On Thursday, I couldn’t help but note a lot of stories about Canada’s population growth.
Scratch that.
Canada’s record population growth.
Did you notice too? Or was it just me?
The CBC picked up the story:
“Canada’s Population Grew By Record 1 Million In 2022, Spurred By International Migration”
But of course CBC would pick up the story. It’s huge Canadian news, um, here in Canada.
But would it surprise you to know that it was a story in other places of the world?
You simply can’t imagine how much play this got.
From our neighbours in America, on CNN:
“Canada Sees Record Population Growth In 2022 From Immigration”
And how about from our friends in United Kingdom, over on BBC:
“Immigration Fuels Canada’s Largest Population Growth Of Over 1 Million”
You can even read about the story on an Aussie news feed:
“Canada’s Population Grew By 1 Million In 2022: StatsCan”
I’m willing to bet that if you searched the internet, you’d find this was a story in many news outlets across many countries.
What does that tell you about just how large a story this is or could be?
Many people don’t “do the news.” I know, it’s so boring. How can hard-hitting, far-reaching, impact-having news stories possibly compete for your attention when there’s a teenager from Alabama doing a funny dance on TikTok, or a really great meme of a cat jumping out of a closet on Instagram?
But this news is massive, folks. And it’s going to have a huge impact, not just on us as individuals, but on the economy, the government, on future public policy and taxation, and on how our cities grow and expand over time.
The CBC interviewed one individual who is new to the country and was asked, “What the country needs to deal with a population that’s growing fast.”
Her answer?
“Definitely healthcare, childcare, affordability in general, and having more housing options.”
The irony is: we all know this and have always known this, but she just got here and already knows this!
That’s how obvious these needs are!
According to the CBC report, Canada’s population grew by 1,050,110 in 2023 to 39,566,248.
And as a real estate agent, I can’t help but think that all of these people have one thing in common…
….they all need to live somewhere.
There aren’t enough homes in the country, plain and simple. This is something else that we’ve known for quite some time.
But we also know that we aren’t building fast enough to accommodate the individuals in need of housing, let alone those that will arrive in the country in the near future.
I’ve been saying this for quite some time, even as the mere mention of the facts could be defined by many as “xenophobic,” although I feel on this blog that most of the readers are alright with calling things what they are.
I don’t know that any of us are against immigration, but rather we question the process, planning, and/or lack thereof in both respects.
On Thursday, a fantastic article appeared in the Financial Post on this topic which I’m going to replicate in full so we may discuss:
“Canada On Cusp Of Rental Housing Crisis, Says RBC, As Population Growth Sets Record”
Financial Post
March 23rd, 2023
Alarm bells are sounding again over a housing shortage in Canada, this time in the rental market.
An analysis from RBC Economics warned that unless the pace of construction of rental housing accelerates, the current shortage of 30,000 units could quadruple to 120,000 by 2026. The report’s authors estimated that 332,000 new units will be needed between now and 2026 to achieve a balance between vacancy rates and rental affordability.
The rental market is being squeezed by a couple of factors, said authors Robert Hogue and Rachel Battaglia, including a massive wave of immigration and declining housing affordability due to rising mortgage rates. “With Canada’s immigration targets set at record levels and affordability poised to remain stretched, the pressure isn’t likely to let up,” they wrote.
Statistics Canada helped make their point. The agency reported March 22 that Canada’s population increased 2.7 per cent in 2022, an increase of more than one million people, the biggest increase on record. Further, “immigration accounted for nearly all growth recorded (95.9 per cent),” Statistics Canada said.
Last year was a record year for rental housing construction, with 70,000 units completed, the highest rate of completion in almost a decade. Yet Hogue and Battaglia estimate that construction will need to grow at an annual pace of 20 per cent above last year’s rate to avoid a serious shortage. Calgary and Ottawa-Gatineau recorded the biggest increases in rental stock at 7.4 per cent and 5.5 per cent, respectively.
The smallest increases were in Toronto (2.1 per cent) and Montreal (1.4 per cent), even though the cities are the among the most popular destinations for newcomers.
Despite the increase in 2022, vacancy rates and rental prices have continued to deteriorate across the country, the economists said. For example, the vacancy rate for rental-built housing dropped to 1.9 per cent in 2022, the lowest level in 21 years and the biggest one-year drop in more than three decades, they said.
