US » Ren Thomas

Whitopias

Many researchers are concerned about ethnic concentrations in our cities, particularly in the US. Researcher Rich Benjamin’s latest book Searching for Whitopia: an Improbable Journey into the Heart of White America, examines why the fastest-growing areas in the US are also the whitest. He defines “whitopias” as areas that are over 75% white, and for the book he focused on places with a higher than 6% growth rate since 2000. The idea was also raised by Bill Bishop, who wrote The Big Sort (2008) which documents the trend for Americans to live in increasingly homogenous communities where everyone has the same religious and political values. Both authors agree that this is bad for Americans; Bishop’s book is subtitled “Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” It seems like Richard Sennett was right after all.

Decades ago in The Uses of Disorder (1970) Sennett argued that suburbs were a fascist social control that created a more intolerant society, one that was more individual-based rather than community-based. He wrote that suburbs tended to exacerbate the natural inclination of people to associate with others with similar values, even banding together to exclude people of different cultures and religions.

In the US, Bishop and Booth write that the roots for this type of voluntary segregation can be seen in the 1960s, when the courts demanded integration of African Americans and “white flight” first began. Recently, minorities are increasing in the inner suburbs fairly close to city centers, spurring whites to flee to exurban areas, which can be over an hour from the city. Benjamin says that many of these are older white Americans who fear an increasing role of government and a loss of power in the face of demographic shifts. Older whites traditionally have more political power because they are more likely to vote, but as of 2042 whites will no longer be the majority in the US.

Echoing Sennett, both Bishop and Benjamin argue that segregation into class-based, race-based neighbourhood leads to more clashes between groups, as each becomes entrenched in its own position and values. Bishop writes that this type of stalemate leads to some innovative policy at the metropolitan and state levels, but a lack of transformative change in the US.

The argument is very interesting from a Canadian viewpoint, where many of our suburban areas are very mixed because of our consistently high immigration rates. Unfortunately, no author has taken on a book-length discussion on growth rates and ethnicity in Canadian cities, but there is plenty of statistical evidence that shows Canada moving in a very different direction than the US. In Metro Vancouver, suburban municipality Port Moody had the highest growth rate in the region, followed by Surrey. Richmond and Vancouver had much lower rates but are still around 6%.

Immigration landings confirm that the vast majority of these immigrants have come from Asia, particularly mainland China and Hong Kong. Statistics Canada Community Profiles show that the proportion of immigrants is significant even in traditionally “whiter” mid-sized cities: 20% of Victoria’s population is foreign-born, as is 21% of London’s and 15% of Kelowna’s. However, visible minorities make up only 12% of Victoria’s population, 14% of the population in London and 6% in Kelowna.

Despite the mixture of ethnic groups in Canadian suburbs, the tendency towards locating among people with similar values can clearly be seen in Canadian elections. Cities emerge as islands of Liberal and NDP support in a country that has had a Conservative minority government since 2006. Have a look at southern Ontario or Vancouver in the 2008 federal election. Even Vancouver’s municipal election results show sharp dividing lines between those supporting Gregor Robertson for mayor versus Peter Ladner. Some even argue that the periodic redrawing of census tracts is linked to political agendas, but given the housing affordability crisis in most Canadian cities, it seems that the political and ethnocultural trends is less tied to cultural preferences than the geography of affordable housing.

At any rate, there are some obvious differences between Canadian and American cities, notably in the spatial concentration of ethnic populations and the absence of sharp ethnic divides. While Bishop and Benjamin trace this to civil rights era, the issue clearly goes further back to a history of slavery in the US. Canada, while having its own history of racist legislation, does not have as long of a history of non-white settlement. The Immigration Act of 1952 was the first to allow people from non-European countries to enter the country, and by that time there were fewer legal restrictions to owning land and buying property. By 1967, with another major shift in the Immigration Act, a new wave of non-white immigrants entered the country. However, they were never faced with legal barriers to homeownership or the labour market, two considerable barriers for African Americans in the US that remain entrenched today. Earlier non-white populations in Canada, notably Sikhs and Chinese in British Columbia, faced much harsher restrictions and still have the highest rates of segregation in the country today. These differences in immigration and labour market policy mean that our segregation rates are much lower than those seen in the US, yet another reason to think twice before applying American theory and reality to our own cities.

