The 20 fastest growing cities between Canada and the US

[niwell]

While a breeze compared to Toronto (or even Halifax), Calgary’s traffic has gotten a lot worse over the years. And this is with one of the larger infrastructure expansions in the country.

[Acajack]

I've mentioned Halifax but Charlottetown also has surprisingly bad traffic when you consider its size. In my experience it's a lot worse than any of the cities in New Brunswick, all of which are larger.

[MolsonExport]

^Charlottetown has more challenging geography, with the three inlets (rather like Vancouver in this regard, which also has terrible traffic and an even worse infrastructure in some places...hello Massey Tunnel!).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

^Charlottetown has more challenging geography, with the three inlets (rather like Vancouver in this regard, which also has terrible traffic and an even worse infrastructure in some places...hello Massey Tunnel!).

Agreed, though what is the secret of cities in other parts of the world that also have challenging geography? Like Stockholm for example.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Agreed, though what is the secret of cities in other parts of the world that also have challenging geography? Like Stockholm for example.

It's not that people in Stockholm commute less than us. They invest heavily in non-car infrastructure (pedestrian realm/wide sidewalks, bus, LRT, subway, and bicycle) while at the same time make commuting by car less convenient (2 lanes instead of 4-6 lanes and far less parking). There's only so much above ground space and cars take up an absurd amount of it. So Swedes get rid of as many cars from their streets as possible. It only works if you invest in good non-car infrastructure (extensive, convenient, safe) though.

In wealthy countries like Canada, we can absolutely achieve the same thing but we still have an extremely auto-centric mindset. Canadians expect to be able to drive where ever they want and park there too. As long as that stays the same, we'll just have to put up with insane car congestion and cities where 85% of it is devoted to cars (asphalt) instead of people. If you look at a typical Canadian downtown, 85% is for cars and 15% for people. We need to flip that ratio upside down.

Counter-intuitive, but cities like Halifax should reduce car lanes while at the same time invest heavily in non-car infrastructure. They need to bite the bullet and invest in underground LRT like the Eglinton Crosstown. It will cost a fortune but there just isn't space above ground to move tens of thousands of people each day. It's a peninsular. Underground LRT is the best investment Halifax could possibly make. It would have immediate impacts on livability, congestion, and make Halifax a far more desirable place for people and capital. The sooner cities with difficult geography do it, the better.

[Acajack]

Funny how driving around in cities that have "declared war on the car" can often be relatively painless.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Funny how driving around in cities that have "declared war on the car" can often be relatively painless.

Yes, although the expression 'war on the car' is what auto-centric people view it as. What cities the world over are really attempting to do is un-do all the damage cars have done to what used to be beautiful attractive places built for people. I love driving but insisting that I should be able to bring 2000 lbs of metal, rubber, and glass with me where ever I go is ridiculous (and selfish).

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Toronto traffic has gotten immensely worse in the last 5 years. Even 5 years ago it was a lot more manageable...

Anecdotally, I agree. I live in Armour Heights, just north of the 401, and spend the summers in North Frontenac. Whenever we drive home, about once a month, it has almost become a rule now that we exit the freeway in Scarborough or earlier and take York Mills home-bound. And this is not during rush hour. Sometimes the entire 401 across the city is stop-and-go, so we just get out in the Shwa and take Victoria St as far as it goes. Even just a few years ago, most of the time we could take the 401, congested and slowish as it was, all the way to our exit, but that is seldom the case nowadays.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by isaidso

It's not that people in Stockholm commute less than us. They invest heavily in non-car infrastructure (pedestrian realm/wide sidewalks, bus, LRT, subway, and bicycle) while at the same time make commuting by car less convenient (2 lanes instead of 4-6 lanes and far less parking). There's only so much above ground space and cars take up an absurd amount of it. So Swedes get rid of as many cars from their streets as possible. It only works if you invest in good non-car infrastructure (extensive, convenient, safe) though.

