In the face of $40 per barrel Western Canada Select and predictions that this is the new normal perhaps for years Premier Jim Prentice warned this week that provincial finances are in the worst shape in 25 or even 50 years. Cabinet is reviewing spending project by project.
As the adage goes in crisis there is both danger and opportunity. In the face of falling oil prices an opportunity presents itself — step back from an ill-conceived 50-year-old dated dream of a ring road megaproject.
Back then driving was in its heyday. In the U.S. the massive taxpayer-funded interstate highway system — the largest construction project in human history at the time — set the stage for happy motoring and the love affair with the automobile. Rail-based transportation systems were being decommissioned and starved of funds. Infrastructure czar Robert Moses boasted of taking a meat cleaver to beautiful old New York neighbourhoods and North Americans were getting their first taste of suburban sprawl.
Calgary came of age in this period of urban planning. Over time our industrial economic and urban planning systems were retooled to facilitate the efficient production of this kind of urban landscape. City-building was locked into this particular energy-intensive development path. Developers auto manufacturers and oil companies struck a gusher of profit.
Today we have a very different conception of good urban design thanks to visionaries like Danish architect Jan Gehl and Jane Jacobs who took on Robert Moses in New York. Walkability public transit livable communities are where it’s at — except it seems in the ministry of Alberta Transportation.
Today the Calgary ring road is being justified merely because it’s been on the books for 50 years so damn it we’re going to get it done. In an October 2013 press release then-premier Alison Redford claimed the project would “dramatically improve traffic flows in through and around Calgary and the surrounding region… it will improve our quality of life allowing us to spend less time stuck in traffic and more time with our loved ones.”
In fact the balance of evidence suggests that none of Redford’s claims are true. A California study found that 60 to 90 per cent of new road capacity is taken up within five years of a project’s completion. Why? People use their cars more suburban sprawl brings more users and people choose to drive further for the same services.
Alternatively according to research by the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute designed congestion “causes people to defer trips that are not urgent choose alternative destinations and modes and forego avoidable trips.”
Studies find that new roads bring some initial economic benefit but it dissipates over time. In contrast investing in transit brings small initial gains that continue to multiply over time. So residents of Cranston or Tuscany your smooth ring-road ride may disappear as the highway invites more suburban development — a vicious cycle of more roads begets more low-density suburbs begets more roads….
Reviewing material on the ring road it is hard to even find a clear presentation of cost. Under the heading of “Costs” the Alberta government website says only that “To date we estimate that using P3s on ring roads alone has saved taxpayers more than $2 billion.”
From information I have been able to pull together the initial estimates put the cost of the entire ring road at under $4 billion. But with the final leg alone now pegged at $5 billion the entire 100 kilometres could top $8 billion.
A rough calculation of the land area devoted to the ring road is 3600 hectares. At the density of a community like Sunnyside you could put 140000 people in that space. Imagine if our governments had some vision to really prioritize transit. Imagine a ring rail LRT for roughly the same cost. With the LRT the right of way would be prime Transit Oriented Development land worth billions of dollars and capable of accommodating not only a major piece of transportation infrastructure but $20 billion to $25 billion in mixed-use development.
Water under the bridge you might say. Well yes for most of the ring road but do we want to throw good money after bad? There is a gathering storm in the oilpatch with ever more volatile booms and busts. Research in the journal Nature proposes that to control climate change Alberta will have to keep 85 per cent of its reserves in the ground. The Conservatives may have a lock on Alberta politics but they are impotent in the face of global change. At some point we have to bite the bullet and start building the smart compact low-carbon Calgary of tomorrow rather than the fossil-fuelled high-maintenance Cadillac city of the past. Step one: keep the $5 billion in the bank.
FIGURES:
I thought it might be useful to make the logic of my calculations on which the article was based transparent. These figures are of course very rough back-of-the-napkin kinds of calculations but they do help demonstrate how we could develop our city in a different and more sustainable manner — that there are viable alternatives to business as usual.
• The most recent data available from City of Calgary documents estimate the cost of the remaining west and southwest portions of the ring road at approximately $5 billion. A CBC report put the cost of the S.E. leg at $770 million the N.E. leg at $930 million. The N.W. leg was estimated to have cost $485 million. Total cost estimate: $7.2 Billion. With each leg of the ring road going over initial estimates we could expect the same for the S.W. and West legs so I used a round figure of $8 billion. (It should be noted that these costs include over $50 million annually for 30 years for maintenance.)
• The west LRT cost about $1 billion dollars for 8 kilometres or about $125 million/kilometre. That’s a Cadillac version of an LRT line built into established parts of the city – so very expensive. Estimates of LRT costs range from $25 to $160 million per kilometre. I estimated a ring road LRT in the right of way to cost about 65 per cent per kilometre of the west LRT so a 100 kilometre LRT line would cost roughly $8.25 billion dollars.
• The Sunnyside Density (3850 people/km2) is calculated from the City of Calgary 2014 Census and Google Maps. City of Calgary’s ‘Snapshots’ report on growth puts the housing density for Sunnyside at 40 units/hectare.
• The Ring Road will be just over 100 kilometres when complete. From Google Maps I estimated that the right of way of the ring road to be on average about 300 metres. At intersections that width expands to between 650 and 800 metres. With the dozens of intersections about 15 per cent of the ring road is intersections. So 15 kilometres at 700 metres and 85 kilometres at 300 metres = 36 km2 = 3600 hectares
• 36 km at a density of 3850 people per km2 = 140000 people if the ring road right of way were developed at the density of Sunnyside. That’s probably 5 or 6 years of growth for our city.
• To estimate the potential value of the land I did a search on Kijiji and found a 20 acre piece of property for sale at the intersection of Airport Trail and Stoney Trail for $110000/acres or $275000 per hectare. So 275000 * 3600 ha = $990 million ~ 1 billion dollars.
• If the ring road right of way were developed like Sunnyside with similar property values and persons per household 155000 households (averaging $700000/unit) housing stock would be worth about $108 billion.
• If the right of way were developed at the density of Sunnyside (3850 people/km2) with persons per unit at the city average (2.4 persons/unit based on ‘Snapshot’s data) that would result in ~ 60000 units. If units are valued at the Calgary average (House: $466000; Condo: $287000 based on Calgary Real Estate Board numbers) and assuming half the households are houses and half are condos (making the average price of a unit $376000); Then 60000 units * 376000/unit = $23 billion in home values. This would likely be a conservative estimate for the right of way as it does not include commercial development.
** Update **
This article was updated to correct an error when calculating Sunnyside density. The previous numbers had the density at 6800/km2 whereas the real figure is 3850/km2. All related numbers have been updated to reflect the change.
Noel Keough is a co-founder of Sustainable Calgary and Assistant Professor of Sustainable Design at the University of Calgary Faculty of Environmental Design.
