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The municipal government funding model in North America is broken. Mayors and city councilors discovered that they could generate revenue with development charges (housing taxes) instead of raising property taxes, which would anger the voter. Cities need a new funding model that doesn't tax new house construction.

Jason is right! Redesign of a whole city / country and step by step! Not only 1 road etc.

I have lived in fake London all my life. A new C---o was recently built bigger than the old one next to the 401 exit. It is around the corner on the side road. The bike path from Byron to downtown was originally a trolley line. I used to live on Baseline west of Wharncliffe. Single family homes are being replaced with med density apartment buildings on a main bus line. Most of the main services are within a short walk. Some things better but many of the old properties are being replaced giant homes on tiny lots. I am a life long cyclist who has adapted to mobile combat... However using the bike paths I can get to Western in less time than it takes to drive from Victoria Hospital near my house.

It’s almost like politicians are in the pocket of energy companies and vehicles manufacturers or something

I thought mass timber was pretty expensive?

Sorry for the long post/ answer. It is easy to say that you should just implement the Dutch model in other cities/countries. It does not work if you only tackle part of the problem, because you only shift the problem. Exactly what you see with regard to widening the roads to avoid traffic jams. In the Netherlands, people also think about how bulk goods are transported. Because moving consumer goods from factories or warehouses to shops is not done by bike. But if you think about how people live and in what radius they can meet their needs (going shopping, going to work, going to a doctor for example), you come to the conclusion that a lot can be achieved within a radius of the center of a community, and the delivery of goods can be done outside. There is no need to build a big fat highway into the center. It is not attractive and it only causes problems, to mention a parking problem or the appearance of a center that you completely destroy with it. It should be said in advance that in the Netherlands (and in many European villages and small towns) we have a lot to do with old city centres, with winding streets, many protected monuments, and infrastructure that does not fit in with motorways to the centre at all. People tried to work around it and indeed there was a time when the focus was on the car industry. Until they noticed that that was not the solution. It should also be said that in the EU we have to consider the use of land because we often do not have the space. Reusing old buildings is something of the last 30-40 years here in the Netherlands, before that everything was also demolished and ugly monotonous buildings were built in their place. And we really regret that. When I look at old industrial complexes, people are currently thinking about what can be preserved and used to make homes or to meet the need to convert them into community centres; doctors, vets, physiotherapy practices, community space such as a local coffee shop, a hairdresser, a florist or a small supermarket. To fulfil the need and to make good use of the space. Indeed, the political will must be there. The will to radically flip the switch and get started. Start with one street and connect it to the street next to it and connect the desired infrastructure. Think about what you are doing and look again at all the regulations and think about whether this is still necessary. A street in a residential area does not have to be 9 metres wide because a fire engine has to be able to park there and cars still have to be able to pass. It will be quite a change for many if their street suddenly looks completely different and you can drive much slower through a residential area. But you will notice that in the long run it will feel much more pleasant and the municipality where you live can drastically reduce the tax for road maintenance.

One of the most exciting aspects of mass timber construction to me is the potential of prefab offsite, and the utilization of BIM modelling to a far greater extent than on previous concrete mid rises. One thing that tends to happen in my experience is a free for all, with electrical, plumbers, sheet metal, sprinkler fitters, and whoever else cramming their systems into a building without any detailed coordination. Without a very involved general contractor playing referee, it can get so ugly, and inefficient. Prefab penetrations for specific systems just sound like a dream come true to me.

Innovation and productivity in the construction sector is very low and decreasing, we need to change the regulations to allow for things like mass timber and robotics.

The city of Montreal just announced that it is releasing a bunch of land in various spots throughout the city for non-market housing projects. It would be great if you could review this in a future video, but this idea of mass timber would be excellent if it could be put in use here in Montreal for these non-market apartment buildings.

I find this not to be true. Georgism is all about what is the most moral form to fund a government? It is taxing economic rent. Land rent, natural resource rent, intelectual property rent, cyberspace rent. If some one is gaining from unearned wealth, that should be taxed. This only pertains to the main way of funding societies needs. Now Henry George was a laissez-faire free market guy. Today, THIS is what divides the advocates. Some are geolibertarian capitalists. Some are geosocialdemocrats. Most agree that the Land Value Tax is the goal and to ideally use this tax to incentivize the most opportunistic use of our scarce resources that nature has given us.