A healthy vacancy rate is three per cent, RBC said.
Because vacancy is so tight, competition has intensified, lifting rental prices along the way. In Canada, rent for a two-bedroom unit rose 5.6 per cent in 2022. Some of the highest increases were recorded in Ottawa-Gatineau at 9.1 per cent, Toronto at 6.5 per cent, and Calgary at six per cent.
“With high levels of in-migration and a widespread shift to rental housing continuing due to affordability struggles, we don’t see Canada returning to that optimal three per cent vacancy rate without a significant acceleration in supply,” Hogue and Battaglia said.
Still, a separate report from housing website Zoocasa showed that renting remained much more affordable than buying a home.
Zoocasa calculated the monthly mortgage payments versus monthly rent for 21 markets across Canada. It found that owning was cheaper than renting in only two cities, Winnipeg and Quebec City. In Winnipeg, the average monthly rental payment was $1,435, compared with $1,360 for monthly mortgage payments. In Quebec City, rent was $1,355, compared with mortgage payments of $1,300.
The largest spreads between rent and monthly mortgage payments were measured in Vancouver, $3,136 versus $4,361, and Toronto, $2,908 versus $4,499.
Rents have fallen approximately two per cent over the past three months, Zoocasa said, citing data from Rentals.ca. However, the housing platform noted that population continues to “outpace” housing, meaning finding a roof to put over one’s head will remain top of mind for many Canadians.
“The best way to meet current and future demand, as well as provide stability (and hopefully greater affordability) in the rental market is to considerably grow the supply of purpose-built rentals,” said RBC’s Hogue and Battaglia.
The United States Federal Reserve stuck to its guns on March 22, raising interest rates 25 basis point to a 4.75 to five per cent range, despite recent turmoil in the global banking system that had some market participants betting that the Fed would play it safe and hold.
Still, the Fed indicated that it could be close to the end of its unprecedented hiking campaign that began in March last year and lifted rates off of pandemic emergency level lows of zero to 0.25 per cent.
In its statement, the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee said that “some additional policy firming may be appropriate,” leaving open the chance that one more quarter-of-a-percentage-point rate increase, perhaps at the Fed’s next meeting, would represent at least an initial stopping point for the rate hikes.
So the latter half of the article segued off into a conversation about interest rates and monetary policy, but I’m sure you read the first half with gusto.
And if you want to read the full RBC report, there’s a link above.
So are we in a “rental housing crisis?”
Absolutely!
A picture paints a thousand words, folks:
According to the RBC article, with data from the CMHC, we are at the lowest vacancy rate since 2001. And nobody really expects that 1.9% figure to increase, so we might end up with the lowest vacancy rate ever by year’s end.
Is it going to get any better?
Not if the gap continues to widen…
The conclusion to RBC’s report:
The best way to meet current and future demand, as well as provide stability (and hopefully greater affordability) in the rental market is to considerably grow the supply of purpose-built rentals.
Um, ya think?
“Considerably grow the supply of purpose-built rentals.”
And who is going to do this?
The private sector? Unlikely.
The public sector? Perhaps less likely.
Didn’t the City of Toronto just ask the Ontario government for $510 Million in “COVID hangover costs?”
And how did that go?
That was rhetorical.
The Ontario budget didn’t “bail out” the province’s largest city, as you can read HERE.
Maybe some money from the federal government, then?
Um, I don’t know how much is left.
“Trudeau Government Has Spent Most Money Per Person Per Year In Canadian History”
So if it’s not going to be the public sector, then it has to be the private sector, right?
That one wasn’t rhetorical, by the way. And I’m not trying to be condescending, even though I feel as though there might be a small odour of condescension in the air.
But the problems in this housing market, er, “crisis” seem so obvious, especially as they have never changed over the years.
Meanwhile, nobody at any of the three levels of government has really posed a solution.
The first step in problem-solving is identifying a problem, and I feel as though, even though it took a while, we’ve been really good at that. In fact, we’ve been so good at it, that we’ve identified the problem many, many times!
But the second step in problem-solving is, well, implementing solutions.
And I just don’t see any out there.
Do you?
