STUCK IN TRAFFIC FOR 10,000 YEARS CANADIAN PROBLEMS THAT INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT CAN SOLVE July 2017 EMBARGOED COPY 2 Cyber2 Security in Canada | The Canadian Chamber of Commerce This reort as made ossible b the generous suort of our sonsors Title Premier Associate Canadian Construction Association CPCS Transcom Limited Ontario Poer eneration TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 5 Road Congestion in Large Cities 6 Facilitating Trade Through the Asia Pacific Gateway and Corridor 13 Positioning Canada to Excel in the Information Age 20 Realizing the Potential of Canada’s North 25 Enhancing the Quebec-Ontario Continental Trade Corridor 30 Getting Canada’s Oil and Gas to Global Markets 36 Green Electrification and Transmission 43 INTRODUCTION Ten thousand years is how much additional This funding will be accompanied by time commuters in Toronto, Montreal and hundreds of billions of infrastructure dollars Vancouver spend stuck in traffic every single from provincial, territorial and municipal year as a result of road congestion from governments. key bottlenecks in those cities. This severe congestion is an issue not just for businesses At the same time, the private sector and residents of those cities, but for the continues to bring forward significant entire Canadian economy. Highly focused investments in Canada’ non-publicly infrastructure investments can help solve owned infrastructure, including Canada’s this problem and other major economic telecommunications, pipeline and rail challenges that Canada faces. networks. While most of these projects do not seek public funding, they do require In 2013’s The Foundations of a Competitive various government approvals through Canada, the Canadian Chamber of regulatory and other permitting processes. Commerce identified key principles of sound public infrastructure investment. There is an opportunity for the next decade The Chamber’s 2016 report, The of infrastructure investment in Canada to Infrastructure That Matters Most, made be truly nation changing by unleashing the case for increased trade infrastructure the private sector and targeting specific investment to drive Canada’s international economic problems through public competitiveness. investment. The problems identified in this report are not the only problems in What follows is an outline of seven problems Canada that infrastructure investments in Canada that strategic public-private should target, nor is infrastructure the sole infrastructure investment can help solve. means of solving them. However, they are important economic issues that demand Public infrastructure investment has been federal focus to better prepare Canada placed at the centre of the federal for the economic, environmental and government’s economic plan through technological changes that lie ahead. its commitment of $180 billion in new infrastructure funding over the next decade. 5 ROAD CONGESTION IN LARGE CITIES The problem: Eighty-two per cent of cities has put pressure Canadians live in urban on their basic systems of Annually, areas of more than 90,000 infrastructure. commuters in residents, and this share is Toronto, Montreal expected to increase to Transportation systems have 1 especially struggled to keep and Vancouver 88% by 2050. Canada’s pace with growth, creating are spending urban growth is particularly concentrated in its largest challenges with how people more than cities, with over one-third of and goods move around 10,000 years of all Canadians, 12.5 million these regions. Gridlock extra time stuck total, living in Toronto, and crowded public transit in traffic due Montreal and Vancouver.2 has become an everyday to congestion Inconsistent public reality for businesses and their employees. This created by key infrastructure investment reality has economic and bottlenecks. over extended periods of double-digit population environmental costs. It growth rates in these increases greenhouse gas emissions, lowers employee 1 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Urbanization Prospects (2014) 2 Statistics Canada, Census Metropolitan Areas, (2016) 6 productivity, increases the time to move congested throughout the course of a goods and services to customers and lowers weekday. CAA found that of the top 10 the quality of life of those experiencing it. It bottlenecks in Canada, five are located in affects everyone from large manufacturers Toronto, three are in Montreal and two are in transporting products to a self-employed Vancouver. Grinding to a Halt also provides handyman trying to get to another job. It region-wide measures of congestion by makes dynamic cities less livable and more examining how long an average weekday frustrating. trip takes on area highways versus how long it would take under free-flow conditions as Grinding to a Halt: Evaluating Canada’s a result of these bottlenecks. It found that Worst Bottlenecks, a Canadian Automobile congestion in Toronto, Vancouver and Association (CAA) study developed by Montreal is responsible for adding nearly CPCS Transcom, provides insight into road 88 million