Benjamin’s and Bishop’s books do make us think about the fractured populace living just south of the border, and urge us to do more to help new immigrants integrate into their lives in Canada. Every time I travel to the US for a conference and listen to researchers documenting entrenched segregation, labour market barriers, and the “racial” biases unearthed during the mortgage crisis, I am reminded how different our countries are. This is particularly significant in my own research with immigrants in Toronto, which has introduced me to the work of many brilliant Canadian researchers and opened my eyes to our lower spatial segregation rates and more mixed neighbourhoods. However, I am also reminded of how much work still lies ahead for Canadians in recognizing immigrants’ foreign credentials, ensuring greater income equity, and promoting more tolerance in the workplace. We also need to recognize that sharp divides in tenure, such as the growth of luxury condominiums in neighbourhoods next to predominantly rental and low-income housing, can foster critical differences in political affiliation. As Sennett argued almost 40 years ago, the more isolated we are the more intolerant we become.

The politics of health care

Health care is a polarizing issue; it always has been. Because it is a service that is offered privately in some places and publicly in others, there is an ongoing debate about its ethics, its efficiency, and its reliability. The ethical debate is simple: in countries with private health care, the rich receive much better treatment than the poor. The efficiency debate is more complex: most argue a publicly-funded system is more efficient, saves costs, and treats all patients equally, while others argue the private system is superior. Reliability is a characteristic that is frequently brought up in health care discussions: wait times, availability of general practitioners, availability of equipment. But it often is difficult to get behind the political double-speak to the reality of health care provision.

Health care is a crucial factor in planning more socially equitable cities and regions because anyone can be affected by health problems or accidents, and public health care protects the middle and lower classes from bankruptcy and homelessness. Before the US mortgage crisis, medical bills were the leading cause of bankruptcy in the country, affecting 2 million people annually (this 2005 Harvard study showed that three quarters of these had health insurance at one time, 56% were middle class and over half had attended college). A 2009 study published in the American Journal of Medicine reported that 62% of bankruptcies in the US were due to medical bills and 80% of these people had health insurance. A 2008 study in Health Matrix: American Journal of Law-Medicine showed that for 49% of homeowners going through foreclosure, the foreclosure was caused by illness, unmanageable medical bills, lost work due to a medical problem, or caring for sick family members.

The biggest debates at the moment are happening in the US, the only industrialized country that does not have public health care. US President Barack Obama has been getting a lot of flack for his proposed health care reforms, which would introduce a government-run insurance program to make health care more affordable. Obama’s approval ratings have fallen nine percent since July 2009, to 52 percent, which critics say shows waning support for a national health care program. Because of our proximity, the US and Canadian systems are constantly being compared. The scary thing is that while many Americans are terrified of the Canadian system, pro-economy Canadian politicians want our system to be more like the Americans’, with private clinics offering services such as MRIs in Quebec. American politicians will cite long wait times for surgeries and MRIs, inability to find a general practitioner, and rumoured higher costs as evidence that public health care doesn’t work. However, these comparisons are faulty for several reasons.

The myths demystified

First, the long wait times have only existed since 1996, when the Liberal government, faced with a budget shortfall due to a prolonged economic recession, cut overall spending levels and merged health care transfer payments to the provinces with transfers for other social programs. Serious cuts were also made to federal housing programs and education, resulting in an erosion of the social welfare state. These cuts, in addition to an aging population and high inflation rates in health costs, have caused problems with the system such as fewer available beds, shorter recovery time for surgeries, and increased workload for doctors and nurses. Fees have also been introduced for certain services such as travelling to a hospital by ambulance, eye exams, and physiotherapy. In BC and Ontario, each resident now pays a health premium annually. But the government has made significant strides in reducing these wait times: in 2004 a $5.5 billion Wait Time Reduction Fund was established and most provinces now have websites that allow us to check on wait times for specific services in our areas. Long wait lists are not a form of government rationing, as some Americans believe, but an unfortunate side effect of decreased government spending on health care. The wait lists, rather than prioritizing wealthier patients, ensure that all patients have equal access to scarce and high-demand services. Most health statistics in Canada are at or above the OECD average, including life expectancy, infant mortality, perinatal mortality, and percentage of health care costs paid by government. On the contrary, health care in the US is consistently ranked the lowest in the developed world by organizations as venerable as the World Health Organization.

Second, there are many studies showing private health care is much more expensive. Malcolm Gladwell, in a 2005 New Yorker article, wrote that “One of the great mysteries of political life in the United States is why Americans are so devoted to their health-care system.” He writes that efforts have been made to introduce universal health care six times: during the First World War, the Depression, the Truman and Johnson Administrations, the Senate in the 1970s, and the Clinton years. Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193; the US spends more than a thousand dollars per capita per year—close to four hundred billion dollars—on health-care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada spends only about three hundred dollars per capita.

