Saturday, March 25, 2023
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

The sharing economy will soon change everything about urban transport: Crowley in the Globe

June 12, 2015
in Columns, Domestic Policy Program, Economic policy, In the Media, Latest News
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A

Brian Lee CrowleyThe sharing economy is already disrupting the taxi industry. Soon, writes Brian Lee Crowley in the Globe and Mail, it will alter everything you know about getting around.

By Brian Lee Crowley, June 12, 2015

So-called “sharing economy” services like Uber and Lyft are just giving us a foretaste of how disruptive technologies will transform the way we get around. Moreover contrary to what you might have heard, that transformation won’t stop with the destruction of the old-style taxi industry. Uber may be worth US$40-billion. That means the market sees Uber and its competitors as achieving far more than this.

To understand where urban mobility is going, consider these facts. According to environmental economist Ross McKitrick (writing for my institute), “In 2005, 74 % of Canadian adults reported going everywhere by car, up from 68 % in 1992. In 2012, 82 % of Canadians commuted to work by car, 12 % took public transit, and 6 % walked or cycled. Trips between cities are also mainly by car.” In other words, despite lots of spending on public transit, people travel predominantly by private car and that won’t change anytime soon. The share of those travelling exclusively by car is rising, not falling.

Why? Speed, convenience and cost. The average commute takes twice as long by transit as by car, and while cars go everywhere, buses and trains don’t. Transit ridership isn’t much affected by price. Lowering fares does not attract much new ridership, just as rising gasoline prices have a rather minimal effect on the amount people drive.

Finally, the average car is parked 23 hours out of 24.

What does all this add up to? A huge unused capacity to move people around by the means they prefer without it requiring much expenditure of scarce tax dollars on infrastructure, buses, trains and the like.

That spare capacity, however, could not be used effectively until technology emerged that allowed precise real-time matching of travel needs and cars. That’s what the sharing economy is all about: permitting those who have available capacity to share it instantaneously with those who need it. Cars are just one example, you can now share your house, your driveway, your meals, your office space and more with people who want to use the part you don’t need. The internet and smartphones have revolutionized sharing because before the costs of finding the person who had just what you needed just when you needed it were prohibitive. Now those costs are almost zero.

In that world, who needs to own a car? Before if you wanted just a piece of the transport services a car offered, your choices were taxis and car rentals. Soon you’ll be able to buy car-time carefully calibrated to match not only your location and destination, but even the kind of car you want. You might want a cheap beater to get to work, but a van to move furniture and a Beemer to go on a date.

Cars in the past could sit idle for 23 hours a day because the costs of finding others willing and able to pay to share its transport capacity were prohibitive. We are very close to being able to increase the number of people moved without increasing our investment in rolling stock or infrastructure. Opportunities will soon open up for providers of fleets of cars offering different quality and price tailored to individual budgets.

And since people are willing to pay for “car-time” but are highly resistant to paying for “road-time” (i.e. tolls), the revolutionary changes about to be unleashed may allow us to get the next best thing to variable tolls, which encourage people to travel off-peak. Car-time can be priced according to the time of travel, thereby helping to smooth the peaks and valleys of traffic density.

This is only the first wave of change that is coming as the sharing economy meets urban transport. The second wave will be unleashed when the driverless car moves from experimental vehicle to urban fixture with computers managing the overall traffic flow more efficiently than individual drivers can.

When you need a car it will come to you, on command. No car need ever sit idle in a driveway or garage; it can be working every hour of the day. Brian Flemming, who chaired a 2001 federal transport policy inquiry now says, “so fast are these new technologies coming at us that no new subway, superhighway or LRT should be built without doing an ‘automated vehicle impact study’ to ensure that projects that are supposed to last for decades are not overbuilt.”

So take a bus or hail a cab while you still can. To your grandchildren it will be like tales of rotary telephones and vinyl records: quaint echoes of a long-ago age.

Brian Lee Crowley (twitter.com/brianleecrowley) is the Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent non-partisan public policy think tank in Ottawa: www.macdonaldlaurier.ca.

Tags: Brian Lee CrowleyGlobe and MailMacdonald-LaurierMLI
Previous Post

A balanced-budget law would help keep governments on track: Crowley on the BBC

Next Post

Even at 800 years old, the Magna Carta still matters to Canada: Crowley in the Citizen

Related Posts

A third way for drug addiction policy in Canada
Video

Video: A third way for drug addiction policy in Canada

March 24, 2023
Putin and Xi driven to make authoritarianism the standard worldwide: Balkan Devlen in the National Post
Columns

Putin and Xi driven to make authoritarianism the standard worldwide: Balkan Devlen in the National Post

March 24, 2023
Outside intervention does a disservice to Indigenous communities that need to take control of their economic destinies: Chris Sankey in the National Post
Columns

Changing a lyric in O Canada is not a path to reconciliation: Chris Sankey in the Hub

March 23, 2023
Next Post
Brian Lee Crowley

Even at 800 years old, the Magna Carta still matters to Canada: Crowley in the Citizen

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Follow us on

Newsletter Signup

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

Inside Policy Magazine

  • Current Issue
  • Back Issues
  • Advertising
  • Inside Policy Blog
  • Privacy Policy

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Privacy Preference Center

Consent Management

Necessary

Advertising

Analytics

Other