Have Canadian cities gone too far with bike lanes? Few people are against cycling—but in a country with long, cold winters, does it make sense to spend millions on bike infrastructure and dedicate so much valuable road space to something many people can’t use year-round?
Ontario’s $34-billion Ontario Line, originally priced at $10.9 billion, shows why governments should provide independent cost estimates and transparent line-item accounting before approving major projects, allowing taxpayers to judge risks before billions are committed.
Ireland’s Ryanair will fly you from London to Geneva for $49. Flying from Calgary to Vancouver – a shorter trip – likely will set you back four times as much. Canadians suffer some of the highest-priced, least-convenient and most unpleasant airline service in the world, and mainly for one reason: forestalled competition. In fact, creating barriers to prevent any meaningful competition has been the main goal of Canadian airline policy since the formation of Trans-Canada Air Lines in 1937. Simon Michell explains how this sorry situation came to be and reveals how opening up our skies – as so many other countries have already done – would make things much better for us all.
Scott McGregor exposes how a billion-dollar BC Ferries deal with a Chinese shipyard reflects a deeper failure: Canadian institutions are shielding Beijing’s interests—at taxpayers’ expense—while ignoring glaring national security risks.
Scott McGregor warns that foreign bids for iconic Canadian institutions—like a Chinese-Canadian billionaire’s move to buy Hudson’s Bay—may be more than business. They could be part of Beijing’s broader soft-power push, using culture and commerce to shift influence. In a world of rising tensions and shifting alliances, Canada must stay sharp. Protecting our heritage now means knowing who’s buying—and why.
Dissatisfaction with the current state of Canada's airports is palpable among the public, airlines, and the federal government. Landing fees, shop and restaurant rental fees, and ‘airport improvement fees’ seem high and uncompetitive versus U.S. airports. This...
What a difference the remote work revolution has made. The University of Minnesota Accessibility Observation auto and transit access data for 2021 (the latest) indicates a huge improvement in 30-minute job access for the average resident of 50 metropolitan areas that...
The RTD ship is sinking and Colorado legislators want to fix it by rearranging the deck chairs. According to U.S. Department of Transportation data, RTD carried less than 64 percent as many riders in May 2024 as in May 2019, well below the 77 percent average for...
In all the fuss about the Canadian rail disruption, one thing jumped out at me. Here’s how the National Post reported it: “Despite the economic impacts, the Canadian Industrial Relations Board ruled earlier this month that the railway workers are not an essential...
The Canadian government is considering spending $6 billion to $12 billion to introduce what it calls “high-frequency trains” between Toronto and Quebec City. Though some media reports have described these as high-speed trains (which generally means trains capable of...
Big Topics & Big Ideas
Calgary Transit is mired in the past, building an obsolete transit system designed for an archaic view of a city. Before the pandemic, transit carried 45 percent of downtown Calgary employees to work, but less than 10 percent of workers in the rest of the Calgary...
The jury is still out in Winnipeg: should governments be spending money on roads or more public transit? Well, a new policy brief from the Frontier Centre show that the sooner governments abandon their bias against cars the better. A recent University of Toronto paper...