In 2005, Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program said that “The paradox is that the costliest health system in the world performs so poorly. We waste one-third of every health care dollar on insurance bureaucracy and profits while two million people go bankrupt annually and we leave 45 million uninsured. With national health insurance (‘Medicare for All’), we could provide comprehensive, lifelong coverage to all Americans for the same amount we are spending now and end the cruelty of ruining families financially when they get sick.” This year, the World Health Organization showed that the US spends 12.7% of its GDP on health expenditures, well above the worldwide average of 8.7% and 3.4% in South-East Asia. Canada spent 10.5% of its GDP on health expenditures in 2007. A 2007 report from the Coalition for Health Care said that national health expenditures were expected to outpace the growth of the GDP. The higher costs get in the US, the more people are uninsured.

Third, because we have the world’s most inflated health care costs just across the border, many of our more profit-hungry doctors are lured south. This means fewer doctors for Canadians, particularly general practioners. This, in addition to rampant health care cuts by successive neoliberal governments, is the reason for our doctor shortages.

I may as well put to rest other myths of universal health care voiced by the American public and mocked in Michael Moore’s Sicko: yes, we can choose our own doctors. No, the government will not force euthanasia on you. No, we’re not communists. And no, the economy will not collapse if universal health care is introduced.

As Gladwell writes, “moral hazard”, the idea that insurance can change the behaviour of the person insured, has become entrenched in American economic thought, policy and legislation. If Americans had universal health care, the idea goes, they would “waste” it; making them pay for it ensures it’s only used when it’s really necessary. But this only works if we treat health care like a consumer product, which it plainly is not: we only go to the doctor when we’re sick, and even then, we don’t really want to go. And there’s no way of knowing when a visit to the doctor could make sound economic sense: in the case of having moles checked for skin cancer, or having regular Pap smears. Early detection could save the health care system a good deal of money. Many insurance companies have moved to the “actuarial model” which charges more to insured people with serious health conditions, and their employers, basically guaranteeing that, in many states, these people cannot get health insurance. Under the social-insurance model, which Canada, Germany, the UK, Japan, and all other industrialized nations follow, everyone pays equally into health care, and everyone benefits equally.

The long fight for universal health care: Tommy Douglas

The reality is that health care has always been a political issue, and not just in the US. Tommy Douglas, the “father of health care” in Canada, fought long and hard to achieve universal health care in 1961. Douglas was leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942 and premier of Saskatchewan from 1944-1961. The fact that Douglas led the first socialist government in North America was intrinsically tied to his bold introduction of universal health care. There was also a personal connection: Douglas injured his leg at age 10 and developed osteomyelitis. He would have lost the leg to amputation had a local doctor not seen the condition as a good subject for his students, agreeing to treat Douglas for free. Unable to volunteer for service during WWII due to the old leg injury, Douglas set his sights on health care reform.

Douglas attended Brandon College to prepare for his future as a Baptist preacher. He was attracted to the social gospel movement, which fused Christian principles with social reform. While in his religious capacities at Calvary Baptist Church in Weyburn, Saskatchewan during the Great Depression, Douglas became a social activist and joined the CCF. He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1935. He led the CCF to provincial victory on June 14, 1944, winning 47 of 53 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan. They won five straight victories until 1960, and were responsible for the creation of the publicly-owned Saskatchewan Power Corporation; Canada’s first publicly-owned car insurance service; a large number of Crown Corporations; legislation that allowed unionization of the public service; a significant passage of the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights that preceded the adoption the UN’s Bill of Rights by 18 months; and the first program in Canada to offer free hospital care to all citizens. Thanks to the postwar boom, the Douglas government also paid off the huge public debt left by the previous Liberal government and achieved a government surplus.

In 1958, newly elected Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, also from Saskatchewan, promised that any province seeking to introduce a hospital plan would receive fifty cents on the dollar from the federal government: this promise was renewed in 1959. The Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Bill was introduced in October 1961 and given Royal Assent in November, while Douglas went on to lead the newly formed New Democratic Party. Woodrow Lloyd became his successor as premier of Saskatchewan.

