The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Why Is It So Hard To Get Around Ontario?

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Travelling from one end of the province to another is not an experience many Ontarians undertake. And, if they did, it seems that a car would probably be one of the best ways to get around. But what if you don't have a car or don't want to use one? Train services are not frequent enough, buses might not get you exactly where you need to go. Flights are expensive and beyond reach of many everyday Canadians. Places all over the world have embraced a more transit-friendly approach, so what's a province to do to get to the same level. We ask four transit and transportation experts to weigh in on how difficult it is to get around in the country's second-largest province and what can be done.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. Geographically, Ontario is bigger than Spain and France combined, making travel across the province especially problematic.

Getting around means taking the car, and even that can be difficult when the roads are in poor shape. And what if you don't own a car? How do you get from Toronto to Thunder Bay anyway, or Windsor to Timmins? Why is transportation in this province so difficult, and what can be done to get people moving? Let's ask. Wendy Landry, she is the mayor of Shunia, a municipality just outside of Thunder Bay. She's also president of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association and co-chair of the Northern Ontario Transportation Task Force. In North Bay, Ontario, Eric Boutillier, journalist and columnist for Northern Tracks.

And with us here in the studio, Josipa Petrinić, president, CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium. And Eric Miller, professor of civil engineering and director of the University of Toronto Mobility Network. And we are happy to welcome you two back to our studio here in Toronto. And your worship at Eric and Points Beyond, thank you for joining us on the agenda tonight as well. I'm going to start with a real smart aleck question. Yosipa, how'd you get here today? Transit. You did?

Transit. Which one? What'd you take? It was an epic journey, but one that I take regularly, which is taking a train from St. Catharines, where I was this morning, to Union Station, and taking a subway up. And the subway up. Yeah. Okay, from home in St. Catharines to what, train station? Correct, Union Station.

No, no. Oh, to get there, that's a good point. That was an Uber because I don't have a car. Uber. Okay, okay. Eric, how about you? Subway. I walked up to the Broadview Station, line two to line one, and got here on time.

The TTC actually was on time. Was on time. Well, that happens. You shouldn't sound so surprised. It does happen. Your Worship, Mayor Landry, if you had to get to our studio today from Thunder Bay, how would you do it? I would have drove from Shunya to the Thunder Bay Airport. I would have taken a flight, probably Porter to downtown Toronto, and then taken a taxi or an Uber

from the airport to your studio. Or you could have just driven and that would have taken what, 24 hours or so? About 14, 15 hours. Oh, piece of cake. Not nearly so bad. Okay. Eric, how about you from North Bay?

If you had to come down here from North Bay, how would you do it? Well, maybe in a few years, I might take the Northlander and come down to Union Station and then connect to the TVO studios. But right now I'd probably drive just because it's just the simplest way at this point. And Mayor Landry, if you had to get to, let's say you were going to one of your Northern Ontario Mayors Association conferences, and let's say they had it in Timmins, how would you get there from Thunder Bay? I would probably drive. It would be quicker. Otherwise, my options are to fly to Toronto and wait for a bearskin or a porter to Timmins. Seriously? So you might fly from Thunder Bay to Toronto to Timmins? That

might be a way to get there? Might be safer if it's wintertime, depending on the season. Interesting. Okay. Eric Miller, follow up on all of this, if you would. We are, I mean, transit if you can, but as we've heard, transit is not always an option for all people under all circumstances. Do we still overwhelmingly live in a province that is focused on the car and car culture? Well, yes, we are, because we haven't invested within urban areas in urban transit, and we've failed to provide inner-city public transport in a very, very effective way. public transport in a very, very effective way. You know, we've been talking about in the Toronto, Montreal corridor, Ottawa corridor, high-speed rail for over 50 years. There was a study in 1969 looking at it, and we've been talking about it ever since, and we have failed to deliver

alternatives. And, you know, the bus industry has been in decline for a number of years in the province as well so we people just don't have alternatives uh in most cases uh you have to drive four five six hours well that's what you do because there isn't an alternative. Yosipa how would you characterize the ease with which people can get around this province of Ontario? Yeah well very difficult but I would say there's some beacon lights of hope, perhaps, within that. To your point, Eric, you know, busing has dropped off, and we're talking about coach busing, but services like Flix have stepped in to fill the gap with the Greyhound exit. Having said that, public transit is on the rise. We're hitting pre-pandemic, and I've already busted through pre-pandemic levels in cities like Brampton and other cities around the country.

