less people were, I
think it’s fair to suggest that largely these are people who are existing on
lower incomes than the City’s median, and who may be living in poverty.
Who Benefits, Who Pays?
That’s important for a number of reason, but let me just
point out one thing regarding Maley Drive here: the Cost-Benefit report which
identified $11.1 million worth of benefit also says that people who don’t drive
won’t receive more than a few cents of that benefit, period (see page 4 of this
document, “Cost-Benefit Analysis of Maley Drive Extension,” AECOM, October 29,
2015). The lion’s share of that benefits
identified by AECOM come from a reduction in vehicular travel time – and if you
don’t own a vehicle, you won’t get the benefit.
And yet people who don’t own car will see their tax money going to pay
for the costs of the project. This
certainly raises some questions about the vertical equity of the Maley project
in my mind – and I hope it does in yours.
The "benefit" of reduced travel time and maintenance costs for vehicle owners/operators described by AECOM can also be called a "subsidy".
Getting back to transit, cycling and walking – what we’re
calling “alternative transportation” (which is funny if you think about it,
because the very first form of transportation was walking – shouldn’t driving a
motorized vehicle be the alternative?
But I digress). We know that if
we’re going to reduce congestion, the best way to do it is to get people
engaged in “alternative transportation”.
And yet we have consistently failed to invest much in the way of time or
treasure in facilitating these forms of transport.
Since we don’t see people in our communities walking, we
presume that there’s no need for sidewalks.
Ditto for bike lanes. And buses,
for that matter. And it’s true: we have
fairly low incidences of alternative transport use in our City. So the perception becomes the reality.
Especially when you factor in the fact that building and maintaining pedestrian
and cycling infrastructure costs money – as does running buses.
Truth is, as recently as the 1970s, are streets were filled with
people walking, especially in the
Who pays for roads like Maley Drive? For the most part, taxpayers do. At the municipal level of government, the
revenues which pay for our roads come largely from property taxes and provincial
revenue transfers. Yes, it’s true – user
fees also make up some of those revenues, including taxes collected on
gasoline. But when it comes to roads,
road users are nowhere near paying the full costs of use. Throw free parking into the mix, and it quite
quickly it becomes apparent that society subsidizes road use.
We like to think that government subsidies are going towards
things which make society better for most people. Good roads make life better for everybody,
no? For the drivers who use the roads,
for people who take the bus, for anyone who shops at a grocery store where
goods are trucked in. Clearly, there’s a
public good inherent in roads.
But at the same time, the proliferation of roads has led to
a more sedentary society with contingent higher health-related costs. More roads has led to congestion in our
communities which takes time away from our families, leading to unhappiness. Roads have led to building cost-ineffective
low density suburban communities where the provision of services by governments
isn’t sustainable. And of course roads
have led to a transportation system comprised almost entirely of fossil-fuel
burning motorized vehicles that contribute more to Canada’s greenhouse gas
emissions than any other sector. With
this in mind, it’s difficult to make the case that roads are actually a net
good to the public.
Net Public Good
That’s not to suggest that we shouldn’t build roads. It is, however, to suggest that perhaps its
time we, as a society, began evaluating whether it’s in our public interests to
continue to subsidize the users of our roads to the extent that we’ve been
doing for quite some time now. If a net
public good can’t be demonstrated, why are we continuing to throw tax dollars
at the project? Maybe it’s time for
users to pay more for what they’re using, and to give the rest of us a break.
As taxpayers will be on the hook for the capital and
operating costs of Maley (in other words, all of the costs), whether those
costs are just the $80 million identified in AECOM’s Cost Benefit Report, or
whether they are the approximately $130 million needed to actually complete
Maley from MR 35 to Falconbridge Road, the fact is that all of the
beneficiaries that AECOM has identified will be receiving their benefits in the
form of a subsidy from the government – except those who will benefit from
lower greenhouse gas emissions (which, frankly, is a complete joke. See what Laurentian University Professor of
Economics, Dr. David Robinson, has to say about Maley’s benefits on emissions:
“Maley Drive: How Not to do a Cost / Benefit Analysis,” Economics for Northern
Ontario, November 6, 2015).
