TAC Sponsor Spotlight Article — AtkinsRéalis
Traffic congestion has become a defining feature of life in Ontario. For years, slow-moving vehicles and persistent gridlock have characterized the province’s main arteries and downtown Toronto. Traffic jams are no longer a matter of bad luck; they are now the norm.
Some of the causes of the problem are well known: roadworks, accidents, construction. But the deeper drivers of the problem are our collective human decisions. Driving is often the easiest option, because in many places, there’s no simple, reliable alternative for getting to work, school, the grocery store, or social activities. As hundreds of thousands make the same choices—vehicle registrations in Toronto rose 26% over the last decade—it creates a significant coordination challenge.
Driving nonetheless carries significant costs. The average Canadian spends just under $10,000 per year to own and operate a car. In suburban Ontario, many families own two cars out of necessity. Drivers in Toronto spend an average of 118 hours a year stuck in traffic delays. But congestion isn’t just a headache for drivers; it increases the cost of goods delivery and carbon emissions, while decreasing air quality and mobility for those without cars.
The need for change is widely recognised, and organisations like the Toronto Region Board of Trade have contributed valuable insights into technological, policy, and pilot solutions that can help ease congestion. Ultimately, congestion isn’t just a transportation problem—it’s a planning problem. Where we build homes and local services, and particularly what kind of housing we build, dictates how people move for decades. When the pieces don’t fit, the system begins to creak.
That’s why we need a careful rethink about how, where, and for whom we build.
Rethinking our roads
Adding more road capacity when necessary is the default solution to addressing congestion. Yet this approach leaves little margin for error and upgrades take time and disruption. With roads filled to the brim, even a small disruption such as a stalled truck, a flat tire or overflowing storm drain can cascade disproportionately through the network and delay thousands of journeys.
Although infrastructure is vital, we must understand how people are going to use it by starting by asking better questions. Why is this route congested? Where are people trying to go and why? What are their alternatives? And critically, are we designing our land use, housing, and transport policies around those realities?
Planning for people, not just pavement
Poor zoning decisions like clustering schools, supermarkets, and condos along the same road create inevitable chokepoints. Large apartment blocks with no nearby transit options lock in car dependency. Sprawling cul-de-sacs and distant job or shopping centres force families to own multiple vehicles just to get through the week.
When transit, housing, roads, and services are planned in isolation, congestion is inevitable. But when they’re aligned, cities can grow in ways that support the right mix of mobility options, services, and housing to match how people live, travel, and access services.
Toronto, for example, is reviewing bicycle and automobile parking minimums for new or enlarged condo developments. But most still offer only one or two bedrooms, making them unworkable for families. Updating zoning to encourage larger, family-friendly units near transit—alongside schools, parks, and services—could help shift this. It’s not just about building more homes but building the right ones in the right places, with good access to services.
The same logic applies to goods movement. A single freight bottleneck doesn’t just delay deliveries—it raises supply chain costs. Truck-only lanes, dedicated freight corridors, strategically located logistics centres, preference for unloading zones over parking, and smarter routing can ease pressure on general traffic by facilitating freight activity along certain routes.
We can’t always predict—but we can prepare
There is no single fix. When cities invest in well-planned, multimodal systems—linking roads, ports, transit, walking and cycling—they create the conditions for better behaviour to follow.
Driving often feels like the easiest and often cheapest option. Highways are largely free at the point of use, but the real costs—maintenance, emissions, congestion—are borne by the public. Without incentives to change behaviour, people will continue to default to their cars, even when it strains the system.
Tools like tolls, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, or peak-time charges can also shift that equation, encouraging carpooling or shifting travel times. Ontario recently introduced a pilot allowing single-occupant cars to pay for access to HOV lanes, to more efficiently use those lanes and fund improvements to the wider transportation network. But incentives only work if alternatives are in place—reliable, affordable buses, trains, or light rail, safe cycling routes, and walkable neighbourhoods.
When people have real choices, the whole system flows better. Three new Toronto lines—the Ontario Line, Finch West LRT, and Eglinton Crosstown—reflect a shift toward more integrated urban mobility. But better transit alone isn’t enough. The broader network must be designed to work together, and if it isn’t comfortable, safe and convenient, people won’t use it.
Infrastructure doesn’t just respond to behaviour—it shapes it. The Sheppard subway in Toronto, for instance, was once criticized for serving low-density areas. Today, it’s surrounded by new development, and the provincial government has committed to extending it.
That’s why we must consider costs and benefits across the full lifecycle of infrastructure. A bridge, for instance, may last 100 years and lock in travel patterns for the next generation, along with future maintenance, adaptation, and decommissioning costs. We need to weigh short-term goals, like easing congestion, against long-term outcomes, like reducing emissions and future-proofing our infrastructure against a changing climate.
From more concrete to more clarity
None of this is simple. People’s choices are shaped by habit, urgency, weather, childcare, and perceived convenience. But we can design systems that are more resilient to them—and more responsive to how people live and that requires collaboration at all levels. Engineers, planners, data scientists, behavioural experts, and municipal leaders all need a seat at the table to bring an integrated perspective spanning strategy, planning, design, and operations. Because congestion isn’t just about infrastructure. It’s about how everything connects.
Learn more about AtkinsRéalis’ work in the transportation sector