With municipal taxes going to fund primarily unhealthy infrastructure for private automobiles, few local residents feel comfortable, convenienced or safe adopting a healthy lifestyle. With the lions share of mobility infrastructure dedicated to the automobile, it should be little wonder most Saulites cannot meet the bar of 150 minutes of exercise daily, despite being fully informed of that requirement.  Moreover, those who can afford private membership fees are overly represented at health clubs, illustrating a key point of intervention for municipal budgeting to influence the social determinants of health.

 

This infrastructure funding is also responsible for contributing to the largest single source of GHG emissions from Sault Ste. Marie that the city has the capacity to influence, along with water contamination, air pollution and health care burdens.

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While there are some who may argue that the city does provide options, it is important to distinguish the difference between providing options equally, equitably and in ways that positively influence the behaviours that existing municipal policies advocate.  Current transportation infrastructure spending does not fulfil any of these requirements (see transit example below in recommendation B.), generating instead a vicious cycle of spending, deteriorating services and quality of life, and tax and personal expense outlay increases (downloading) onto citizens.

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This budget submission provides advice to invert that vicious cycle and create a virtuous one.

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Introduction

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Behaviour choices can be individual. However, the majority of choice freedom is produced by infrastructure and policies beyond the reach of the individual decision-making architecture.  Case in point: if a municipality such as Sault Ste. Marie were to spend money on roads to make driving (and by extension urban sprawl) convenient, someone wishing to walk or ride a bicycle, would quickly be discouraged by the noise, pollution, perceived safety risks, discriminatory practices of snow removal or signalisation, and inconvenience of time delays; user fees for public transit would only discriminate against those unable to afford their own vehicle. We wish to emphasize that positive steps are being made, notably in public transit.  Despite specific policies to encourage healthy mobility choices, the city budget reflects a specific behaviour modifying approach to the contrary.  This especially harms our youth, seniors, and those unable to drive or afford their own personal vehicles.  It also has an enormous impact on our GHG emissions and environmental sustainability.

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Mobility patterns are dependent on many factors, including the provision of information, services and infrastructure. If a city provides roads almost exclusively, people will drive. If we provide better options, people will use them. With 90% of our capital transportation budget dedicated to roads, the Sault is using its most powerful tool - public finance expenditures - to persuade residents to drive, institute a driving culture, and normalise driving as the exclusive form of access.  

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This is not to say we do not get it.  We do get it. Our roads are terrible. They suffer from neglect and high demand.  Combined, these factors have given rise to a lot of ups and downs for vehicle suspensions, and quite literally for cyclists and pedestrians.

 

Whether a pedestrian, cyclist, driver or public transit user, poor roads affect us all. Yet to repair all our roads to the standards they were originally constructed to would bankrupt this city, or at least place such a heavy burden on taxpayers as to drive away many residents and businesses.

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The Sault has over $1.3 Billion in road infrastructure alone (not including underground services). At a repair and replacement rate of $15 Million each year, it would take almost 90 years before all this infrastructure is brought up to speed.  Given an average life expectancy of merely 15 years, we would have a majority of our road infrastructure in a severe state of perpetual disrepair, much like we have today.  Clearly, attempting to repair and reproduce our existing road infrastructure is a losing battle, one neither our community nor the environment can afford. With over 1200 km of paved roads in the Sault, continuing to shell out rising costs for massive infrastructure maintenance and operation is fundamentally unsustainable financially, socially and environmentally. 

 

Despite our continued attempts to repair existing road infrastructure, we proceed to expand our road infrastructure, with new lanes and new roads being added annually.  The city's own 2013 report on municipal operational efficiencies shows the costs of operating paved Sault roads is constantly rising, from $2700 per lane kilometer in 2009 to $3700 per lane kilometer in 2013.  The operating costs for winter maintenance per lane kilometer is even more dramatic, relentlessly rising from $4500 in 2009 to over $6000 in 2013.  With climate change, these numbers are poised to rise dramatically.

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The irony is that the evidence, both local and global, unequivocally demonstrates that constructing roads only leads to more traffic, more costs and more collisions. This has been known for 50 years yet we continue to expand that treadmill of insufficient supply locking more residents into vehicle-centric lifestyles, not out of choice, but out of need created by the city's road budget.  This is simply reproducing again and again the forces that compel us to adopt unhealthy, ecologically destructive and expensive motorised lifestyles. By definition, we will never break this cycle by expanding, reproducing or reconstructing our existing supply of roads. 

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If we stop thinking of mobility as an end in itself, we can understand that all roads, fundamentally, provide access - access to goods and services, friends and family, economic activity and social engagement.  Access, unlike mobility, can be achieved in many ways, mobility being only one of those ways, and private vehicle use only one form of mobility. We would be better served by redistributing funding that improves access equitably and sustainably and generates considerable co-benefits.

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We have far too many roads for our means, and we have better means to serve the function our roads provided in the past.  Those other means also come with enormous co-benefits for our economy, health, social fabric and community well being which would help reduce municipal budgeting costs in other areas. We need look no further than many of our municipal policies.

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Better Choices

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Fortunately, there are better choices.  Unlike roads that only provide access for those of driving age, who wish to drive and those able to drive, our Age Friendly policy demonstrates how if we construct our city to enable access for those under 8 and over 80 years of age, we provide access to everyone.  Our Transportation Master Plan already recommends the city 'actively discourage the use of single occupant vehicles' and to consider road diets (which only one of five reconstruction projects budgeted for 2019 did) among other actions, and our Official Plan has many strong elements that support equitable access and sustainable development practices.  As the largest portion of our budget, mobility in the form of transportation capital projects, can be done far more efficiently, and in ways that expand equity and sustainability with many co-benefits.  This budget submission offers advice on how to make those better choices while reducing municipal taxes, improving access and mobility and creating health, ecological and economic and social co-benefits.

