{"id":3462,"date":"2014-01-21T14:40:24","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T19:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vivanext.com\/blog\/?p=3462"},"modified":"2014-01-21T14:40:24","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T19:40:24","slug":"time-is-money-why-gridlock-hurts-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/21\/time-is-money-why-gridlock-hurts-us-all\/","title":{"rendered":"time is money: why gridlock hurts us all"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How to reduce the gridlock in the Greater Toronto Area is a topic that is getting a lot of air-time from commentators of all descriptions.\u00a0 And for good reason \u2013 gridlock has been described by the Toronto Board of Trade as costing the GTA\u2019s economy more than $6 Billion a year.<\/p>\n

How those numbers are calculated, and what lies behind them, isn\u2019t always so clear. \u00a0One of the best breakdowns that I have read is the paper developed by the Toronto Board of Trade last year urging governments to invest more in transit. The paper, called Let\u2019s Break the Gridlock<\/a> <\/em>provides this description of how gridlock costs us all time \u2013 and how that time costs money.<\/p>\n

The biggest concern about gridlock in Toronto from an economic perspective is that the increasingly clogged roads slow down business, and therefore undermine profits.\u00a0 These so-called \u201ccongestion costs\u201d affect different industries in different ways, each with their own price tag.\u00a0 For example, in an economy that is increasingly based on \u201cjust in time\u201d strategies, businesses order extra stock or supplies or equipment as it is needed instead of warehousing it. But if the delivery is unreliable, businesses will need to order earlier, tying up money in extra goods and paying for warehousing.\u00a0 That costs extra money, and those increased prices will be passed on to the customer.<\/p>\n

Another huge price tag associated with gridlock is how long it takes businesses to actually move their goods around.\u00a0 The congestion costs hurt businesses in many ways such as increased shipping and fuel costs, higher labour costs per shipment due to less productive drivers, and reduced travel speeds.\u00a0 Big shippers who need to deliver their products to small businesses throughout the GTA, for example soft-drink bottlers who need to make deliveries to many small convenience stores and restaurants across the region, face significantly higher costs due to congestion, and the snarled roads their drivers travel.\u00a0 They can make fewer deliveries per day, and each delivery costs more.<\/p>\n

And for employers, employee recruitment is negatively impacted by the difficult commutes faced by so many in the GTA.\u00a0 As the Board of Trade paper notes, the lack of transit is a serious barrier for employers in hiring skilled young professionals. \u00a0And nowhere is this problem more severe than in the 905 areas, where employers have realized that the lack of rapid transit actually adds to the cost of doing business in the suburbs.\u00a0 In fact, employers are increasingly seeing the benefits of having nearby transit, so that they can attract the best employees.<\/p>\n

With this last reason in mind, we\u2019re fortunate that York Region is planning for the future with vivaNext.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to have great rapid transit when the construction is complete, so that people can move around our region and make convenient connections across the GTA.\u00a0 And with every full viva vehicle, we can get 70 cars off the road, which will reduce congestion for everyone.<\/p>\n

Defeating gridlock is going to take time, and vision, and money. \u00a0But given the huge price congestion is already costing, there\u2019s really no alternative.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to reduce the gridlock in the Greater Toronto Area is a topic that is getting a lot of air-time from commentators of all descriptions.\u00a0 And for good reason \u2013 gridlock has been described by the Toronto Board of Trade as costing the GTA\u2019s economy more than $6 Billion a year. How those numbers are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,30,187,1,19],"tags":[39,18,76,350,14,34,13,939,7,9],"class_list":["post-3462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-rapidways","category-studies","category-uncategorized","category-urban-planning","tag-bus-rapid-transit","tag-city-planning","tag-congestion","tag-growth","tag-rapid-transit","tag-rapidway","tag-toronto","tag-urban-planning","tag-vivanext","tag-york-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3462"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3467,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions\/3467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}