Marina
at 7:49 am
I don’t see how this will get resolved anytime soon. And it’s going to cause further problems. I know at least three people who are not moving, at this rate ever, because their rent is so low and they lose it if they move. I know at least five people who were looking at buying a rental and didn’t due to regulations (bought AirBnB in cottage country and Niagara instead). We can’t “regulate” our way out of this, and announcing small, incremental, and frankly stupid regulations seems to be the only thing the government is willing to do. And people still expect the market to crash because they wished upon a star. It’s cuckoo bananas.
Appraiser
at 9:03 am
A perplexing conundrum to be sure. However, in 1976 when Canada had a population of less than 24 million there were more housing completions than in 2022.
Build Baby Build!!
hoob
at 9:10 am
Hate to break it to you David, but all those “international news feeds” are only showing that content to you because you’re accessing the feed and/or searching from within Canada.
If you accessed the Aussie news while sipping a latte at a cafe in Copenhagen, you probably see news articles out of Melbourne bemoaning the coastal erosion problems around the Baltic sea
JL
at 10:36 am
Well, the good (or terrifying) thing about this is that at some point something has to give or something has to break, so there will be a resolution at some point (i.e. it can’t go on forever without consequence). The problem is it doesn’t look like anyone has a smooth solution, rather the whole system seems to be heading towards the edge of the cliff, and the best we can do is slow the pace and delay the inevitable but without changing the trajectory.
If the government maintains immigration levels but without solving housing (….or health…. or infrastructure), rents and prices will shoot up and the social systems will continue to weaken and fail, causing a social crisis, and through it or in parallel kill off the very incentives to immigrate (economic opportunity and quality of life). One would hope there would be a better solution to a housing imbalance than letting the socio-economic system crash so that it can find its own equilibrium after the dust settles, but that appears to be the path we’re on.
Papa
at 10:40 am
LTB board delays also causing landlords to leave the rental market or go AIRBNB as option.
Luka
at 12:07 pm
It’s incomprehensible to me that somebody who was fortunate enough to immigrate to this country, is already complaining about healthcare, childcare, and housing prices. How was the healthcare where you came from? Why are you breeding children that you can’t afford to support? My parents immigrated to this country in the late 1960’s and spent their whole lives expressing gratitude and working their tails off to support me as an only child. I can’t imagine my father complaining to the media about all the discomforts of Canadian lifestyle after fleeing a war torn country.
QuietBard
at 12:51 pm
To be fair this was a survey conducted by the CBC so they were looking for someone to share their thoughts. We don’t know if the individual was on a personal tirade or just matter-of-factly sharing their opinion. And I’m not sure were it was mentioned them not being able to “afford” children.
QuietBard
at 1:04 pm
Is there a repository of data somewhere that regular people can have access to? I get we have all these experts conducting research studies and present impressive looking charts. But there isn’t really much context given to the stats and especially when compared to history. Why did the vacancy rate fall to 1.7% in the early 2000s? What led to the increase afterwards? Have there been any correlation studies conducted to identify potential factors we can address?
Does any one know how many AirBnb units are available for rent? Is it a sizeable amount? Would it alleviate some pressure on the vacancy rate?
I just read that a new $1B “Vegas Style Casino” is opening in the summer (in Toronto) with 400 units available for rent. I’m assuming these will be for tourists. Will these units be occupied throughout the year? Or is the majority of money just coming from the games and the rest is just “extra” revenue.
Ace Goodheart
at 1:25 pm
The problem with rental housing in Ontario is over-regulation and the general bad mouthing and denigration of anyone who dares to become a landlord.
During COVID, we saw the true state of things. The Provincial government directed tenants to stop paying their rent. Landlords were told to keep the lights on, keep making mortgage payments and property tax payments, and ensure the tenants had a safe, warm and happy place to live (all at the landlord’s own expense).
Many landlords had been thrown out of work by the same government when they ruthlessly closed down small businesses (but for some reason, not large ones) and the added stress of suddenly having the government shut down your monthly rental income stream was too much to bear.
In normal times (when the government is not conducting a full out war against landlords), regulation of the industry is so oppressive that anyone considering getting into the landlord job, really has to consider whether they want to be treated as badly as a landlord usually is.
