OECD Says Traffic Congestion Costing Toronto - But What Are They Measuring?

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development thinks Toronto can speed up its productivity by putting tolls on its roads.

The 213-page OECD report on the region's economy was released Monday during a global cities forum at the Toronto convention centre.

The report shows that Toronto ranks well down the list in terms of city productivity growth between 1995 and 2005 and that Vancouver and Montreal are similarly low placed.

The OECD outlines four main policy issues and, arising from these, makes five main recommendations in the report:

• Boost innovation, by focusing on niches, university-firms linkages and cluster development and by phasing out subsidies
• Addressing obstacles to the acknowledgment of foreign skills, for example by bridging education programs and internships
• Tackle transportation challenges by creating incentives for reducing car use, access to additional revenue sources, longer term funding commitments by federal government for investment
• Apply a green overlay to the Toronto region’s competitiveness agenda
• Intensify strategic planning at the level of the Toronto region

It should be noted that, of the 32 cities included on the productivity growth chart, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver make up three of the bottom nine cities. Given that none of these three cities appear to be doing all that badly, in relation to many of the higher-ranked cities, such as Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, etc., I have to wonder just how valid this whole exercise is.

Could it be that this survey is giving higher ratings to cities that had bigger 2005 bubbles and whose economies have actually now collapsed to a far greater degree than Toronto, Motnreal and Vancouver? Qutie possibly. Indeed, I don't even know how important "productivity growth" from '95-05 really is, considering the magnitude of the recession of '08.

How much of the so-called productivity growth shown is based on overblown bubbles and trickle down from Iraq war spending? Very hard to tell.

It is also noted that the key recommendations make no mention of culture.

At this point I think the OECD needs to get back to the drawing board.

Not that I don't believe traffic congestion is a major problem in Toronto. =) And toll roads, as they suggest, could be a darn good idea.