The ridership is coming back. The ridership is coming back. So clearly transit is playing a role. It is growing and we expect transit to double in size in the next decade or so because of electrification. But having said that, when we are talking about commuting and mobility, just to set in context, you know, 80% of Canadians still drive to their regular commute. Only 20% of us take transit or walk. It's the reverse in Tokyo. And so why can't Toronto be like Tokyo? Well, there's some good political reasons probably for that that we can get into, but the reality is it's still an 80-20 split, which means it's too hard to get around. Eric Boutillier, how does it work in North Bay?

If you've got to go somewhere, are public transit options at all available there, or how significant are they? If you're travelling within the city, public transit, while limited, is available. The moment you try to step out of city limits is when it becomes challenging because there really isn't any sort of connected network to connect you to smaller communities that surround North Bay. And certainly intercity transit is sparse, very limited here in Northern Ontario. How much bus or train service is left in

Northern Ontario, in your view? It's almost non-existent. I mean, you have a train that goes from Sudbury to White River three times a week. You have the transcontinental train that goes from Toronto to Vancouver through places like Sudbury, Horn, Payne, Suluk out twice a week. You have train service between Cochrane and Moosonee a few times a week. Bus service maybe once a day, depending on where you live. So it's a real fragmented system. There's very little ways to connect in between those different modes. And it's a challenge, quite frankly. Mayor Landry, how safe are the transportation options in Northern Ontario?

So when we talk about the transit system, the transit system in the city is limited to the city of Thunder Bay. And again, just like Eric was saying, that it's within the city limits. And those folks that take the city transit here in Thunder Bay are usually the folks that don't own a vehicle or don't have a vehicle or they're new to the area. And it's time consuming to get across the city with the transit system here. If you're inter-community, commuting between our communities, then it's extremely limited. With the loss of Greyhound, that was a huge loss for all of our communities. And we have limited options. The Northlander comes through now occasionally. And some places, when it comes through, it's pick up at three in the morning, all hours of the night. And some places, when it comes through, it's pick up at three in the morning, all hours of the night.

And if you want to go to any of the communities that are off the highway, there's some offers of private transit, like Casper buses. And some municipalities have received funding for some of the ability to bring seniors to the city of Thunder Bay for doctor's appointments and stuff. But it's traveling in between. Our communities are very long uh very boring it's a lot of trees well it looks beautiful though okay hang on your worship what do you mean boring it looks beautiful up there okay well let me follow up on that okay let me follow up on that you said it's dangerous if you're if you're driving in the city of thunder bay and of course roads are an issue weather can be an issue what's it like well the city of Thunder Bay I mean they do a good job in the snow clearing but it takes

time right if you get a if you get 12 inches of snow which is not uncommon and in an evening it it takes time to get all of our roads cleared and I mean I don't want to speak for specifically the city of Thunder Bay but for those that are traveling in from the outer side outside communities to come into Thunder Bay to work the highways the, the time frame of getting those highways cleared can vary from one storm to the next. And so even buses are being canceled for school in the mornings are a regular thing. Let me follow up on buses with Eric Miller. There's not the bus service in this province, particularly inner city bus service that there used to be. Do you think buses are a thing of the past? There's no reason why

they need to be a thing of the past. You know, modern technology, you can have Wi-Fi on it, you can make it comfortable. The challenge is the cost effectiveness. We tend to have long distances, as we're talking about, thin markets. So, you know, why did Greyhound leave? Because they couldn't make money. And, you know, the government generally is not willing to subsidize it. So if we acknowledge buses as an essential service to connect particularly smaller communities, you know, government is going to have to invest in it to make it happen. There aren't a lot of other technology options, I think, in many cases. You're not going to be building a lot of rail in, again, in long, thin markets.