If your expenses go up (ie, if the City of Toronto doubles your property taxes, and then uses the money to send city staff on expensive trips to obtain business for other sectors of the economy that you don’t, as a landlord, actually benefit from) you have to apply to a tribunal, so as to increase your rent. When you do that, you get pilloried in the press and online, as an evil “rentier” who is sucking the blood from your tenants and their helpless families.
If a tenant does not pay you, you are still required to provide them with fully paid for accommodation, for around a year or so, while you fight in the tribunal for an eviction. Toronto is full of “professional tenants” who know the system. They move in, and then refuse to pay. They know they can stay for a year or more, entirely for free. They do it over and over again.
If you have an older building full of rent controlled tenants, and you want to fix it up, again, you become the “evil landlord”, you have to fight your tenants in court for the right to fix your own property and raise their rents accordingly. Often you lose. The tenants can then complain that the building is a piece of crap, which it likely is, as you are not allowed to renovate it without permission from the tribunal.
Tenants are persons with massive amounts of legal rights, and no responsibility. I remember the story of the apartment building where tenants had decided to create a large garbage pile behind one of the units. Why? No one knew. They didn’t bring their garbage down to the compactor. They just threw it out the windows.
Who was responsible for this? If you said, “the landlord” you are of course, right. A tenant can do as they please. The landlord is to blame.
Another story comes to mind. Two tenants having a war with each other. Things got nasty. Who was to blame? Well, if you said the landlord, congratulations, you win a prize. The landlord was found to be fully to blame, by the human rights tribunal, for not having some sort of policy to deal with tenants who hate each other. They had to pay out damages.
Interestingly enough, the landlord in this case had tried and tried and tried to evict the problem tenants. Tribunal would not let them. And the tenant war continued. Maybe they were supposed to hire an onsite counsellor, for people to talk to if they felt like fighting with other tenants?
The lefties want to regulate the rental industry even more. Get rid of vacancy decontrol (you can’t raise the rent, even if the tenant leaves and another one comes). Force rental prices down. Force property owners to renovate and update at their own expense, offering expensive, newly renovated properties to tenants at below market prices.
The result will always be the same. There will be less and less people willing to do this for a living. No one will want to rent out a property. They are trying to force people to do that now with their “vacant home tax”, which just shows how bad things have gotten.
The only way to increase rental supply is to get rid of all the silly rules.
As for immigration, well, we know how Trudeau makes decisions.
“What would the UN do?”
“What would the World Economic Forum do?”
OK, let’s do that! (even though it won’t work in Canada, he has no plan to make it work, and he is not going to help out at all or even care about the results of his decision).
He is just virtue signalling to certain international organizations that he seems to want to like him.
Artyom
at 2:44 pm
Agree Lefties must be stopped. First the covid paranoia and vaccine genocide and now this it will not stop . We must rid society of scourge.
Ace Goodheart
at 2:52 pm
No…COVID was real, and the vaccines work (the vaccines are the reason why we don’t have COVID lock downs anymore – most people have some immunity to it now).
But rental housing?
Lefties are wrecking it. No one wants to be a landlord. If they completely crush the industry with rules against landlords, that won’t result in more rental housing.
And Trudeau does spend most of his time virtue signaling to a small group of international organizations, with the number one on his virtue signal list being the United Nations.
He never has a plan for anything he does and this is not news.
Remember “the budget will balance itself!” ?
That has been his modus operandi for his entire time as PM. Things will just work out themselves.
Artyom
at 4:31 pm
Covid is real but is a flu vaccines are sham
Youre another leftist snowflake bootlicking the WEF
Disgusting
Ace Goodheart
at 4:50 pm
Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me……
Maybe go buy a truck and find a convoy?
Artyom
at 6:25 pm
You cry and cry about leftists like the little b!tch that you are but you are communist just like the ones you moan about
Swine
Alexander
at 8:26 pm
The figures on the costs of rental and mortgages in Toronto and Vancouver that you mentioned, David, are self explanatory. Why are some investors going to subsidize somebody else’s housing? That’s the government and NGO’s job. And if you add all that mix of landlord squeeze then we are going to have a crisis. I – and everybody in their right mind – not going to touch any investments in rental business unless something is going to change – house prices ( down another 20-30%) , rents ( up 30%) , mortgage rates ( down 40% ) or government landlord/tenant policies.
Buckley B. Buckington
at 1:29 pm
“When you’re stuck in a hole the first thing you should do is stop digging”.
