In order to address the…

In order to address the systemic urban problems of high cost of living, safety, and green house gas emissions, we would be best off transitioning toward dense, pedestrian oriented urban form (Rode et al., 2017). As cities densify, it become less practical for private vehicles to be the main mode of transportation given the amount of space they consume (Will et al., 2020). The Bill 212 - Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act, 2024 prioritizes private vehicles over more resource efficient methods of transportation (such of cycling). Consequently, Toronto and other impacted urban centers will shift towards a more expensive, dangerous and resource intensive urban form.

Having a mix of transportation options that includes active transport features like dedicated bike lanes improves the safety of our streets. The organization Strong Towns, founded by a transportation engineer, explains how streets are meant to facilitate people and be places of diverse economic activity, while roads are meant to quickly move vehicle traffic. We need roads to move goods and facilitate long range transportation but places like Yonge street and Bloor street best serve Toronto as economically productive streets. Trying to maximize the ‘level of service’ for vehicles on inner city streets causes them to become what is derogatorily known as stroads. Stroads don’t function well as a street or a road, have less economic productively per square kilometer and have more pedestrian fatalities (Marohn, 2019; Marohn, 2021).

Bill 212 will increase the cost of living due to the high infrastructure costs and subsequent infrastructure maintenance costs that is required for ubiquitous private vehicle transportation (Müller et al., 2013). Facilitating a mix of transportation options that includes cycling, transit, and walking consumes less land (Will et al., 2020) and decreases the overall cost of transportation (Litman, 1995). Bill 212 will also increase green house gas emissions per person both due to the increased amount of infrastructure required per person and incenting car transportation (Norman et al., 2006; Bart, 2010; Jones and Kammen, 2014). A recent study by Turner et al., (2024) comparing sprawling single detached home development to compact no sprawl development in the greater golden horseshoe between 2023 and 2030 found that the sprawl development scenario led to an additional 2 MT of carbon emitted annually.

Please consider the glut of research that proves that shifting our city towards a dense, mixed use form with a variety of transportation options is more economically productive, safer and more environmentally friendly.

References

Bart, I. L. (2010). Urban sprawl and climate change: A statistical exploration of cause and effect, with policy options for the EU. Land use policy, 27(2), 283-292.

Jones, C., & Kammen, D. M. (2014). Spatial distribution of US household carbon footprints reveals suburbanization undermines greenhouse gas benefits of urban population density. Environmental science & technology, 48(2), 895-902.

Litman, T. (1995). Land use impact costs of transportation. World Transport Policy and Practice, 1(4), 9-16.

Marohn Jr, C. L. (2019). Strong towns: A bottom-up revolution to rebuild American prosperity. John Wiley & Sons.

Marohn Jr, C. L. (2021). Confessions of a recovering engineer: transportation for a strong town. John Wiley & Sons.

Müller, D. B., Liu, G., Løvik, A. N., Modaresi, R., Pauliuk, S., Steinhoff, F. S., & Brattebø, H. (2013). Carbon emissions of infrastructure development. Environmental science & technology, 47(20), 11739-11746.

Norman, J., MacLean, H. L., & Kennedy, C. A. (2006). Comparing high and low residential density: life-cycle analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Journal of urban planning and development, 132(1), 10-21.

Rode, P., Floater, G., Thomopoulos, N., Docherty, J., Schwinger, P., Mahendra, A., & Fang, W. (2017). Accessibility in cities: transport and urban form. In Meyer, G., & Shaheen, S. (Eds.) Disrupting Mobility, Lecture Notes in Mobility (pp. 239-273). Springer International Publishing.

Turner, C., Allen, J., Chapple, K., Smith, S. (2024). Land Use Planning to Mitigate Climate Change in the Greater Golden Horseshoe: An Analysis of Potential Scenarios. Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance, School of Cities, University of Toronto, 55 St. George St., Suite 853, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Will, M. E., Munshi, T., & Cornet, Y. (2020). Measuring road space consumption by transport modes: Toward a standard spatial efficiency assessment method and an application to the development scenarios of Rajkot City, India. Journal of Transport and Land Use, 13(1), 651-669.