We have many more people talking about how great mass timber is than actually starting mass timber manufacturing companies or otherwise doing anything to make it happen. If the chattering classes and academic class would tell the government to sit down, shut up,and get out of the way we might actually be able to buy a reasonably priced mass timber home. The reason we need schools to teach trades now is because employment laws have made training employees an obviously stupid idea to be avoided if at all possible while convincing way too many people to waste time and money on unmarketable degrees from colleges that maybe could be excellent high schools if they stuck to the basics.

Why not use AI technology instead of more bureaucracy to audit projects?

Mass timber does not help address Greenbelt induced high land prices or the 30% gov taxes on new homes. It would only make a meaningful difference in markets such as Winnipeg, Regina, or Saskatoon that already have low land prices and low taxes on new homes.

The reality of space - ample "geography" and low population density that go well beyond what has LONG characterized any Western European country, let alone the Netherlands - are a reality that just cannot be ignored. There are huge economies of scale associated with infrastructure in densely populated areas: that's what makes it cheaper on a per capita basis to do the kinds of things the Dutch do in the Netherlands. It will take decades - if not a century or more - and consistently high immigration (which I think is acceptable in Canada - in the US maybe not so much anymore) to move towards a more dense population pattern in established (sprawling) (sub-)urban areas of the sort that would make it practical (in per capita public taxation terms) to recreate today's Dutch-style cities in North America. Calls for "political will" always strike me as an intellectually lazy throw-away line that assumes away the thorny political problem of how you get people to accept encroachment on their spaced-out suburban lifestyles: in the Canadian/Ontario context, how exactly does a government get re-elected if it is seen to work against the interests of people spread out across the "905" belt? (i.e. Toronto's very extensive suburban belt, for non-Canadian readers)

Bike lanes created traffic congestion in my little town and are hardly used. There's no green aspect when traffic sits and idles