On May 1st, 1962, the Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Act was to be adopted, but the province’s doctors went on strike and 90% closed their offices, forcing Lloyd to delay adoption of the act. The government brought in doctors from Britain, the United States and other provinces in order to staff community clinics set-up to meet demand for health services. The Act was passed July 1st, 1962. By mid-July some of the striking doctors returned to work. Lord Taylor, a British physician who had helped implement the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, was brought in as a mediator and the “Saskatoon Agreement” ending the strike was signed on July 23, 1962. As a result of the agreement, amendments to the Act were introduced allowing doctors to opt-out of Medicare and raising fee payments to doctors under the plan, as well as increasing the number of physicians sitting on the Medical Care Insurance Commission. By 1965, most doctors favoured the continuation of Medicare. The strike was a significant test for Medicare. Its failure allowed the program to continue and the Saskatchewan model was adopted throughout Canada within a decade. The political divisions within the province aggravated by the strike contributed to the Lloyd’s government defeat in the 1964 provincial election. However, even though the Saskatchewan Liberal Party of Ross Thatcher had opposed the plan, Medicare was so popular that Thatcher’s government left it in place.

The program’s success led Diefenbaker to appoint Justice Emmett Hall, a noted jurist who also hailed from Saskatchewan, to chair a Royal Commission on Health Services in 1962. In 1964, Hall recommended the nationwide adoption of Saskatchwan’s model of public insurance. The program was created in 1966 under Lester B. Pearson’s minority government, with the NDP, who held the balance of seats, putting significant pressure on the Liberals. The federal government was to pay 50% and the provinces the rest. In 1984, the Canada Health Act was passed, prohibiting user fees and extra billing by doctors.

The moral dilemma

As Gladwell writes, the universal health care question is really quite simple: “Do you think that redistribution of risk is a good idea? Do you think that people whose genes predispose them to depression or cancer, or whose poverty complicates asthma or diabetes, or who get hit by a drunk driver, or who have to keep their mouths closed because their teeth are rotting ought to bear a greater share of the costs of their health care than those of us who are lucky enough to escape such misfortunes?”

As a Canadian whose parents (both registered nurses) immigrated to the country the year universal health care was introduced, I’m proud to say that we do not feel this way. Canadians, including Shirley Douglas, daughter of Tommy Douglas, have rallied to save our publicly-funded health care system throughout recessions and political changes. A 2009 poll by Nanos Research found 86.2% of Canadians surveyed supported or strongly supported “public solutions to make our public health care stronger.” A 2009 Harris/Decima poll found 82% of Canadians preferred their healthcare system to the one in the United States, more than ten times as many as the 8% stating a preference for a US-style health care system for Canada. A Strategic Counsel survey in 2008 found 91% of Canadians preferring their healthcare system to that of the US. In the same poll, when asked “overall the Canadian health care system was performing very well, fairly well, not very well or not at all?” 70% of Canadians rated their system as working either “well” or “very well”. Since the passage of the 1984 Canada Health Act, the Canadian Medical Association has been a strong advocate of a publicly-funded health care system, including lobbying the federal government to increase funding, and being a founding member of (and active participant in) the Health Action Lobby (HEAL), although some provincial medical associations would like to see a larger private role. Tommy Douglas was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 1998 and voted “Greatest Canadian” in a nationwide Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) contest in 2004.

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go bankrupt or lose their home because they get sick. Period.

Housing as consumer product

Housing has for decades been a major component of economic growth–and economic decline–in Canada and the US. The recent economic downturn was linked to the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, in a bid to encourage low-income renters to move into the housing market since house prices declined after September 11, 2001. While Canada wasn’t hit as hard (Canada Mortgage and Housing’s zero-down-payment mortgage only lasted from 2004-2008), every time the housing market threatens to level off, the Bank of Canada lowers the interest rate. Why are we so obsessed with housing as an investment? Why do policy, government programs, and society in general insist that homeownership is necessary? Shouldn’t housing’s postwar definition as a consumer product come secondary to its role as primary shelter?

While I harbour a fascination for conspiracy theories, this isn’t one. Before WWII, renting a home was the norm in Canada. But the National Housing Act was revised in 1944, and the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation established in 1946. Like the FHA in the US, CMHC effectively controlled the physical design of suburbs because it directly insured residential mortgages and gave grants for social housing. It was basically a national planning agency with strong regulatory and financial power, the first to ever exist in Canada. Throughout the 1940s, Canadian planners began using Chicago School principles to identify neighbourhoods “decaying” or “blighted”. Usually these were areas with a large proportion of older, poorly maintained multifamily housing tenanted by the poor, immigrants, and renters. Urban renewal schemes, and their corrollaries, suburban housing developments, took off in the 1950s. Homeowners were redefined as wealthier, more stable, more family-oriented…and housing was redefined with the single-family home in the suburbs being the ideal.

