There’s an old joke that Canada has two seasons: winter and put up.
A New research this week The results are striking, and the researchers say they apply to other large cities, too.
“There is major construction going on on the road, e.g. Gardiner Expressway “This will obviously disrupt commerce and commuting,” said Eric Miller, a professor at the University of Toronto.
Toronto may be a “particularly bad case” because it hasn't kept up with the infrastructure needed for a growing city, but Miller said it's a common problem facing other major Canadian cities.
“People think the cost of travel is about $20 an hour. So every extra hour of delay costs $20,” he told Global News.
The Gardiner Expressway, a major thoroughfare in downtown Toronto, is currently under construction and will take three years to complete. A report from traffic analysis company Geotab ITS On Thursday it was revealed that lane restrictions due to roadworks had increased morning peak commute times by 250 per cent, meaning the commute to work was taking two and a half times longer, “while the afternoon peak was up 230 per cent”.
This undated infographic shows traffic hot spots on the Gardiner Expressway. Geotab.
CNW Group/Geotab Inc. and Geotab ITS
Earlier this year, the Toronto Region Board of Trade warned the region was on the brink of crisis.
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“We’ve reached a tipping point where people are very frustrated and it’s really starting to depress economic activity and business activity in the Toronto region,” Giles Gherson, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, told Global News in February. Following the announcement of a new transportation task force.
The Toronto Congestion Task Force, a group based in the city of Toronto, estimates that the annual productivity loss is Over $11 billion.
Before the pandemic, other municipalities estimated the annual cost of congestion in Metro Vancouver to be between $500 million and $1.2 billion, according to 2015 data from the CD Howe Institute. In 2023, the overall impact on the U.S. trucking industry will reach $94.6 billion.
Canadian Automobile Association Determining the cost of lost work time In 2021, Montreal's traffic congestion costs were $45 million, while Toronto's losses were about twice that amount that year. Determine wider costs The cost of shipping to Montreal that year was about $4 billion, including costs such as delivery delays.
Mike Branch, vice president of data and analytics at Geotab, said he was “not completely surprised because I’ve been in that traffic situation, too.”
But he said it was “pretty amazing” to see the impact being measured.
The company has installed GPS devices on about 10,000 commercial vehicles, ranging from small cars to large trucks, to collect data on speed, fuel consumption, and “even whether the windshield wipers are activated inside the vehicle,” Branch said.
He added that the costs fell mainly on delayed commuting workers rather than employers, and said it also affected productivity because drivers were likely to be more stressed when they finally reached their destination.
He clarified that it was difficult to calculate an exact cost-benefit analysis for the roadworks – other than to know that “it's a big number”.
But anecdotally, he said his son and daughter-in-law “live on the west end of town. We live on the east end of town. It's unlikely they'll come visit us because it's such a chore to walk across town now.”
Overall, Miller said roadwork is a “necessary evil” because without maintained streets, transportation and the economy grind to a halt.
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