Cost Sharing
With Maley Drive, AECOM’s biggest beneficiaries are going to
be the trucking industry. While
motorists will receive a slightly larger share of those costed benefits ($8,464,000
in travel time and vehicle operating cost savings – about 51%), that share will
be distributed among a much larger pool of participants. Truckers will receive about $4,168,000 in
savings, or 49% of the benefit, - but those savings will be split among a
much smaller group – only about 1,000 to 1,500 users a day (and likely much
fewer at peak times – maybe only 100 or so during rush hour). Those are individual trucks, of course. Many of these trucks are owned by just a
small number of operators – so that’s where the benefit will accrue.
Given that the local trucking industry will be receiving about
half of the monetized benefit of the public’s subsidy of Maley Drive, and given
that the remaining benefits are of questionable utility to the public, perhaps
it’s time that the public turned to the beneficiaries to help pay for some of
these costs.
Preposterous, right?
We can’t ask the trucking companies to pay for the Maley Drive
Extension. We can’t ask users of our
roads to pay for their use. Who would
ever think of such a thing? They may do
that in Europe or the United States, or maybe even in Southern Ontario with the
407, but this is Sudbury – we’re different.
Well, actually, we’re not that different after all. As for who would ever think about asking
users to pay for new infrastructure from which they will primarily benefit –
guess what? Greater Sudbury contemplates
doing just that with specific regard to Maley Drive. Or at least we did at one time. The September 2005 City of Greater Sudbury Transportation
Study Report, item #12 on page 112, indicated that funding will be provided
through negotiated cost-sharing agreements with major industries when those
industries benefit from the transportation improvement being proposed. Right now, it’s the 2005 Transportation Study
which is in effect in our City, as the more recent Transportation Master Plan
has yet to be accepted by Council.
Maley - Those Who Benefit Should Pay
So, AECOM produced a Cost-Benefit report which showed that
the trucking industry will receive a significant monetized benefit from the
construction of the Maley Drive Extension.
Given that the City has since 2005 contemplated entering into cost
sharing agreements with major industries where those industries receive a
benefit from a transportation improvement, one can’t help but wonder what the
status of those negotiations might be.
How much are the beneficiaries of Maley chipping in for the costs?
They’re going to receive a benefit – what are they going to pay for that benefit?
Or, despite what’s written in the 2005 Transportation Study
Report, does our City expect that taxpayers alone will be on the hook for this
major infrastructure project which will provide limited benefit to taxpayers,
and a more significant benefit to a narrow set of business users, namely the
trucking industry? Why should taxpayers subsidize this road when the identified benefits to the community will be marginal compared to costs - and probably non-existent when you factor in opportunity costs (what we'll be missing out on doing because we're paying for the Maley folly).
Some believe that Maley Drive may be the lynchpin for other
new roads, such as widening MR 35 to Chelmsford and building the Barrydowne
Expressway from New Sudbury to Hanmer.
In these grand visions, a multitude of new lane kilometers will open up
the Valley (East and West) to new residential, commercial and industrial
development.
Unfortunately, that development just isn’t going to
come. With enough lands already set
aside to
However, should we really expect two thirds of new residential
growth to 2036 to occur outside of the former City of Sudbury? This assumption
may need to be tested, although I understand why Hemson has included it in
their report. If the future was going to
be like the past, then the trend seems a logical one. But the future isn’t going to be like the
past – we know that. As we become even
more concerned about the costs of development, are we going to continue to
subsidize a suburban built form?
Prosperity: Getting Prices Right
We would be wise to take a closer look at where the lion’s
share of anticipated growth in our City should be occurring – with an eye to
making our City more livable while simultaneously keeping our collective costs
down. Right now, there’s a prevalent
misunderstand at large in our community in which citizens believe that property
taxes from the outlying areas are subsidizing the former City. This misunderstanding, arising from an
extremely limited discussion around area rating back at the time of
amalgamation, has led to considerable resentment from those living in the
outlying areas.
At the time of amalgamation, it was decided that property
taxes would be area rated depending upon the level of service that parts of the
new City would be receiving for fire protection and transit. At the time, it was recognized that it would
be prohibitively expensive to extend the level of service enjoyed by the former
City of Sudbury to the outlying areas for these two services, and as a result,
a formula was developed whereby outlying area property taxes were – and remain
to this day – lower than those of inner city taxpayers.
Some – mainly those in the outlying areas – have always
believed that this area rating didn’t go far enough, given the perceived lower
level of services that they continue to receive from the City.