While homeownership grew in prestige, renting declined. Steadily, the federal government and the renamed Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation have removed subsidies for rental housing, affordable housing and decreased its role in the development of other types of housing such as co-operatives and cohousing. The passing of Condominium Acts in the 1970s sealed the fate of rental housing: able to outbid rental developers and access federal and provincial subsidies, condo developers have changed the face of high-rise living in Canadian cities. In 2006, 10.9% of homeowners in Canada lived in condos, more than double the 4% who owned condos in 1981. Interestingly, the highest condo ownership rates were seen in Vancouver, Abbotsford, Victoria, and Kelowna. Single-person households traditionally have lower homeownership rates (52.2% in 2006 were renters), and they are one of the most rapidly-growing household types in the country. According to the 2006 Census, Canada’s homeownership rate that year was 68.4%, its highest since 1971. J. David Hulchanski, Director of the Center for Urban and Community Studies at University of Toronto, believes that high ownership rates are the direct result of federal and provincial housing policies that subsidize ownership over renting.

We’re often told that housing is a good investment. But a lot of that depends on where you buy and when you need to sell: what if you buy in a neighbourhood whose value doesn’t increase substantially? And what if you need to sell…well, now? Richard Florida recently compared US house prices in 300 cities and found on average, a 15% drop in prices from 2006-2009. Cities with an even greater price drop include L.A., San Francisco, Phoenix, Miami, Chicago, and Washington, D.C; prices didn’t drop as quickly in New York, Portland, Seattle, Baltimore, Boston, or Houston.

While housing may be a great long-term investment, should that be its primary purpose? What about the right of Canadians to suitable, affordable, and adequate housing? Housing affordability in Canadian cities is a major issue. From 2001-2006, housing costs increased by 12% for renters and 22% for owners. A quarter of homeowners spent over 30% of their incomes on housing, which is one of the three characteristics CMHC uses to measure core housing need (suitability, affordability, and adequacy). In 2006, half (50.1%) the households over the affordability threshold were renters and 41% were homeowners with mortgages. In 2001, renters were four times as likely as owners to be in core housing need. Other major groups in core housing need include those living in Canada’s largest cities, Aboriginals, the elderly, single-parent households, immigrant households, and those whose incomes are less than $20,000/year. These trends and the meteoric rise in housing prices in Canadian cities until last year mean that more people are buying housing merely to “flip” the next year, selling at a higher price to make a profit. This unrestrained profiteering further erodes affordability, although the recent economic decline has temporarily increased housing affordability in Canada.

Nearly 6 out of 10 homeowners in 2006 had a mortgage, which means big business for banks and for CMHC, which corners 70% of the mortgage market plus mortgage insurance (necessary for anyone who puts less than 20% down on their mortgage). Unlike our friends south of the border, Canadian homeowners cannot deduct mortgage interest from their taxes. While we may not have a mortgage crisis here, mortgage debt is very significant for many Canadian homeowners. Housing affordability concerns have started to edge out the market’s need for ever-increasing prices.

It’s particularly interesting that what’s good for renters is not good for owners. When housing prices rise, rents rise as well. This leaves owners richer if they decide to sell, and renters poorer. When interest rates rise, fewer people can afford to buy, which forces more people to stay in rental housing, lowering the vacancy rate. But these high rates also prevent developers from building new rental housing to fill the increased need, i.e. the law of supply and demand does not work for rental housing. Most Canadian cities have built decreasing numbers of rental units since the 1970s, so not only are there fewer rental units per capita than there were back then, but the ones we have are rapidly aging. Rental units are also extremely vulnerable to condo conversion, to the extent that some municipalities, such as North Vancouver, have passed by-laws banning condo conversion if their percentage of rental housing drops below a certain threshhold.

Municipalities have had to get pretty creative in their search for affordable housing options with almost no support from the provincial and federal governments. Vancouver just passed a by-law approving laneway housing in a bid to increase affordable housing options. Single-family homes backing onto a lane will be able to create units up to 500sq. ft. and 1 1/2 stories high to add affordable rental units to the city’s dwindling supply. The units will not allowed to be sold separately from the house, and are intended to supply smaller housing for particular life stages (in other places they’re known as “granny flats”). Vancouver had previously legalized secondary suites, usually in basements of single-family homes, to help deal with its housing affordability problems.