EastYorker
at 5:37 pm
Eventually, people will not be putting up with any of this and emigrate out or not even bother coming here. Third world places are becoming nicer. While Canada degrades itself.
Steph
at 7:17 pm
The problem will never be resolved as long as our country is so deeply divided. As long as the left doesn’t trust the right and the right doesn’t trust the left, everyone might as well be as crazy as Artyom. Artyom is a reminder of how much of a turnoff it is to read a harsh and misinformed opinions. Some of these points are thoughtful, and then they just get overshadowed by exaggerated attacks. Not all landlords are right-wing. And not all lefties (in fact almost none of them in Canada) are communists. And who said anything about the left wanting to fix rents in perpetuity? Which politician actually said that? Obviously that is a bad idea. I think we need to accept that there are extremists (i.e. Artyom), but if we only see two sides, we are getting nowhere fast.
Toad
at 12:01 am
Preach.
I assume most consistent readers here lean right because David does, so the echo chamber is in full effect. But no one will ever admit when the other ‘side’ has a point.
The true problem is that there’s no solution to any of this regardless of which way you lean. Should we accept as much immigration given there’s nowhere to live? Probably not. Do we need immigration to prop up our economy? Probably. Should we just let our population age out and have the bloomers require more resources than the other working generations population size can provide? Probably not. Can we ever build enough for cheap enough to make all of this work? Probably not.
But if we’re embracing capitalism for all of its benefits, we have to be willing to accept it’s downsides… that there’s no rich without lots of poor and suffering. And that the system is never in balance and there’s always a run up to a calamity before anyone/anything changes.
We’ll keep kicking the can down the road until the music stops.
Ace Goodheart
at 9:12 am
Agree completely.
The dialogue has fundamentally been taken over by conspiracy theorists and there is no middle ground anymore.
However, as the topic if the blog deals with rental housing, let’s get back to that.
Ontario is a landlord hell
I got out of the rental industry because of this so I know how it works.
They figure out where you live and they come and protest at your house.
Not your actual tenants. Just random socialists with too much time on their hands.
If it moves, they tax it. If it stops moving, they regulate it. When it dies, they subsidize it.
Ontario’s rental housing industry died a long time ago and is currently and over regulated, subsidized mess.
I was reading an article in the Star where they are discussing putting apartments and subsidized housing into neighbourhoods that only have single family homes.
The idea is, those neighbourhoods are nicer, so if we build high rises there and make them social housing complexes, the folks who live in them will get to live in nice neighbourhoods.
I was thinking “they already tried this with condos”. They bulldozed Toronto’s old neighbourhods, tore down all the restaurants, shops and houses and put concrete towers in their place.
They did that because people wanted to live in the old neighbourhoods.
But the old neighbourhoods are gone. The new neighboirhood is just condo towers. People don’t want to live there. No street life. No restaurants. No culture. No old buildings. All gone.
So the solution is to find another old neighbourhod to bulldoze?
I live in the Junction, where we have a rule about the maximum height of a condo.
The rule works well. Condos are all low rise. They fit into the street scape. It looks good.
But the talk is now getting rid of that height restriction. So they can build the same garbage sky scraper air b n b condos they do downtown.
If the do this, will people complain that our neighbourhood is dead, full of lifeless towers and no one wants to live here?
Then they have to find another neighbourhood to destroy?
Artyom
at 11:25 am
Stop trying to regulate and tell everyone what they can’t do with their land. Youre whining about too tall buildings now?? Youre the worst far leftist of all its insane you try to pretend you are not.
Ace Goodheart
at 5:00 pm
Conspiracy theorists just poison the dialogue.
Can’t discuss a topic without someone going all extreme and ridiculous on you.
For example (you’ll love this one as it has many conspiracy theories attached to it) – the “fifteen minute city”
All this really is, is a tax on mobility.
You cross a certain line, outside of your “fifteen minute zone” and you pay a fee.
The idea is, if you tax people for moving around too much (and too far) then people will choose to work and live within their “fifteen minute zone”.
Why pay a tax to cross the line twice a day to go to work, when you could commute to a job within your fifteen minute zone, for free?
It is really just a carbon tax on mobility.
But the idea requires discussion.
And now that the conspiracy theorists are involved, you can’t discuss it.
