Canada should base infrastructure spree on standardized statistics, experts say
The federal government needs to consider driverless cars and reliable, comparable data before spending, experts say.

TheStar.com
June 9, 2016
David Rider

Toronto experts have advice for the Trudeau government on how to aim an unprecedented $125 billion over 10 years on infrastructure.

Locally developed, internationally accredited statistics can tell Ottawa, the provinces and cities how to squeeze the most benefit from spending on transit and more, say World Council on City Data (WCCD) representatives.

And the federal government risks missing massive opportunities and investing in the wrong resources if it ignores the driverless car revolution just around the corner, says technology expert David Ticoll who, like the WCCD’s Patricia McCarney, spoke Thursday to a smart cities conference.

U of T-based McCarney led a wildly successful effort, now involving 260 cities, to standardize urban data and introduce an international measuring system so cities can be accurately rated and compared on everything from transit to housing to emergency response times and air quality.

For example, research available to everyone through an open-data portal revealed that 49 per cent of Toronto commuters use an alternative to a personal vehicle, while that figure is 79 per cent in London, England. Followup interviews are revealing reasons including trains arriving every 100 seconds in peak times, 24-hour service on some subway lines and modifications to accommodate disabled passengers.

“How do you get solutions to travel across cities and innovate on the ground?” McCarney said in an interview before the World Future Cities conference that continues Friday.

“It’s through comparative data because now on an apples to apples basis. You can start to move solutions and innovation from city to city.”

Former Toronto city manager Joe Pennachetti, now a WCCD adviser, says they have offered to work with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provinces to help target the spending spree with high-calibre data, verified by a third party and collected in a way approved by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization.

“To have an ISO standard for city services — I never would have dreamt it would have happened — it’s huge,” Pennachetti said.

“If the federal (government) wants to have a better indicator for prioritizing infrastructure spending across the country, we’ve got the mechanism to assist them to gather that information and we can quickly develop new indicators as required to get the money rolling.

“For example, I would argue where the pressures of congestion are greatest are where the transit dollars will go the furthest — Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, the cities where congestion is usually horrendous. But data will tell us.”

The commuting demands of Torontonians, however, might look very different when they can summon an automated vehicle with an app, says Ticoll, a distinguished senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affair’s innovation policy lab.

“Sometime in the early 2020s, maybe as early as 2020, we’ll see Uber-like services without drivers appearing in cities,” he said in an interview. “By 2025 in Toronto self-driving cars will be extremely common.”

He says roads can be narrower because computers drive better; the need for on-street parking will virtually disappear; transit will have to be rethought as more low-income people have access to automated taxis, likely transferring them to automated buses; people might be content to commute further unless they face road pricing or other disincentives; and a switch to nonfossil fuels could rocket Canada to its greenhouse-gas emission targets.

“Canada’s infrastructure investments and climate-change plans need to take vehicle automation into account,” Ticoll said.

“It’s an amazing opportunity, with the government on the verge of making two radical investments, to not just write reports but to take action on what’s so obviously coming at us.”