And if you want an alternative to the car, then I think modern buses could be providing, you know, the sort of service that you need to fill the gap. Yosipo, what about, like, St. Catherine's to Toronto? Is there a bus that does that? There is. I mean, there is a Flix bus. Yeah, you can do it. It's pretty cheap. And actually, I just took the bus from Calgary to Banff. It was 11 bucks. Don't drive your car. That's why I tell people. But having said that, you know, I'm single. I don't have kids. I'm taking the laptop, not a baby stroller. So there's some constraints. But if I may, Steve, just go back to the point that the mayor raised about safety. Let's go even further, because then this goes into the what is possible on the busing side. Safety is not just about getting on the roads and not dying.

For sure, the development of a northern transit strategy is to get to the ring of fire to make sure that there's workers getting to the ring of fire. How many dead people are we willing to accept on the icy roads of northern Ontario before we build the rail line? That's a serious question that we have to think about. But the other piece of safety, let me remind folks about Weston, Canada. We're in Ontario, but British Columbia has a highway of tears. And it's called a highway of tears for a reason, Highway 16, because women are dead and murdered on that highway. And they're dead and murdered on the highway because they're hitchhiking and they're getting picked up by predators. That is what happens when we don't have buses, coach, rail, you name it, public mobility services. Since BC Transit started delivering a bus service, just three routes, three buses,

over 5,000 rides. So that shows that there's immediate demand, there's an immediate need, and it is entirely possible, even in low-density communities, to serve not just their ridership requirements, but also save lives. And what is the economic exchange and return on investment on a life not murdered or killed? That's a real hard question to ask and to answer. But Mayor Landry, those are the kinds of those are the kinds of facts you and your colleagues have to consider when deciding how many billions of dollars we can afford to spend to improve the infrastructure network in our cities, towns and provinces. What What do you come up with when you ask those hard questions? Well, it's interesting because, you know, the transit systems in the other part of the province, other than northern Ontario, are subsidized to a great extent.

In northwestern Ontario specifically, I won't speak to northeastern Ontario, the subsidies are not the same. The subsidies look different in this application for funding for municipalities to bring seniors to the large urban centres. It's not the inter-community connection that needs to be subsidised for the reasons that were mentioned by Josipa. Exactly that. I still know I was a foster parent for many years and I still know some of our young women are hitchhiking from Kenora to get to Thunder Bay.

And it makes me cringe all the time knowing how many women go murdered and missing. And that's a huge piece of factor of safety too, right? But our weather systems up here are so different. We can literally have four seasons in one weekend. Just had one, matter of fact. So it's safety on the highways is another consideration. But the subsidies for the province of Ontario has to flow a little bit further than just an application from municipalities who are able to find a partnership with a private subsidy or private partner to offer services. Because as Eric Miller mentioned, it's low ridership.

So Greyhound was great. I grew up in Nipigan and I went to high school in Red Rock. And if I missed the school bus that morning or stayed a little longer in the coffee shop, I could pay $6 and take the Greyhound into Red Rock and be at school, you know, shortly after start time. That's not existent anymore. So even with the Northlander coming through, it's not hitting our smaller communities that are off the highway. No, those days are gone, to be sure. Now, Eric Miller, if you're starting in Windsor, Ontario, and you want to go sort of within about an hour of the U.S. border,