They have poisoned the dialogue.
Really folks like you are your own worst enemy.
Artyom
at 5:15 pm
Bla bla bla keep whining about tall buildings snowflake
cyber
at 8:48 am
I love how you accuse others of conspiracy theories, only to spread DUMB conspiracy theory yourself.
15 minute city is NOT a tax on leaving a prescribed zone (LOL). It’s an urban planning concept that one should be able to meet most of their daily needs (living, shopping, recreation, health, education) within 15 minute walk or bike ride. It entails concepts like mixed use, bike lanes, safe pedestrian infrastructure, and yes – a level of density higher than that of a Brampton tract development (in order to support resturants, amenities, etc.) . Literally the whole reason your neighbourhood, Junction, is considered attractive is because it has many of those elements already…
Ace Goodheart
at 2:07 pm
This is all true
However, the 15 minute city concept also deals with making it difficult (ie, expensive) for people to leave their 15 minute zones.
You can read all about it on the World Economic Forum website (which is not a conspiracy theory, it is actually their idea):
They already put it in place in Paris, France, where they are now putting up barriers (such as taxes and fees) to stop people from driving around Paris in cars. The mayor of Paris has famously stated: “We must forget the crossing of Paris from east to west by car”
The idea is, you can go anywhere you like, so long as you do not drive there. So yes, you would not be stopped from WALKING out of your 15 minute zone, however if you tried to drive out, you would be heavily fined. If you really needed to take your car out of your 15 minute zone, then you had to purchase a special permit to do so, and then the government tracks how many times you drive across the line in your vehicle.
This concept has also been put in place in Oxford, UK, where the same sort of restrictions are now operational. If you try to drive a car out of your 15 minute zone, you are caught by a camera, and you are heavily fined. You can leave in a car, but you need to purchase a permit, and the amount of times you come and go is monitored.
This is from the National Post, which recently authored an article on the subject:
“That said, there’s little doubt that certain measures (such as fines and fees for travelling between zones) are meant to make it less convenient or affordable to drive and leave your neighbourhood. For example, in Oxford, U.K., there are fines for driving cars between neighbourhood zones.”
The idea is, as I have stated above, a carbon tax on mobility.
If you own a car and are in the habit of driving more than 15 minutes from your house, you want to pay attention to any attempts to put in place “15 minute cities” in Toronto. Because one of the things that comes with this concept, is traffic cameras and heavy fines for leaving your 15 minute zone, in a car, without permission.
Just consider your life not being able to drive very far, anymore.
Again, the conspiracy theory is that people will be imprisoned in their 15 minute zone, and not allowed to leave. This is absolute nonsense.
The reality is, they want to stop YOUR CAR from leaving, not you. You can walk out or take transit out, any time you like. You just can’t drive your car over the 15 minute zone line.
cyber
at 11:20 am
NO, STOP MAKING STUFF UP! There is literally nowhere in the world that’s placing restrictions, costs, taxes on LEAVING a specific zone.
There are examples where traffic INTO a zone is restricted, and pretty much all of them are related to managing (or trying to manage) congestion and road safety, and have nothing to do with 15 minute city concept. Two most common variations are (1) “downtown zone” that’s restricted entry (e.g. pedestrians only, or just to commercial EVs, or there’s a toll imposed to enter), and (2) a “low traffic neighbourhood” which is meant to restrict traffic and pollution in residential streets, and can range from restricting commercial (truck) traffic on certain streets to having movable barricades that only residents can pass through and to closing down the streets for vehicle traffic alltogether.
A version of #1 is what is being done in Paris, essentially prohibiting cars from driving “through” the historic downtown without stopping. This will cover ~12% of the city’s footprint (i.e. 5.4 square miles out of 40.7 square mile area), while still allowing residents and those with permit.
#2 is what was done in Oxford, and apparently the next step is dividing the city (not physically!) into zones, SOME of which cannot be entered between 7am and 7pm without a residents’ permit or an exemption, or risk paying a fine as license plates will be “read” by cameras during those times. So you can still drive any time of day, but during specific times you may need to take a different route than what you’d perhaps prefer. AGAIN NO ONE IS FINED FOR LEAVING THEIR ‘PRESCRIBED’ ZONE, THEY JUST CANNOT ENTER SPECIFIC ZONES DURING SPECIFIC TIMES OF DAY IF THEY ARE NOT RESIDENT OR HAVE A PERMIT TO DO SO.