In wealthy countries like Canada, we can absolutely achieve the same thing but we still have an extremely auto-centric mindset. Canadians expect to be able to drive where ever they want and park there too. As long as that stays the same, we'll just have to put up with insane car congestion and cities where 85% of it is devoted to cars (asphalt) instead of people. If you look at a typical Canadian downtown, 85% is for cars and 15% for people. We need to flip that ratio upside down.

Counter-intuitive, but cities like Halifax should reduce car lanes while at the same time invest heavily in non-car infrastructure. They need to bite the bullet and invest in underground LRT like the Eglinton Crosstown. It will cost a fortune but there just isn't space above ground to move tens of thousands of people each day. It's a peninsular. Underground LRT is the best investment Halifax could possibly make. It would have immediate impacts on livability, congestion, and make Halifax a far more desirable place for people and capital. The sooner cities with difficult geography do it, the better.

Investing more in rapid & active transit infrastructure than in road infrastructure makes perfect sense. The problem in Canada though, is that we tend to cheap out and do neither. Particularly in places like Halifax and Vancouver, where there's an ideological aversion to building highways or expanding road capacity; but transit funding has not been increased accordingly to fill the void. Montreal and Toronto at least have been a little bit more ambitious with their transit projects (while also still building new freeways in the suburbs).

The end result is that getting around by transit is slow and inconvenient in most cases, so people prefer to drive for obvious reasons. But because road infrastructure hasn't kept up with demand either, we end up with intolerable congestion. I'd rather copy the European model than the American one, but instead we get the worst of both worlds: insufficient transit and insufficient road capacity.

[bilbao58]

I have a question for Toronto people: What was the reasoning (if any) for not extending the Yonge Street Line all the way to Steeles? "Metro" was already a thing when plans were made for the extension and the northern limit was Steeles, not Finch.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

I have a question for Toronto people: What was the reasoning (if any) for not extending the Yonge Street Line all the way to Steeles? "Metro" was already a thing when plans were made for the extension and the northern limit was Steeles, not Finch.

While I'm not a Toronto resident, I can say that with transit planning here the decisions on how far to extend a route aren't really based on reaching jurisdictional boundaries but rather on travel patterns, the cost relative to expected benefits, and the availability of funding. Sometimes routes aren't as long as transit planners or politicians would like because of difficulty securing the funds, while other times planners choose not to extend past a certain point because they don't feel the expected ridership would warrant the cost.

However, there are current plans to extend the line several km beyond Steeles so the significant growth that has occurred since then means the route segment would get more use.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

...with transit planning here the decisions on how far to extend a route aren't really based on reaching jurisdictional boundaries...

I didn't mean extending to Steeles simply because of the boundary, but that there was no jurisdictional hindrance to extending the line that far. Yonge at Steeles seemed a very logical place for a station. Buses on Steeles could draw riders from both neighborhoods to the south and to the north. Pretty much everything between Leslie and Dufferin on both sides was already there in 1974. Admittedly, though, pedestrian infrastructure north of Steeles was, and still is, abysmal.

If I had been just a couple of years older and had figured out that a subway into the city was less than two miles east by bus, I would have been out of boring Thornhill every chance I could get. (Just as an aside, Thornhill was not so "swanky" then as it is now. All those McMansions in Bayview Glen replaced earlier houses. Bayview Country Club was the most expensive neighborhood then.) My older sister got to go into Toronto without the parents all the time. I know there's a bus that turns at Yonge and connects to the subway at Finch, but there's something about a simple straight shot ride that is more psychologically appealing.

I noticed when looking at plans for the new extension that Steeles is to have a transit center which pretty much confirms (in my mind, at least) what I was thinking.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

One good thing I can say about dealing withToronto is that it takes about 6 months of being back home before I start complaining about our traffic again.

Lol, same here, I was in Montreal yesterday, it's crazier than what it was even recently, now I'm not going to complain about Sherbrooke traffic for a while. (One major overpass is getting redone, it's actually causing significant traffic jams for Sherbrooke, we're not used to that!)

