Urban Sprawl and Public Transit

By Mary Ann Wasilka

Published June 2000

I am a member of a Local Transit Users’ Group. This group was formed as an initiative of the Rides to Work Committee, which endeavoured to address the transportation barriers that exist for low income or unemployed workers. The lack of reliable and af­fordable transportation to work re­stricts access to jobs, and limits the abil­ity of those with fewer financial re­sources to consider all forms of employ­ment. ‘Good’ public transit has a pro­found impact on everyone in our com­munity but those with private vehicles may compensate for this by using their own personal resources to maintain this life style choice.

Access to paid employment is a ne­cessity for most of us but there are other vital things which are restricted by geographical barriers and the time and cost to travel large distances in inclem­ent weather to access food, medical attention and educational opportuni­ties. Our group believes that cities fail to plan for compact urban design, con­tributing to the difficulties which will exist for all of us, but impacting most significantly those in poverty or existing on low wage or middle income work.

Urban sprawl gobbles up precious land, limits local food production, and creates an inner city ‘dust bowl’. While downtown housing is usually afford­able, transportation to suburban retail and industrial areas is always expen­sive and time consuming. Urban sprawl supports and maintains the concept that personal vehicles are the answer rather than recognizing the social cost of car ownership.

Urban sprawl with its winding street patterns, supports the automo­bile industry and vice versa. If indi­viduals had to walk or bike to work, to medical resources, or to grocery stores, grid form roads would be more direct. Centres of employment, culture and education would be more concen­trated and governments and workers would support public transit. (Nation­ally, Europeans spend half of their budgets on mass transit. France spent $7.7 billion on mass transit and $5 bil­lion on roads. This budget year the U.S. is spending $27.7 billion on highways, five times as much as on mass transit-USA Today, Jan. 5, 2000).

This past May our group sent a let­ter to Graham Vincent, the new Man­ager of Grand River Transit at the Region of Waterloo, to find out how Re­gional Planning supports Public Tran­sit by planning cities which are more compact. He accommodated our group and explained some of the com­plex problems about assessing land de­velopment fees.

While there are some financial incentives to encourage developers to build near city centers, the actual land mass of Kitchener Waterloo and Cam­bridge is still very large. Expanding the suburbs without considering popu­lation density is taken for granted. We did learn that the Cities of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge could have greater control over responsible use of municipal land which supports transit and similar environmental issues.

City planning may seem like pretty dry stuff until you consider it takes 15 minutes for an airplane to fly over the suburbs of Chicago and 5 minutes to fly over the residential areas of Paris. In the 1930s when an ‘old timer’ was asked why he owned a car, but not a bath tub, he replied, “You can’t drive a tub to town.” Are the two things re­lated? Maybe they are if you consider how we set our priorities both person­ally and publicly.