Drivers and especially upset drivers are furious about car congestion. Having a basic understanding of congestion can be helpful, it’s something they might listen to. Traffic planners use the V/C Index which uses daily traffic counts to measure congestion: Volume ÷ Capacity = V/C Index Multiply by 100 and it is expressed as a percentage. This is useful for overall calculations but it can put the “numb” into numbers for most of the public. Congestion happens moment to moment. You can always add more cars by drivers travelling on off peak times, like how you have a maximum amount of water that can go through a pipe but you can let the water run more often like at night. They see and get caught in congestion. They feel it. So using a rating system like the congestion scale is something they can relate to. THE CONGESTION SCALE 5 GRIDLOCK 4 BUMPER TO BUMPER 3 TAILBACKS 1 BLOCK LONG 2 “SMALL TOWN” TRAFFIC 1 LITTLE TO NO TRAFFIC What concerns drivers is Levels 4 and 5. We don’t get gridlock. It makes a great trigger word to inspire drivers to oppose bike lanes but we know this is exaggeration. Gridlock is where the whole neighbourhood gets flooded with cars and your car is locked in the grid of streets. You can’t go forward or backwards. Might as well turn your car off because you won’t move for 10 to as much as 45 minutes. We get this when a big event ends, like a world championship sports game. A solution to this is for the city to ask a venue to present a traffic mitigation plan, like host post-game activities that encourage attendees to linger and not leave all at once. Level 4 is where the street is saturated to capacity and traffic starts to fold in on itself. On streets like Bloor, it never reaches gridlock because the worst of it is just on Bloor, not on cross streets. But it’s this level that makes drivers get claustrophobic. When you’re caught in it, it feels like you are drowning. Having a rating scale to refer to is like touching the bottom of the lake and finding you can stand up with your head above the waves. When we see congestion from the sidewalk and actually surveying congestion on Bloor we notice this congestion ebbs and flows. So it fluctuates between Level 4 and 3 and often the whole queue of cars gets through before the red light. So we measure congestion by observing the level of congestion at specific parts of the street and we measure how long it stays at this level. When we do this, what looks like gridlock is not nearly as bad and it’s easier to tolerate. So the next step is to recognize the city wants to reduce car congestion. The highest Level Of Service (LOS) is at Levels 3 and 4, that’s the highest capacity of a street. That brings us to how to reduce congestion, what actions the city can do. Increasing Level Of Service is one way. The network of streets can accommodate more cars. But recent ways to calculate LOS include how do we move more people, not just cars? And, as long as people ride bikes and fill bike lanes, that can be more efficient than a car lane. Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT), is an approach that’s been around for a while. Put origins and destinations like home, work, shopping and recreation closer together so people use the streets less. This recently got the name 15 Minute Cities. Encourage people not to drive by making other modes like biking more popular. Discourage people from driving, with left turn only, like on King St, car free streets, parks and neighbourhoods, road tolls and congestion fees. And odd licence plates drive every second day while even plates go the other times. When we add lanes to a highway, we ease congestion, so more people drive. We call that induced demand. But a secondary effect of more people using the highway is this means more trips at the beginning and end of the ride on city streets. So more local highway travel results in more congestion on city streets. There is one more we induce demand on streets. We work painstakingly to make our community more liveable. More homes, both businesses that create more jobs, more infrastructure like better streets. The result of our hard work is more people want to stay and more are invited in. Population growth is a good thing, right? Especially if you are a landlord or developer. But when you can’t afford rent let alone buy a home, you have a different perspective. And we see more congestion. What is the solution? Pretty soon we paved over the Green Belt and contaminated our fresh water supply as Toronto expands to Lake Simcoe the same way it did along the Golden Horseshoe. The reason why our population is growing is not just because Toronto is a great place to live. It’s because it’s better than everywhere else. So it’s in Toronto’s best interest for 2 things. Make places like Sudbury and Timmins better to move to. And do a better job promoting them. Toronto is still world class but so is Kirkland Lake and Nippising. We welcome refugees from Ukraine, over 100,000 of them. But a lot of these people are farmers and like farming. Setting them up with entry level jobs in Toronto might not be the best value for them or us. That’s population growth. A decade ago, experts talked about a world population explosion. But now they talk about a decline in birth rates, quoting country after country already having birth rates so low they don’t sustain the current population. At a time when communities age, riding a bicycle is a perfect way to get daily exercise to keep us healthy. Most drivers in Etobicoke who got upset with the Bloor bike lane extension just drive without considering these factors. If they do and if they know their thoughts and ideas are not just welcomed, they are needed to make Toronto better, they might not be so upset by the bike lanes. They might even try riding a bike!

A few things might help us understand what’s behind Bill 212. It was inspired by residents complaining about the bike lanes on Bloor when they got extended into Etobicoke. For some reason when this one bike lane gets extended, locals get upset about the new section in the same way they got upset when bike lanes got first installed. It seems to go like this: Cycling advocates talk with other cyclists about bike lanes. Then they spoke with key decision makers with the city, to get them installed. But cyclists didn’t focus much on talking with drivers. So drivers rightly felt they were not in the loop. You can understand this because for decades drivers blocked bike lanes. Now that bike lanes are being rolled out it’s tempting for cyclists to say suck it up just like we had to before. But that isn’t helpful at all. The city proposes bike lanes and sends out flyers to homes. Drivers see the flyers and say this is about cycling. I don’t have anything against cycling but it has nothing to do with me. So the flyer goes in the recycle box and they get on with their lives. Then the city installs the bike lanes and drivers suddenly see a bit more car congestion. Now that they are in their neighbourhood, they notice the bike lanes. They still haven’t educated themselves on bike lanes or congestion so they just see the congestion and want the bike lanes gone. And that happened in Etobicoke. See this from the Conservative government’s view. They got thousands of complaints in person, on the phone and by email. The essence of responsible government is to respond to people’s concerns. And constituents did share their concerns. Add to that, bike lanes were a downtown “problem.” Now that the Bloor bike lanes were extended into Etobicoke, it can feel like the city came over and pooped in their backyard. After Ford and Christine Hogarth spent 3 decades in local politics, they can use this issue as one of the last big causes to fight, to cap off their political careers. So this is personal, not just political or academic. But there’s more: When the city removed the Jarvis Street bike lanes, not much consultation went into installing them and ZERO consultation was used to remove them. Rob Ford and council relied on gut instinct and their own judgement to decide to remove the Jarvis bike lanes. Since then, the city uses a robust consultation process to install bike lanes: Councillors and the council want the bike lanes. Grass roots support from residents, residents’ associations and BIAs support bike lanes. And the city routinely invites traffic planning agencies to have experts inform us on best practices and more city staff have knowledge on bike lanes. Doug Ford is still functioning in the old style that relied on their own judgement and what they heard from residents. But even when they talk about how this issue is the number one issue for constituents and they never saw any issue the residents were so unified over, they haven’t bothered to get counts on how many people complained and what the specific complaints were. And they seem to ignore locals who share they want the bike lanes. They just say lots complained. And this bill does not suggest other ways to reduce “gridlock” except to remove the bike lanes. So it’s a lot more about opposing bike lanes than it is about fighting car congestion. So it falls to cycling advocates to inform drivers about not just bike lanes but also about congestion for cars and its cures. Including talking directly to drivers in Etobicoke. These drivers are mad. They won’t want to listen, they just want to hear the words, We will remove the Bloor bike lanes and do it ASAP. So any dialogue needs to be done in very short sound bites that are meaningful to them. Like understanding congestion.