hours annually to Canadians’ congestion in Canada by identifying the commutes. That is over 10,000 years’ worth worst highway bottlenecks in the country. of extra time every year that drivers in those It defines bottlenecks as the stretches of cities are stuck in their vehicles. highway that are routinely and consistently Additional Annual Hours of Travel Time Compared to Free-Flow Traffic City Millions of Hours City Millions of Hours Toronto 51.6 Ottawa-Gatineau 5.2 Montreal 26.3 Oshawa 2.3 Vancouver 10 St Catharines 1.5 Calgary 7.8 Regina 1.1 Edmonton 6.2 Winnipeg 1.1 Quebec 5.3 Halifax 0.9 Hamilton 5.2 Total 124.4 Source: Grinding to a Halt: Evaluating Canada’s Worst Bottlenecks. CPCS analysis of data provided by HERE and provincial/local departments of transportation. 7 Toronto The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) is the most congested region of the country. Grinding to a Halt found that Toronto has 10 of the top 20 bottlenecks in Canada, with the three worst being Highway 401 between Highway 400 and Yonge Street, the Don Valley Parkway and a stretch of the Gardiner Expressway. It also found that region-wide congestion due to these bottlenecks results in 52 million hours of additional travel time per year. In 2006, the regional transportation authority Metrolinx pegged the annual costs of congestion in the region at $6 billion and estimated that, without significant transportation improvements, the annual costs would increase to $15 billion by 2030.3 In 2013, the C.D. Howe Institute assessed that the costs of congestion in the region were underestimated by $1.5-$5 billion Source: CPCS analysis of data provided by HERE and by not including unrealized provincial/local departments of transportation. Results first published in the CAA’s paper: “Grinding to a Halt: Evaluating income when congestion deters Canada’s Worst Bottlenecks” people from visiting faraway businesses, sharing ideas face-to-face and taking on better paying jobs that require a longer commute.4 3 Metrolinx, The Big Move: Transforming Transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (November 2008) 4 Benjamin Dachis, C.D. Howe Institute, Cars, Congestion and Costs: A New Approach to Evaluating Government Infrastructure Investment (July 2013) 8 Expanded road and mass transit cost of $3.2 billion. In the face of these infrastructure are crucial to meeting kinds of costs, Toronto and Canada’s other the needs of the region’s economy. In large cities will need a renewed focus November 2008, Metrolinx unveiled its on improving the productivity of existing long-term regional transportation plan, The transportation infrastructure. Incentives to Big Move: Transforming Transportation in the encourage off-peak travel and Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. The ride-sharing platforms can help cities use plan calls for $34 billion in new transit and existing transportation assets more efficiently. transportation projects including 1,200 km of Looking ahead, emerging technologies, new rapid transit and resolving bottlenecks such as autonomous vehicles, hold in the road network. To date, $16 billion in enormous potential to ease congestion. projects have been funded. Identifying continuous, ongoing funding Adding capacity to major transportation for upgrades to the region’s transportation systems in densely populated areas is costly. infrastructure is critical to ensuring Look no further than Toronto’s planned congestion in Canada’s largest city does Scarborough Subway Extension that will not become a bigger economic problem add 6 km and one additional stop on the than it already is. Bloor-Danforth subway line at an estimated 9 Montreal Montreal’s Light Rail Mega Project Grinding to a Halt found that Montreal had five of the top 20 bottlenecks in Canada, Major changes could be and as a result, Montreal-area residents coming to the face of public spend 26 million additional hours in traffic transit in Montreal. A new every year. project proposed by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du In addition to needing greater capacity, Québec will connect several Montreal is grappling with existing road suburbs and the Pierre Elliott infrastructure that is crumbling due to Trudeau International Airport to decades of inadequate maintenance. downtown Montreal through The mayor of Montreal recently stated 67 km of new light rail that would that 45% of the 4050 km of roads in the city be operational in the early 2020s. need either urgent or immediate repair.5 In Montreal’s current maintenance plan, The $5.9-billion project is unique the city will be working on 676 km of road in that the Caisse will build, own per year over the next several years, a and operate the system. The significant increase over the 2015 total of Caisse has pledged to commit 295 km.6 $3.1 billion to the project and is looking to the provincial and While this repair work is long overdue, federal governments to finance businesses and employees in Montreal the remaining $2.8 billion. To will suffer the consequences through earn a return on the project, construction-disrupted commutes.