Why traffic jams are a good thing

Local traffic congestion signals the presence of people, money and activity.

Thestar.com
July 11, 2017
By Christopher Hume

All the great cities of the world - and many that aren’t so great - are awash in congestion. Toronto is no exception. The difference is that some cities deal with it more effectively than others.

Despite what most of us believe, however, congestion is a sure sign of a vibrant city. Congestion is good. This isn’t to say that traffic flow can’t be improved - it can - but the idea that congestion can be eliminated is misguided at best, hubristic and destructive at worst.

Congestion is the price of urban success. A city without congestion is a city no one wants to live in or visit.

But in an effort to reduce congestion, cities, especially North American cities, have wreaked enormous havoc on themselves. Heritage buildings and thriving neighbourhoods have been demolished to make way for urban highways, parking lots and the like. Again, Toronto is no exception.

Not only did these extreme measures fail to reduce congestion, they made it worse. And in the process, they damaged and destroyed cities across the continent.

Though the worst excesses of the car-crazed 1950s, ’60s and ’70s are over, our obsession with congestion persists, as does faith in our ability to do fix it. All would be well if only we could widen the roads, adjust the traffic lights, stop illegal parking, enlarge the expressways . . .

Some cities have introduced congestion fees to discourage downtown driving. Others have increased the cost of parking. Some have eliminated parking spots. Some tax cars beyond the reach of all but its richest inhabitants. Some levy vehicle registration fees.

Smart cities have adopted, even prioritized, other forms of mobility. Bicycles are now a feature in many cities; even Toronto has moved timidly in that direction.

But the best weapon in the anti-congestion arsenal remains transit. In this regard, Toronto has not fared so well. We have wasted decades and continue to fall behind because of political interference, bad planning, an outdated governance structure and social attitudes that see transit as the mobility equivalent of subsidized housing.

Prejudice against public transit is most pronounced in suburban cities where car-dependency is built into the physical and mental infrastructure. In an act of singular stupidity, Brampton turned down a fully provincially-funded LRT line worth between $300 million and $400 million. Hamilton council voted in favour of an LRT, but only after long and acrimonious debate that exposed widespread opposition to the proposal.

Even Toronto - Canada’s largest city - elected Rob Ford who as mayor famously fought against any form of public transit except subways. He liked subways because in his mind they were underground and out of the way of cars and trucks. Despite his cluelessness, Ford’s agenda still dominates Toronto politics. Thanks to him, the city and province have committed more than $3 billion to an unjustifiable subway in low-density Scarborough.

At the same time, the spread of sprawl means that more GTA residents now get around by car than transit. This in turn has led to an increase in regional congestion, which unlike local congestion, does not indicate economic and social vitality. Local congestion is good for business; it signals the presence of people, money and activity. Regional congestion, by contrast, implies the opposite.

As Ryerson University’s Matthias Sweet put it, “while regional congestion appears to be a drag, local congestion appears to function as an amenity — implying that there is truth in the competing notions among engineers and economists of congestion as a diseconomy and among urban designers of congestion as an amenity.”

Needless to say, the argument that congestion is an “amenity” doesn’t sit well with drivers stuck in endless traffic jams. Still we should be wary of efforts to remake the city for the sake of reducing congestion. “When the congestion warriors have won,” Milwaukee’s former mayor John Norquist wrote in CityLab, “the results aren’t often pretty. Detroit, for example, has lots of expressways and widened streets and suffers from very little congestion. Yet no one would hold up Detroit as a model.”

It’s one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenarios; Toronto without congestion would be a dream come true. But Toronto without the causes of congestion - jobs, shops, cultural attractions, neighbourhoods, other people - would be a nightmare.

Few have expressed the congestion paradox more eloquently than Yogi Berra. “No one goes there anymore,” he said about a restaurant in St. Louis. “It’s too crowded.”