I doubt that someone who clearly reads conspiracy “sources” without fact-checking – like yourself – is going to be persuaded, so posting this for the benefit of other TRB readers who may randomly come across your comments and take them at face value, since the level of discourse here tends to be pretty high on average.
What is actually true?
> The world is getting more urbanized, and the existing cities are swelling in population due to being centers of economic opportunity, health and social services, entertainment, etc.
> It is almost impossible, or increasingly prohibitively expensive, to build more surface roads within existing cities. And even where possible, the concept of “induced demand” (Braess paradox in technical circles) makes sure that any extra capacity disappears pretty quickly. This is prety obvious in any highway widening – if a lane is added, traffic flows faster initially; people who did not want to drive more than 1 hr to work now start thinking “I can buy a house further out, and still not spend too much time in traffic”… however enough people have the same idea, so it’s just a matter of time before congestion and delays are back to where we started (or even worse) than before the lane addition. I strongly encourage the “build baby build” crowd to take a gander at Houston suburbs, where there’s practically no restrictions on where one can build houses, so SFH developers have expanded way out. Congestion on the now infamous Katy Freeway was so bad that the state pumped almost $3 BILLION into expanding it to up to 26 lanes (!) at the widest section – within 4 years, the travel times during morning rush hour on two main segments INCREASED by 55% and 30%, respectively.
> So in times of increased demand and more or less “fixed” amount of supply capacity of surface roads, the only solutions – outside letting congestion, pollution, etc. to get worse and worse with time – are to (A) reduce demand (B) better utilize the limited road capacity (C) add capacity where there’s good ROI.
It’s pretty difficult to actually reduce travel demand, i.e. the need to get from point A to point B at a specific time, but it’s possible to affect mode-specific travel demand (i.e. the demand to do so by car). Policies such as “downtown zones” and “low traffic neighbourhoods” DO target car use, but that’s usually combined with exceptions for area residents as well as improvements in cycling infrastructure and better transit service (even if transit service levels remain the same, but there’s fewer cars on the road or a bus-only lane can be added, this makes transit better and more attractive as an option). The target end result is that non-car modes like transit, cycling and walking are CHEAPER, FASTER and MORE CONVENIENT… just imagine life that’s more affordable and convenient due to not having to own a car at all while living in a city with crazy high housing costs?
IT’S NOT A CARBON TAX ON MOBILITY – IT’S A CONGESTION TAX. No different than Toronto Board of Trade endorsing tolls on the DVP and Gardiner because traffic is so bad that it’s literally resulting in massive productivity and income loss… unless they’re also pinko commie climate warriors??? Even in frickin Texas, they started adding “managed toll lanes” on existing free highways – basically, flow of traffic in these lanes is guaranteed at a certain minimum speed at any time, and toll $ amount varies at different times of day in order to meet this guarantee.
I would even argue that these policies are not even a “tax” at all – they’re just a “user fee” to make sure road users who drive individual cars (usually with no other passengers) are paying their fair share for the usage of a limited resource in a high & growing demand scenario and not being subsidized by others. If people want the luxury of driving a car, which takes up maybe 1/5 of the road surface area than a bus but operates at 1/100 of the bus’ capacity, in situations where roads are congested and demand on them is exceeding the capacity, then maybe those car drivers should pay – with time, money, or both – for being ~20x more ‘wasteful’ users or our limited road assets… since we’re all paying the same property taxes.
Is someone being a massive hypocrite? Expecting low traffic and unlimited free road use & cheap/free parking for themselves like it’s Toronto in 1990, but – as a landlord – certainly not even thinking about charging 1990 rents if a unit comes vacant in 2023 and there’s more demand for a limited supply of housing…
Artyom
at 11:21 am
Because you don’t like what I say I am now extremist?? Do your research and you will see I am proven to be correct
Ridiculous
Vancouver Keith
at 11:20 pm
500,000 immigrants. That means we need 160,000 units of new housing completed. Plus more schools, more doctors, bigger highways. We bring in population to grow the economy. I see it as an intergenerational ponzi scheme, because when the current young people are old, they’ll need even more immigration to pay the bills. It will all end badly.