March 9, 2015
The hidden costs of congestion are between $500 million and $1.2 billion a year for the Metro Vancouver area, according to a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Tackling Traffic: The Economic Cost of Congestion in Metro Vancouver,” author Benjamin Dachis finds that when congestion causes people not to travel it stifles the key benefits of living in a city, like learning face-to-face, finding better jobs, and sharing services and infrastructure. These are collectively called agglomeration benefits.