Others recognize that the chances are the opposite is
happening: that inner city ratepayers are subsidizing those living in the
outlying areas. This observation is not
based on any specific study of the City of Greater Sudbury, but rather based on
studies from a multitude of areas which compare the costs of suburban and
exurban living to those of urban areas, and which show on per capita basis, the
servicing costs of suburban and exurban living are much higher for
municipalities. So unless Greater
Sudbury is different from just about everywhere else, our reality is that our
municipality experiences higher costs servicing the outlying areas than the
inner city – but taxpayers in the inner city are paying a higher share of taxes
than those in the outlying areas!
This is an example of perverse pricing. And it is examples like this which we can
expect to see turned on their heads going forward into the 21st
Century. Getting the price right is
going to become extremely important to decision-makers.
For Whom The Road is Tolled
For Greater Sudbury, that means that we will likely see a
shift away from the desirability of developing in the outlying areas in
preference to areas within the former City.
With new policies promoting second suites, and smaller, denser and (in
theory) more affordable built form in locations which are transit supportive
and include cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, we can expect the former
City’s predicted share of development will be more than the 1/3 forecast by
Hemson. And this will especially be true
if we end the subsidies for suburbia and move to a user-pay system for
servicing – particularly for roads.
While municipalities in Ontario do not currently have the
authority to institute road tolls (only the province can do this), you can bet
at some point in the not-too-distant future, as part of a larger suite of
municipal revenue-generating powers, cities will get these powers. We often think of tolls as being collected in
person or electronically at a booth or gate of a highway, but there are many
ways in which users of road infrastructure can be made to pay for the actual
costs of their use (see: "We Can't Get There From Here: Why Pricing Congestion is Critical to Beating it," Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, November 2015). New technologies
finding their way into vehicles right now will be able to facilitate the
collection of fees for each lane kilometre driven, and raise and lower those
fees depending on the time of use.
We’re already smart-metering our energy use – one day soon
it may very well be that we’ll have smart meters in our cars as well.
Turning the Future on Its Head
Let’s be clear: this approach to paying for our roads will
turn the current situation on its head, because it will end the subsidy which
road users have enjoyed. By having users
pay for their use, we’ll actually likely decrease congestion, as our roads are
currently experiencing excess demand thanks to the subsidy.
When you pay people to drive, that’s what they’re going to
do. And that’s what we’ve been doing. We
can’t afford to keep doing this – not only is it not equitable, but the “net
public good” which we derive from subsidization is questionable at best, and likely
non-existent (see: “The True Costs of Driving,” the Atlantic, October 25,
2015).
Those looking at Maley being the first in a series of new
roads in our City, ostensibly to fuel suburban growth in the outlying areas,
need to consider what the future is going to be like. The pursuit of a 1950s-style dream of
high-speed roads that open up vast tracts of new land for low-density
single-family homes isn’t in the cards for the future we’re going to have. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen – if our
decision-makers want to make foolish and fiscally ruinous decisions to build
more roads and maintain them over time when none are demonstrably needed, than
it very well could happen.
But if we really want to get our financial house in order,
and maximize our opportunities for prosperity going forward, we have to change
the way that we spend public money. If
we choose to subsidize a project, program or activity, we have to be certain
that we receive a net public benefit from our subsidy. Making the case for new roads, particularly
in a low-growth environment, is one which will fail time and again the test of
net public benefit.
Getting Our House in Order
We here in Greater Sudbury are already going to be facing
numerous, difficult challenges going forward, many as a result of past land use
decisions which created our sprawling City.
As much as we might like, we can’t go back and change time – or wipe the
map clean like you can in Sim City. We’ve
got to live with what we’ve got, and retrofit suburbia as best as we can. But there are a number of things which we
know we must not do – and perpetuating an unsustainable, fiscally unsound built
form has to be at the top of that list. One
of the ways of accomplishing this is to stop new roads that we don’t need.
Maley Drive, like many of the road projects City engineers
have talked about for decades, has no future – or rather, our future should not
have Maley Drive in it. If there
actually is a benefit to be derived from Maley, it’s one which will accrue
almost entirely to as specific industry.
Taxpayers should not be asked to foot the bill – upwards of $130 million
– for a road that we don’t need and can’t afford, and is in the wrong place for
development which isn’t going to happen anyway.
If the beneficiaries of the road believe that there is value in its
construction, let’s figure out a way to make sure that they are the ones on the
hook for the lion’s share of the costs – either through cost-sharing agreements
as contemplated by the City through the 2005 Transportation Study Report – or through
user fees.
(Opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not
be considered consistent with the views and policies of the Green Parties of
Ontario and Canada)
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