My two children bought homes in Bidens administration with my third one buying soon. And each one has just one job. But they didnt buy an expensive vehicle. They have used vehicles between 7 to 10 years old. They arent having trouble buying groceries either. They have gardens and they use coupons and look for sales. They dont have student loan debt either because they started at the bottom of their respective companies and worked their way up. They also have investment accounts and SAVINGS. Oh, did I mention they also have children and they aren't struggling. STOP WITH THE DOOM & GLOOM. P.S. My brother and sister-in-law are also doing GREAT.

Hard to judge how many people side with the government on this, I haven’t found great stats. But I think there are a lot of people who live outside of Toronto (or other city centres) that just like the idea of punishing Toronto and unfortunately this appeals to them.

Good episode. I think left or right pretty much make not much difference when governments spend and the central banks print causing out of control inflation. Seems like more and more debt is their only strategy.

The U.S. Government tells 2 lies for every truth. The economy is horrendous for working class, and fantastic for the elites. It's how they wanted it, so they had zero plans to fix it. Trump is the soldier the working class elected to fight for them.

Municipalities fill in the gaps where the province fails to standardize within the code. If the province made the codes better we wouldn't need things like the Toronto Green Standard

Metrolinx standardizes the station design. Local guidelines have to be applied to each station. Toronto stations on the YNSE will have more stringent energy requirements than the Richmond Hill stations because of the Toronto green standard. This isn't corruption. This is the way designs are done.

Neo-liberal and populist politicians all serve the needs of capital not the everyday person. They make the rich richer. The Housing Accelerator Fund will give municipalities much needed funding that the Ford government has cut. Municipalities can't tax existing residents for needed growth. Now Pollivere is coming in saying he will get rid of the HAF and remove HST on homes less than $1 million. So municipalities have no way of funding new growth with a federal PC government. Municipalities need new streams of funding if the province and the feds cut the way we pay for infrastructure.

Neo-liberal and populist politicians all serve the needs of capital not the everyday person. They make the rich richer. The Housing Accelerator Fund will give municipalities much needed funding that the Ford government has cut. Municipalities can't tax existing residents for needed growth. Now Pollivere is coming in saying he will get rid of the HAF and remove HST on homes less than $1 million. So municipalities have no way of funding new growth with a federal PC government. Municipalities need new streams of funding if the province and the feds cut the way we pay for infrastructure.

Damn, this is the 1st time I've seen the dude's face. On his own channel all the footage is POV.