To think that that atrocious Montreal traffic would likely look fluid to a modern Torontonian... wow. I'd just leave my vehicle parked in Kingston, and take a train or bus to TO then do EVERYTHING on foot while there.

[Wigs]

apologies for the crude phone edit of this map.

On the QEW/Queen Elizabeth Way from the Peace Bridge near the border with Buffalo, NY to Toronto the traffic heading westbound to Toronto used to be backed up after one traveled over the Burlington Skyway over Hamilton harbour (shown in blue).

Then it was before you got onto the Burlington Skyway (shown in purple).

Now it's either Grimsby or Beamsville where the traffic begins, a full 30-35 km( 18-22 miles) sooner (shown in red). On terrible days the traffic begins before one has even left St. Catharines city limits on the QEW heading west



In the summer when the hotels in Niagara Falls are full and day trippers from the Greater Toronto Area or elsewhere within 2-3 hour drive head east to spend the day at the Falls, traffic heading eastbound on the QEW can be bottlenecked between St. Catharines and Niagara Falls.

We need all day or at least regular GO Train service between Niagara and Toronto particularly since Niagara's population growth is accelerating with no signs of slowing down and the QEW gets more congestion by the year.

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

I have a question for Toronto people: What was the reasoning (if any) for not extending the Yonge Street Line all the way to Steeles? "Metro" was already a thing when plans were made for the extension and the northern limit was Steeles, not Finch.

Your answer can be found here:

https://transittoronto.ca/subway/5105.shtml

Long and short the idea was considered/then discarded, when the work started the intent was to go only to Sheppard, but was then pushed to Finch largely to create huge commuter parking lots.

[giallo]

I have a car in Vancouver, but rarely drive if I can avoid it. Luckily, I live in a central neighbourhood with good transit options, but every now and then, I have to drive for work-related reasons, and it's a drag. Anyone that's driven between Surrey and Chilliwack on Hwy 1 knows exactly what I'm talking about. Gridlock city.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

Your answer can be found here:

https://transittoronto.ca/subway/5105.shtml

Thanks for the link! I now feel much more informed as well as super old.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Investing more in rapid & active transit infrastructure than in road infrastructure makes perfect sense. The problem in Canada though, is that we tend to cheap out and do neither. Particularly in places like Halifax and Vancouver, where there's an ideological aversion to building highways or expanding road capacity; but transit funding has not been increased accordingly to fill the void. Montreal and Toronto at least have been a little bit more ambitious with their transit projects (while also still building new freeways in the suburbs).

The end result is that getting around by transit is slow and inconvenient in most cases, so people prefer to drive for obvious reasons. But because road infrastructure hasn't kept up with demand either, we end up with intolerable congestion. I'd rather copy the European model than the American one, but instead we get the worst of both worlds: insufficient transit and insufficient road capacity.

Our built form (even in old central cities) is North American so simply importing European ideas isn't optimal. We need to follow a Canadian model tailored to Canadian cities and that seems to be what Canadian urban planners are doing.

As frustratingly slow as things can be, most Canadian municipalities are moving in the right direction. Unfortunately but largely unavoidable, we're in for 20+ years of chaos before intensification, TOD, infrastructure improvements, and pedestrianization efforts hit a tipping point. Building lots more roadway would alleviate current congestion, but it's short sighted, counter-acts attempts to invert the rides share ratio between cars and other forms of commuting, and a colossal waste of money.

If Toronto is to urbanize and become a transit, cycling, and pedestrian oriented city, all that 'new' roadway would have to be torn down again in 20 years. The Ontario Line, Eglinton Crosstown, and GO investments are huge positive steps in that direction but we need to keep our foot on the gas. Eventually, things will get better but this really is our only workable way forward. We need to double down on transit, stay the course, and not give in to drivers demanding even more car infrastructure. Doing so will prolong this mess we're in.

In closing, many criticize our rapid population growth but it's really a blessing in disguise. Without that growth, it would take us far longer to transition our cities from ones built for cars to ones designed for PT, cycling, and walking.