Alex Reid

Last month, Macleans magazine issued a bold exposition; assessing our cities.

Instead of measuring citizen’s happiness or measuring young professionals’ choices, the survey – conducted by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) – looked at the performance of city services compared to the cost. The magazine explained:

For without some sort of yardstick to measure their performance, either against other cities or against their own past record, how can they hope to know whether they are succeeding?

Macleans was quick to point out that their survey is different than the Frontier Centre’s Performance Index which they say measured how efficient Canadian cities are (doing things right) while Macleans was trying to measure how effective they are (doing the right thing).

There were two conflicting factors in the survey. One was inconsistency. Upon hearing the results, some cities’ Mayors complained that their city was unique and did not compare justly to other cities. And the fact is that some provinces maintain certain services while in other provinces, it is the cities that maintain those services. It was like comparing apples to oranges in many cases. A city that has a lot of crime may not be the fault of the police, just as a city that suffers a lot of snowfall may have to spend a lot of effort and money to plow it.

However the bigger problem in comparing the cities was the utter lack of transparency. In many cases, many cities either didn’t collect any data or feedback on their service levels or straight out did not release it to the public. But this all comes back to the main point, if we aren’t allowed to know the data which we already paid for, then how can we properly judge the decision making of our community leaders, or more importantly understand our weaknesses and improve upon that?

Macleans stated that if more than half the top 30 cities did not release information on a certain indicator, it was left blank such as “fire department response times or the percentage of roads in good condition” and if a city (like Victoria and Laval) didn’t release much data, they were dropped from the overall score. Painfully, one third of the cities offered very little data, specifically in regards to safety and protection (police and fire services). So AIMS had to rely on other previous works in the field of municipal assessment, such as Ontario’s Municipal Performance Measurement Program which started in 2000.

It’s not perfect, AIMS admits, but it’s a start. Assuming that Macleans will sponsor this survey on an annual basis, researchers hope that a pattern will emerge and hopefully pressure for open government data will prevail. In the meantime, it’s all meant for consideration.

FOR ALL THE DETAILED DATA, click here.

One interesting point was that the cities near the top of the list tended to have low voter turnouts while those cities near the bottom had the highest voter turnouts in Canada. Perhaps happiness equates to apathy?

Another interesting trend appears to be geographical, lending weight that the provinces or regional attitudes may play a part in local city centres.

Three of the top four cities in the Macleans list are in Vancouver and its suburbs. Quebec contains three top cities (Longueuil, Sherbrooke and Quebec City) in the top ten list, and apparently have the best fire and police services in Canada. Four cities in the Atlantic region ranked in the bottom third of the list. Winnipeg scored well with having the fourth most city employees per capita and Winnipeg Transit scored really well.

A Toronto architect has proposed building a seven-kilometre park on top of the Gardiner Expressway. The “green roof” was proposed for the run between Dufferin Street to the Don Valley Parkway, eight metres above the current road. It would be similar to New York’s High Line (video) (photo) which is a two-kilometre park on top of an elevated freight railway.

Since the Gardiner was built in 1965, residents have long complained that the elevated expressway blocked their view of the waterfront and recently the City of Toronto has been debating what to do with it. Mayor David Miller favours dismantling the expressway at the tune of $200 million while others suggest burying it at the cost of nearly $1 Billion.

Les Klein, the architect behind the unsolicited proposal says his idea would cost about $600 million, but the design also would include solar panels and wind turbines to power it’s lights. He argues that the roof would protect the road underneath from rain and snow and thus save the city from snow clearing and using salt.

Unrelated to the proposal, Toronto recently passed a bylaw that requires the construction of a green roof on all new developments of a certain size – a North American first.

Klein says even if his idea isn’t accepted, at least he has proposed an idea that will fuel the debate and get people to think about creative alternatives.

In a troubled industry, Southwest Airlines is known for “mixing” it up.

Martin Cash of The Winnipeg Free Press reports that the two largest taxicab companies in Winnipeg (owning 91% of the 410 cabs on the streets) are applying for more licenses despite opposing over 800 licenses of the same license applications made by other much smaller and start-up cab companies last summer (many cab companies only have one car). The largest application was made by a newly formed co-operative of disgruntled drivers for 150 licenses.

Cash also reported on this frustration several weeks ago when a disgruntled cab driver who was applying for 50 licenses called the two companies “a cartel”. Not helping so much with the label, the biggest opponent against his applications was Sidney Soronow – lawyer for both Unicity Taxi and Duffy’s Taxi – who argued that more cabs would “destroy the industry” and that “the health of the industry is at stake.”

Yet here they are asking for more licenses.

The belief of Unicity Taxi and Duffy’s Taxi is that if more licenses are going to be granted by the Taxicab Board (a provincial regulator) they should go to them. It’s a bit arrogant and certainly not in the best interests of a free market to continue to allow two companies (out of dozen companies) to control over 90% of the cabs on the road. And to add insult to injury (to the smaller companies) is that there is a rumour that Unicity Taxi and Duffy’s Taxi may shelve any new licenses.

Taxicab licenses in Winnipeg are much coveted at an average re-sale price of $220,000, the highest going for $285,000. [source]

The smaller cab companies claim there is more demand for taxis, while Unicity Taxi and Duffy’s Taxi say December is their busiest month (this doesn’t mean other months aren’t busy), so really the key to the supply/demand argument here is demand. CBC reported last year that Winnipeg has a low availability of taxis per capita in comparison to other Canadian cites.

If consumers (taxi customers) had a way to voice their complaints, the primary complain being that they are waiting too long for cabs or that they are generally unhappy with the service already offered by the two leading taxi companies, then the Taxicab Board might be impressed to allow more competition into the market.

The levels of government announced earlier today that the Winnipeg Skywalk system will expand from City Place to the Winnipeg Convention Centre. An overhead passage will be added from CityPlace Mall to 330 St. Mary and above Hargrave Street to the Delta Hotel, above the Elephant and Castle Pub.

There is already a skywalk from the Delta Hotel to the Convention Centre.

The $9 million expansion to the 2km downtown pedestrian network will be funded by a $6 million contribution from the Winnipeg Partnership Agreement; $2.4 million provided by CityPlace, the Delta Hotel, and LaSalle Investment Management (the owners of 330 St. Mary) and additional funding from the City of Winnipeg of $321,300.

Construction will begin in early 2009 and the extension should be done by early 2010.