all the way east, all the way to Ottawa, I mean, that's a fairly well-served area by both roads and transit, is it not? Well, it's yes and no. Yes and no. Because you're dependent on the 401, which is a horrible highway to drive, particularly west of Toronto. But it will connect you, and it is a high-speed road. The train service, the VIA service, its main problem is it's not reliable. And so there's you know on paper there's fairly good service it could be more frequent uh and ideally it should travel a little bit faster but the big problem is reliability uh and reliability as in arriving on time arriving on time um and the big

problem there is by and large the trains share the tracks with the freight with freight traffic and the freight traffic is always going to have priority uh because they own the tracks and and so you know the best way we could uh do to speed up uh the travel time from let's say toronto ottawa is just to arrive on time instead of half an hour or 45 minutes late um and, but that's not as easy a thing to solve as we think. So yes, the service is there, but it's not sufficiently attractive in most cases or many cases for people not to fly or drive instead. Josipa? Yeah, if we can add some numbers to it. And actually, I disagree that it's not as easy as it sounds. I think with political will, it is actually potentially that easy. To put some numbers on it, you know, via rail transported about 5 to 6 million people in a given year pre-pandemic,

roughly still there if we're going to go post-pandemic. Metrolink moves about 40 to 50. Pre-pandemic, 60 million. 40 to 50 million. Okay. If you go to the Netherlands, it is five times that amount, about 430 million in a similar kind of geographic zone. So it's entirely possible to move a lot of people in a similar kind of geographic zone. So it's entirely possible

to move a lot of people in a short period of time across a large distance. And if we look at the corridor from Windsor to Quebec City, the issue here is the right of way. And there was a private members bill raised earlier this year by an NDP member of parliament. And it's not kooky and it's not outlandish and it's not left wing radicalism of some sort. If people are opposed to the nature of the origin of it, the idea is that CN and CP would pay fines if they blocked via trains from arriving on time. Totally legit. Why? Because Amtrak's been doing it for 50 years,

and they have right of way. So CP and CN do bow down to Amtrak in the United States because legislation says you must. It is entirely feasible and intellectually possible and constitutionally possible to do the same thing in Canada, especially is entirely feasible and intellectually possible and constitutionally possible to do the same thing in Canada, especially given that CPNCN's track was laid by taxpayer subsidized funds in the past century. So this is not a radical concept for us to raise as Canadians. And given our immigration rates, our population, our congestion, it's something that actually we're obligated to start looking at.

Well, let me ask Eric in North Bay, how do we get from where we are to the vision of the future that Josipa has just outlined? Political will is a big one. I would say connecting people to the places they need to get to would be a start. I mean, here in Northern Ontario, when I go up to see my partner in Thunder Bay, I take the train from Sudbury to White River. And I've got to wait for my partner to pick me up there because there's no practical connection to transfer to the bus to get me to Thunder Bay. So I'm stuck waiting nine hours between the arrival of the train and the departure of the bus. I wait beside a restaurant outside a highway because it's closed in the middle of the train and the departure of the bus. I wait beside a restaurant outside a highway because it's closed in the middle of the night. I have to carry my luggage in hand between the

train station to the bus stop. So I think making transit simple to use, easy to use, reliable, affordable, and comfortable so that people will make that conscious effort to use it as opposed to driving. Well, Mayor Landry, let me do a follow up on that, because I think it was a little over a decade ago that the government of Ontario Premier Dalton McGinty cancelled the Northlander. They said it was simply too expensive to keep going and therefore it doesn't exist anymore. Now, the current government, in its wisdom, has decided to try to resurrect it. And apparently contracts were recently awarded

for station shelters and so on. How have we suddenly been able to afford something today that we were told a decade ago we simply could not afford to subsidize anymore? Well, it's exactly that political will and the willingness to put down the subsidies to the northwestern part of the province so that we can, too, be offered the ability to choose different types of transportation in between our communities. And so it's about political will. And, yes, it's going to cost money.

Northwestern Ontario people are Ontario citizens, too, who pay tax dollars as well. And the subsidies should be flowing this way as well and it's political will and you know there's a start place going on right now and we just need to tweak it and find out how do we connect the communities that are off the main line. Eric Miller I've got a real nasty question for you which is we have a finite amount of money to invest in different transportation infrastructure projects. We can't afford everything. Can't afford to build everything we want all over the place.

