Cherise Burda — May 31, 2010

Do you know your Walk Score? 

No, it's not a fitness test. Walk Score measures the "walkability" of your neighbourhood  - how easy it is to walk to restaurants and grocery stores, rapid transit, a library or community centre, a park or even a hardware store.  The higher your score the better.

I started with my current address in west downtown Toronto - 98 per cent! The website called it a "Walkers' Paradise." Then I got curious about the house where I grew up in Thornhill.  It scored 45.

But my sister and brother-in-law's big house on the scrubby edges of Unionville scored much worse: 15 per cent!  They can't buy a pack of gum without climbing into their minivan and driving to a big box complex. 

The disparity between Canada's walkable urban centres and its car-dependent outer regions is only getting worse, according to a new report Pembina released last week.

The report, called Canada's Coolest Cities, includes six case studies that examine what Canada's largest cities - Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa - are doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles via better transportation and urban planning policies. 

Most of these cities are doing some cool things, such as implementing bike sharing programs, investing in rapid transit lines that connect apartment clusters on the outskirts, making a point of planning more dense communities, and requiring new condos to include charging stations for electric vehicles.

However, in all six cases, these gains were undermined by sprawling development in the broader metropolitan regions, which outpaces accessible transit to serve this booming population.

Between 2001 and 2006, while the cities made progress in some areas, all of the large metropolitan areas studied except for Vancouver got worse: they experienced longer commute times, and now have fewer people living in medium- or high-density communities.

Reversing this trend requires three key solutions: funding transit, allocating population closer to transit, and providing practical choices for commuters.

The province of Ontario just cut funding for transit in the Greater Toronto Area, even though this region needs it more than ever. Decision makers and policy experts need to get together to come up with a long-term funding strategy for transit in all urban areas. The province needs to consider a range of options, including fuel taxes, tolls, congestion charges and cap-and-trade revenues.

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA), for example, has the longest commute times of 19 major cities, including New York and Los Angeles. However, according to a recent OECD report, the GTA is the only city of its size without road tolls or congestion charges to offset the $3.3 billion a year in congestion costs and  to fund transportation alternatives.

But even sustained transit funding isn't going to be successful if commuters still have to get into their cars just to get out of their suburbs and to the nearest rapid transit station. A co-ordinated approach, which includes building walkable communities, is required to turn this ship around.

Getting people to leave the car at home is always a challenge, but if transit is within walking distance we stand a fighting chance. A range of incentives, including employer benefits to take transit, pay-as-you-drive insurance and live-where-you-work mortgage incentives, can make low-carbon transportation a win-win for everyone.

Since communities can't transform into transit-oriented utopias overnight, the solution also needs to include those who still need to drive by providing better options and incentives for people to choose more efficient vehicles, including electric vehicles.

It's all about choice: we need cost-effective options to choose a low-emitting vehicle, safe streets to walk or cycle, access to rapid transit and affordable living in walkable communities.

Achieving this also requires ending subsidies to sprawl and leveling the development playing field, as we recommended in the Driving Down Carbon report we released last month.

If our cities have the vision to implement these actions before our commutes get even longer, everyone will benefit: greenhouse gas emissions will drop, municipalities will reap the rewards of lower infrastructure costs and citizens will be able to spend more time living and less time behind the wheel - and who doesn't want that?

More... |