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Sault Ste. Marie is especially well positioned to be a global leader in this respect: it is a caring close-knit community; and it is not a fast growing large municipality - we, unlike many other communities, do not have to worry about the costs of growth.  We have the unique opportunity to reverse our vicious cycle, and replace it with a virtuous cycle.

 

Cutting services to reduce the level of tax increases will neither improve services nor reduce taxes in the long run. It is time for a fresh approach.

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Recommendations

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A. Place a hold on new roads, reconstruction and resurfacing projects in 2019

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We need to hit the pause button on this viscious cycle.  As we scramble to reproduce our road infrastructure, we fail to stop and ask the important question: "Is this the best way to proceed?" instead opting for the more traditional question "How is the best way to do this?" Every year we continue to reconstruct roads that were originally constructed decades ago, or construct new roads to those antiquated standards, locking our community into a costly unsustainable driving culture. Showing at best tokenism for other options such as good urban planning, public transit, cycling and walking, roads take precedence. For example, in last years budget, we spent $25M on roads and related capital infrastructure, while a meagre $0.05M on healthy kids. This is no way to educate children and youth on healthy mobility choices.  Conversely, prioritizing healthier mobility choices would eliminate the need for ineffective downstream funding measures.  Furthermore, excessively wide roads have huge associated costs for maintenance, snow removal and water contamination.  Indeed, if the city wishes to reduce storm water flooding and contamination by charging for impermeable surfaces, perhaps the first place they should look is to the roads and other paved surfaces fuelled by municipal taxes.  A one year road reconstruction pause will give staff and citizens time to reflect on what we really want and need, and the best way to proceed. 

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The following four projects should be placed on hold until they have been evaluated for road diets, traffic calming, active mobility and connected healthy and active mobility networks and other practices consistent with municipal policies and tax reductions:

Ruth Street Reconstruction

Second Avenue Reconstruction

Leo Avenue Reconstruction

McNabb Street Reconstruction

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Similarly, the 2019 proposed budget allocates $550000 to resurfacing projects. These again reproduce antiquated infrastructure, produce a driving culture, increase taxes and environmental pollution and download costs onto citizens.  They should all be placed on hold until such time as the fiscal, social and ecological realities have been aligned and reconstruction aligns with existing municipal policies.

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Finally, the Black Road Project would unnecessarily and recklessly add new lane kilometers to our already onerous, over taxed, unmaintainable road network only to strengthen our driving culture at the expense of other pressing problems.  We believe this funding could be far better distributed to reduce crime, improve health outcomes, create upstream solutions to our substance abuse challenges, tackle climate change or reduce property taxes.

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Taken together, the above projects would save an estimated $15 Million in budget 2019. We propose that spending be paused, choosing instead to redistribute half of it ($7.5M) to other programs that will help support an overall reduction in automobility infrastructure concurrent with improved health outcomes, reduced ecological damages, reduced crime and poverty, with an equal share ($7.5M) going toward a property tax reduction

 

B. Evaluate need and align capital road and reconstruction project needs with municipal policies

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The city has begun a list of supportive policies and practices that accommodate a healthy, sustainable and fiscally prudent transportation network.  These cannot be considered in isolation or applied ad hoc or randomly.  Improving access and creating a healthy and sustainable mobility network requires that all relevant policies contribute to the overall objective.  For example, traffic calming works well for a neighbourhood, but does not work well with a street. A road diet, such as Bay Street or Queen Street, work well when all other roads that connect or intersect with these roads are of the same configuration. It does not work as well when connecting and intersecting roads do not self-replicate that network.  Public transit works well when it is given a level playing field with other modes, but does not work as well when competing modes are not charged their full costs, such as for parking, road user fees or pollution. A bicycle sharing program works well when it can compete fairly, but not very well when other services such as roads do not have to operate on a full cost recovery basis.

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C. Place a moratorium on any new roads or lanes until operational efficiencies and equitable distribution of mobility network is achieved; re-evaluate needs at that time

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There are significant gaps in our existing transportation network which can increase the efficiency of operations and more equitably distribute resources to all modes of mobility.  Funding allocated to reproduce or expand the existing stock of roads cannot achieve these efficiencies.  Examples may include equipping all signalized intersections with induction control devices, pedestrian priority signals (countdown and lead time; crossing on all sides), pedestrian crossovers, reduced speed limit on all roads (to 30 kph), traffic calming of all neighbourhoods, redirect gas tax revenue to sustainable and healthy mobility options, apply user fees to private vehicle road use.  These less expensive options should be undertaken prior to reproducing or expanding our road infrastructure.  For just one example, the $15M in savings from budget 2019 could fund 500 new pedestrian crossovers, virtually eliminating the risk of pedestrian deaths on all streets, including Great Northern Road, Second Line West, Trunk Road and others where these deaths have occurred.  The city should develop an action plan and schedule and implement that plan prior to reproducing any new roads or expanding the road network.

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D. Redistribute capital road funding to other core services for 2019; improve service delivery for public transit, active transportation, walking, cycling and social services (increase of 3.75% funding or $7.5 Million)

From the $15M saved, we propose that $7.5M of this funding be redistributed to help fund the above action planning. For example, funding can be redistributed towards projects such as electrification of our transit fleet, a bike sharing program, landscaping, parks and recreational spaces, and fare free transit access. This should be done equitably, not just equally.