Would resurrecting the Northlander, in your view, be the wisest expenditure for those billions? That is a nasty question. I warned you ahead of time. I gave you the heads up. And, you know, part of our problem is we have not been investing in both urban and intercity transport for so long. And we have such a catch up that it is very daunting. I think, yes, probably as a backbone to then build around. But to Eric's point, we also have to think about as an entire network the connectivity you know so the Northlander will connect major points how do people get to and from that from

the remote communities uh and and uh and so thinking about the overall service and thinking about from the user point of view so we have been designing a service just building a rail line that's a great first step but then how do people get to and from it? And, you know, the same thing is true in sort of the southern corridor as well. It's the first mile, last mile. And that's where, again, technology and different types of services can help us connect, have that train really connect the communities together. So this is an age-old problem. You've got 90% of the population of the province living within an hour of the U.S. border, but you've got people like Mayor Landry and like Eric Boutillier who are in northern Ontario who feel that they're not getting their

share of the pie. So how do we resolve all that? Well, I'll take it back to the Northlander discussion here and then talk about the integration. The first thing is, if you're Doug Ford right now, you've staked your reputation in part on the rain of fire. Yep. And if you go to the Ministry of Transportation's website and take a look at their rail strategy or their strategy for northern Ontario, there right in the middle is a picture of the rain and fire. Why is it there? Because you can't get workers to the rain and fire.

You cannot get people to work in those mines. You cannot get them into the supply chain. Who is going to drive from Toronto and from Windsor to work in the rain and fire? Well, particularly, you have two levels of government doing for 10 years over. Who's going to build the roads? Well, exactly. So if you have staked your reputation on extraction of those minerals for an electrification industry of the future, you're going to have to build rail out

and the integrated system. So then that speaks to the integrated system. Like, definitely it's going to be worth the billions because the income tax that presumably, and the corporate tax that should be coming back into our pocketbook. But even if we take that out of the picture, very low-hanging fruit that is Canadians, we have available tomorrow already. The fact of the matter is we have transit systems, public transit systems operating along the backbone of the Metrolink's line and all of VIA.

Right now, today, when you get onto one of those transit systems from Kingston all the way down to Hamilton, your Presto card tells Metrolink a lot about you when you get on. You get off your bus onto your train, but that data does not flow the other way. Every transit agency we work with, 22 agencies across that Metrolink's line, do not get information going the other way telling them when are passengers arriving, who are they, what kind of clientele do we have. So how do you get Burlington's buses and Oakville's buses to arrive right on time when you're not getting the data to come back? That is an immediate solution tomorrow.

And for VIA, it's the same thing. There's no information sharing between VIA and local transit that already exists. If that happened, I guarantee to you we'd know a lot more about our clientele. We'd have more clientele to appeal to. The buses would know how to arrive and when to arrive. And poor Eric would not be stuck out behind a restaurant in the middle of nowhere because there would be a bus that had been given the information on that clientele. Mayor Landry, do you see a future where you have hope that trains will once again come into Thunder Bay from around Ontario? Well, you know, Steve, we used to have the via rail that used to come into Thunder Bay right now, but now it goes to Armstrong, Ontario, which is three hours north

of Thunder Bay. So you have to find a way to get to Armstrong in order to take the via to get either to go east or to go west. So I'm hoping that there's a political will to someday put forward. We still have train tracks here. We still have the CNCP rail lines going through these areas and these communities. So, you know, if there's a political will, an upfront cost and long-term gain, we have a lot of jobs available.

