Latest news with #CanadianCities
CTV News
2 days ago
- Automotive
- CTV News
‘It's shocking': CAA shows number of near misses with cyclists, pedestrians and vehicles
Footage that CAA reviewed a showing a near miss between a vehicle and pedestrians in a Canadian city. Uploaded June 18, 2025. (CAA) A new report from CAA shows a shocking number of cyclists and pedestrians have experienced close calls with vehicles. In an effort to improve road safety for all users, CAA monitored 20 intersections across Canadian cities, including in Winnipeg. Over seven months, it recorded close to 617,000 conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles. 'I mean, it's sobering. It's shocking,' said Coun. Janice Lukes. That means one out of every 700 pedestrians and one in every 500 cyclists experience a high-risk or critical near miss with a vehicle. 'So if they would have actually happened and if there would have been a collision, they could have resulted in serious injury or death,' said Kristine D'Arbelles, the director of public affairs with CAA. The study found left and right turns posed the most near misses, followed by through traffic. CAA said to reduce these near misses, cities could add separated right-turn lanes, which slow down drivers, as well as give left-turning vehicles a dedicated green light before bikes and pedestrians. Another recommendation is installing leading signals, giving pedestrians a five-second head start into an intersection, which Winnipeg recently did downtown. The city has restrictions on some right turns and Lukes said the city is eyeing something similar for left turns. 'We're doing a lot of traffic calming. We're working at reducing—well, I'm looking at reducing the speed in residential neighbourhoods. The city's done a pilot on it,' said Lukes. As part of the study, CAA monitored St. Mathews and Wall Street in Winnipeg using an existing traffic count camera. CAA said this location was chosen because of the technological capabilities and not based on collision data. CAA did not provide data on incidents at specific locations.
National Post
09-06-2025
- Business
- National Post
Joel Kotkin: Carney's Canada will devolve into feudalism
Article content In this shift towards oligarchy, homeownership and investment profits play a major role. This is particularly true in terms of housing, where the Liberal Party has long championed 'urban containment,' a policy that seeks to limit suburban and exurban development while promoting dense urban growth. The result, notes a new study by demographer Wendell Cox, has been housing prices that, in terms of the relationship between median home prices and household income, are increasingly out of reach for the average Canadian. Article content Immigration, key to Canada's population surge, has contributed to this shortage. While the country's working population swelled by a record 3.7 per cent at the start of this year, housing starts remained essentially flat. At one housing start for every 4.9 people entering the working-age population, 'there is no precedent for a housing supply deficit of this magnitude,' notes National Bank of Canada economist Stéfane Marion. The biggest losers have been people under 40, for whom the homeownership rate has dropped to around 50 per cent, almost 10 per cent less than a decade before. It also helps to have wealthy parents who own a home; children of homeowners are twice as likely to acquire a home as those who do not. Article content If you wish to live in Canada's two great international cities, and are not of aristocratic stock, it's getting tough to get shelter. Four of the six major markets in Canada have a median multiple — a ratio of the median house price by the median gross (before tax) annual household income — of 5.4, considerably higher than the US's 4.8. Vancouver now ranks fourth among all anglophone markets at 11.8, behind Hong Kong, Sydney, and San Jose. Toronto, at 8.4, stands as the second-least affordable market in Canada and ranks 84th out of 95 markets in international affordability, with a severely unaffordable median multiple of 8.4. As late as about 1990, national price-to-income ratios were 'affordable,' at 3.0 or less in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Article content This pattern severely restricts homeownership, which has been declining since 2021. Not surprisingly, rates are lower in both Vancouver and Toronto than in much of the country. Clearly densification, the preferred growth option of the elites, does not help a housing shortage or reduce prices as Patrick Condon of the University of British Columbia has shown. Indeed, now Vancouver is now producing less-than-half the housing units needed to meet demand, one reason for the high prices even in a weak economy. Condon, an eloquent advocate of densification, cites the 'indisputable' evidence that 'upzoning' increases the value of land (by increasing the development value). Article content Concentrations of property and wealth are likely to worsen under the renewed Liberal regime. Planners and climate activists, as in California, a place which almost rivals Toronto and Vancouver in their progressive domination, will likely get even stronger with 'net zero' devotee Carney in charge. Similarly, industries that tend to create high-wage jobs, notably in oil and gas, will find themselves constrained, leaving the big money to financial institutions and those firms who rely on protectionism to shield themselves from both Chinese and American competition. Article content
CTV News
14-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
CTV National News: How high home prices are hitting smaller Canadian cities
CTV National News: How high home prices are hitting smaller Canadian cities According to a new report, housing affordability has worsened at a dramatic pace in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Sarah Plowman on how it is affecting homebuyers.