Trump 2024

One is an indigenous genocidal land occupied by genocidal European colonizers and the other is a leech of a tax haven country that leeches off the taxes from world's poor .yeah they should learn from each other

Stop hyping up the thief and leech of a tax haven that is Netherlands you dumbass slaughter

You guys, your discussion is great as you cover so many good points. Thank you. Bike lanes are another mode of transportation; it is a reality so let's not turn the blind eye. Hey Mr. FORD! Perhaps we should remove the street parking spots to make room to your car? Population growth and thinking modes: I know of two new residents of Ontario. They arrived before and after COVID. Guess what. They each bought a car. I am an adopted Canadian and do not have a car (30 yrs in Turtle Island)

The real solution to Toronto's traffic congestion is leveraging transportation mode efficiencies to scale up transportation infrastructure. This means walking, biking, and transit. Cars are an inefficient mode and also require parking. The other modes are far more efficient in all aspects. It's not about cars or bikes; it's about moving people.

Great podcast! 👍

Go Trump!

I checked my bank account and I still own the country so the economy is great.

I’m from Texas and the most extreme right people I know recently moved from California due to CoL and politics. Anecdotal of course but it does line up. As for migrants affecting a place vs the place affecting migrants, it just depends on the speed of migration

If they think that Trump will help them then they are deluding themselves. He is all about himself and his rich, greedy friends.

You don't even have to bring up the induced demand part of the argument. The capacity of any of these streets in question is limited by how cars are handled at intersections, not by how many lanes there are. Far too many intersections in Toronto have signalization controlled by timers rather than systems that respond to traffic flow. If the province has millions to throw at bike lane removal, they could spend it on smart signalization. One estimate coming out of U of T is that this could solve about 50% of Toronto's current congestion problem at a reasonable cost.

Also, Public transiit has worse funding now than pre-pandemic, and is still running 71% capacity of pre-pandemic levels. So the government, mostly provincial and to some degree federal, is pushing people off public transit into cars. (I should note during rush in downtown I see about 1 in 5 actually taping in to pay fare. That makes me wonder if TTC even knows now many people are really using transit)

Because the woke have gone insane...that is the real reason.

Both parties colluded to drive up asset prices, house prices and stock market. That is not economy doing great. That is the blackhole of greed doing great. We need a 75% - 90% fall in asset prices. Let's lay the blame where it should be as the real driver of inflation and inequality.

The best way to solve the car traffic is going the "market way" (that driving demographic usually is a staunch supporter of it): right now drivers aren't paying the real cost of roads and especially the parkings they're using. Charge them the market cost, and bike lanes will be indispensable!

The thing that grinds my gears is the total lack of evidence. Also: traffic calming/road safety projects that include "road diets" are going to get caught up in this, putting active transportation plans in jeopardy (see for example York Region).

Justin Trudeau’s bank account has never been better. Why would he care about Canadians.

Someone should organize a bike bus for the streets in Toronto. Sit on your bike at one of the ends, gather together a bunch of people who want to ride together, and then take the lane in a mass. This should build community and give people experience in vehicular cycling.

There's also the problem that eventually the right lane is the exit lane, and it gets backed up because there's a traffic light there, and people want to get past the line towards the front of the line, so the lane next to the exit lane gets slow from someone trying to stop and merge into the exit lane, so people who want to get past that slow lane to get to the exit lane get in the next lane so they can stop and force themselves in, and on and on until all the lanes are stopped because of one bad exit.

I think the current flavours of left and right in Canada fundamentally leads to the left being anti development and right being pro development. Also about the "most conservative Albertan is born in Ontario" its kinda true, Stephen Harper, Jason Kenny, third of the UCP cabinet was born outside of Alberta.

It would be good for the country for Toronto and southern ON & QC in general to have less political sway in determining the fortunes of the country.

As always Mike is crystal, crystal clear.

Kudos on your discussion of the US electoral college. There’s always a lot of people screaming about it, but they are just mad about losing. It’s the Democrats today, but it was Republicans decades ago. Getting rid of it without a lot of structural changes could be disastrous. Anyone upset about January 6 (so most everyone), should realize how bad the mistrust of the system would be if the states were incentivized to each report falsified vote tallies to get their residents’ desired outcome for President. There are many other nuanced functions of the electoral college making it a bad idea to delete it.

The housing crisis also ties into immigration and the right-wing narratives of "our country is full." Building lots of new homes to increase supply is a lot harder than restricting entry into the country, thereby suppressing demand.