In northwestern Ontario, we believe that we are the future of Ontario because we have the natural resources and we have the abilities to produce natural resources, whether it's mining, forestry, lithium, the ring of fire. We believe that we're the future of Ontario and we can help out. And so if there's political will to help us out in bringing that train system this way, then I think it's possible. Eric Poutillier, I know, I think I know, if you wanted to drive to Toronto from where you are in North Bay, you're looking at, you know, what, four hours, something like that? Does that sound right? Yeah, three and a half, four hours, yeah. Okay. If you wanted to fly it, how much would it cost to fly? Oh, geez. I mean, you're looking, you're probably looking at about $600, $700.

Exactly. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So is there a way, I mean, obviously, that's beyond the means of a lot of people, particularly if you need to do it multiple times. So the question becomes, is there something that some policymaker or some government can do, or is there something that the private owners of these airlines can do to make that more within reach of people's pocketbooks? What do you think? I'm not sure. I mean, it's like I compare a one-way ticket to fly between North Bay and Thunder Bear.

I've looked at it before. You're looking at about $775 each way. At that price, I can get a vacation return flight to the Caribbean for on that price. Like it's air travel, air travel, particularly to in northern Ontario is challenging because you have, the way it's set up is you fly between the community point A to point B, but you're not serving those intermediate communities in between. So a lot of the smaller towns get left out. And I mean, we've seen Bearskin Airlines pull out of Cap Biscaycing when the town ended its subsidy. We've seen Dryden, Fort Francis, Kenora also lose air service because just not enough demand. And I think price point is just a huge factor for people trying to get from point A to point B.

Yeah, Eric, I don't know. Sorry, other Eric. Eric Miller, I don't know if there are any alternatives because the fact is you can probably fly to Paris or Berlin for the same as it costs to fly from here to North Bay. But it's supply and demand. There's not enough people who want to go from here to North Bay. There's lots of people who want to go to Europe. Yeah, again, it's the density, the thickness of the market, and just the cost of operating airplanes and fuel and everything else. Anything be done about that or no?

Well, we can't shrink the geography, can we? So coming back to your other question, the government has to decide where subsidies make sense and help airlines become more efficient. But it's not an easy problem to solve. I would add maybe there are some case studies. And I know we want to say government needs to invest, invest, invest. And this is true. To put some numbers on it, we bought for what, over $10 billion a pipeline, and now it's ballooned to $30 billion. We've put only about $2.5 billion into transit federally

and under $1 billion in high-frequency rail. So just in order of magnitude, we need about 10 times as much investment federally in high-frequency rail to meet what we invest right now, let's say, in a pipeline. That was a National Unity project, though. That was not an economic project. Arguably, so would be a rail be, right? Arguably.

Right, good point. But even if we take it out of government subsidization, we look at what can corporations do, there is very strong evidence in Southeast Asia, Asia, and in Europe that where airlines partner with rail or coach or bus services, they increase their volume and decrease their prices. Now, obviously, you're looking at high density areas, but there's evidence for the the smaller low-cost carriers and also the short-haul flights. So although we usually think of rail competing with airline which is the goal ultimately for environment you can envision and in fact there's good evidence that the partnerships between rail and bus into porter airlines or rail and bus into bearskin or rail or bus into any short-haul flight

would actually increase the volume of riders. Not massively, but it would still do something to that price point. Can I ask you about another mode? Yep. You're in St. Catharines. Yeah. I bet it would be much easier rather than trying to go home, Uber to train station, train station to Union Station, Union Station subway to here, some kind of ferry across Lake Ontario. Why do we not have any of that yet? Well, there's three new mobility modes that have to happen.

One is ferry, for sure. We only really have ferries operating out in British Columbia. If you go to Sydney Harbour, ferries are an integrated part of the Sydney transit system and they are globally well established. It has been not lack of political will, it's been lack of corporate leadership, frankly, to realize the level and the scale of ridership.

Plus, post-pandemic now, you have such a growth in the population in the Niagara region that would use that. It's starting to make ferries look reasonable from a corporate investment standpoint. The second is gondolas. In Toronto and Canada, we have not even looked at gondola technology. Gondola technologies have been deployed in South America. They scale over large cities that cannot be built out. They're not expensive. They're a fraction of gondola. This is like towers with wires and cable cars.