In Canada, many affordable housing and homelessness advocates argue that there is a crisis in housing affordability in our cities that can only be met by increased federal and provincial funding and incentives for rental housing. Richard Florida, in an article in the Globe and Mail at the height of the mortgage crisis (Nov. 28, 2009), recommended a massive increase in rental housing in the US to help alleviate housing needs for low- and moderate-income people, including the purchase and conversion of foreclosed properties to rental housing. He wrote that “Our reliance on single-family ownership is a product of the past 50 years—and the experiment has outlived its usefulness. Not only is it now readily apparent that not everyone should own a home, and that the mortgage system is a big part of what got us into the current financial mess,but homeownership also ties people to locations, making it harder for them to move to where the work is. Homeownership made sense when most people had one job and lived in the same city for life. But it makes less sense when people change jobs frequently and have to relocate to find new work.”

Florida’s recommendations were prescient: a major shift in US housing policy occurred on August 16, 2009. The Obama Administration announced it would spend $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money on the creation of tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities. The money will go to build apartments and townhouses, but also to buy and refurbish foreclosed homes to be rented to low- and moderate-income families at affordable rates. Funds for the new units will be available to states on a competitive basis. Analysts call the move a practical solution to skyrocketing foreclosure rates, tight credit, and the economic crisis, saying “the Obama White House has acknowledged that not everyone can or should own a home.” It is expected to ease homelessness, which has increased during the mortgage crisis. In addition to the stimulus money, the government had also set aside $1.8 billion for the construction of rental housing, the same amount Congress approved last year.

While this is a major shift and worthy of celebration, it is very interesting to note what the conservative critics have to say. David John of the Heritage Center said the benefits of homeownership include building equity, family stability, and an overall improvement in society. Other conservative critics have said that homeownership decreases crime and helps people achieve financial independence. Likely these critics agree with George Bush, who in 2002 described the US as a “nation of homeowners.” Since the mortgage crisis, this ideology seems false or at least outdated. In both Canada and the US, the definition of homeownership as ideal, and homeowners as somehow better and more stable than renters, is what got us into the current mess. Not only has the relentless homeownership agenda now displaced thousands of people in the US, but it has made homeownership barely affordable in many Canadian cities as well.

Like the Obama administration, we need to acknowledge that homeownership is not the only answer. Housing needs to once again be redefined as primary shelter to which every Canadian has a right, rather than a consumer product that helps keep the economy buoyant. It is rather significant that it took a crisis as earth-shattering as the sub-prime mortgage crisis to redefine housing in the US. Let’s not wait for that moment in Canada.

VMT is down in the US…but not in Canada?

A company called Inrix analyzes over 30,000 road segments on more than 47,000 miles of the major highways in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the US to measure urban traffic congestion. Here’s a link to their report, where they found a 3 percent drop in Vehicle Miles Travelled in the US in 2008. Some regions did better than others, of course: Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, and LA had some of the largest decreases from 2007-2008, as did Honolulu, Miami and Seattle. Inrix found that high gas prices and a lagging economy were the primary root causes of the decrease…not increased public transit use. Still, it’s worth celebrating the fact that increased gas prices have a definite impact on car usage; in times of economic largesse higher gas taxes could be implemented.

This news comes on the heels of a New York Times article citing the highest public transit ridership in 52 years. Ridership rose sharply as the result of high gas prices in 2008, and remained high even when gas prices dropped in the latter part of the year.

This contrasts with Statistics Canada’s more dour observations: we drove 5% more in 2006 than in 2002. Stats Can reported that higher incomes and lower prices for other goods have partially offset the cost of higher consumption rates and gasoline prices between Census years (2001, 2006). As this article was released in August of 2008 before the current economic crisis had taken hold in Canada, things may have started to shift. StatsCan noted that in two earlier recessionary periods, Canadians did in fact consume less gasoline:

The volume of gasoline purchased by consumers fell 12.1 per cent between 1980 and 1984, when prices rose 65 per cent
Consumption fell 5.1 per cent from 1989 to 1991 when prices increased 12 per cent.

The effects in Canadian cities, then, are still to be seen. In the US, with many cities cutting transit routes, laying off transit operators, and raising fares due to the recession, ridership may not remain at the historic 2008 levels in the coming year.

Ren Thomas

M.A., Ph.D. (Planning)