We think about gondolas as ski gondolas, but gondolas are used around the world as public transit. They don't rip up roads. You don't need tunnels. And they transport as many people as rail in many cases. It is low cost solution building building and the third one is on-demand transit So I took an uber this morning because I was a bit lazy but if I had planned just 15 minutes more I could have taken st. Catharines Niagara region transit on demand and Everywhere in Canada where transit has like an uber like style service It's a fraction of the price a few minutes longer and it gets you to your transit hub run by the public sector. These are all mobility technology modes that work. They work around the world, and there's no reason why we can't implement them in Canada. Mayor Landry,

the reality is we are, if we want to make improvements here, we're looking at multiple billions of dollars, multiple tens of billions of dollars of investment. And people don't want to pay any more taxes, and governments, you know, are hearing it up the yin yang about that. So where do we get this money to make all these investments from? Yeah, it's a great question that we're always trying to put forward. And the subsidies, you know, the subsidies is a big piece, you know, and we understand it. We don't have the population in northwestern Ontarioario necessarily to meet the demands of uh of inter inter community transit but um we've talked many times and put out solutions from noma perspective when we talk about the fuel tax for example to reduce the cost of flying in between our communities um would bring down the cost to

the airlines so that our riders can pay a lower price. You know, I fly from here to Sault Ste. Marie on bearskin quite often. If I had alternate options, I might potentially take them. But right now you're looking at almost anywhere from $800 to $1,000 from here to Sudbury or Sault Ste. Marie. And even though that might be the quickest route, it might not necessarily be the cheapest route. So when we talk about fuel tax and reducing the fuel taxes to the airlines, we're hoping that maybe that would make a difference as well. Eric Poutinier, is there, I mean, we've talked about the fact that I think, Josip, you said this, but 80% of the people still taking cars, 20% in transit. So we're a car culture still.

In spite of everything, we seem to be a car culture still. Is there a way to, I don't know what, incentivize car use, incentivize sharing, incentivize, I don't know, governments, private sector participants to improve the state of the physical infrastructure of the roads, since that's the way most people are going these days? I don't know. I'm asking you. It really depends where you live. I mean, in southern Ontario, you have a grid-like network where you can take detours to get around traffic or collisions on the road. In northern Ontario, you need a made-in-northern-Ontario solution to address some of those issues. I mean, right now, when Highway 1711 closes between Nipigon and Thunder Bay, the country is quite literally split in two. You have to go through the U.S. to detour.

You have rest stops in northern Ontario that are usually closed to the public during the winter. They're not maintained. Cell service in this region is very patchy or non-existent. You run into situations where, I mean, my girlfriend and I were driving back from White River to Thunder Bay. We saw three moose cross the road. We saw a bear grazing on the side of the road. You know, fortunately, it was daylight. but it just goes to show there's a lot of hazards out there that, you know, if people in this region are unable to drive, the automobile may not be, it just may not be a workable solution for them long term. Right. I must confess, it's been a long time since I saw a bear or a moose at Yonge and Eglinton here in Midtown Toronto. So you make a fair point there.

And also, you know, I do remember the former NDP leader Howard Hampton saying this province is so big sometimes for him to get back to his riding in Kenora. He used to fly to International Falls, Minnesota, and then drive from there because that was the easiest way to go. This is a big place. I want to thank the four of you for coming on to TVO tonight and sharing your views on this. Mayor Wendy Landry from Shunia, Ontario. Eric Boutillier, Northern Tracks is his publication. Josip Petreć, President and CEO, Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium. And Eric Miller, Director of the University of Toronto Mobility Network.

It's great to have all four of you on our program tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Thank you. The Agenda with Steve Paikin is made possible through generous philanthropic contributions from viewers like you. Thank you for supporting TVO's journalism.