Business in Vancouver picks up another angle on Nathan Pachal’s ratings report of Canadian transit – those shamefully distorted congestion ratings of Vancouver’s traffic.
Nathan Pachal gives Metro Vancouver one of the highest transit ratings in the country in his 2016 Transit Report Card of Major Canadian Regions. These high marks are in stark contrast to the low scores given to the region by the Amsterdam-based TomTom. According to the TomTom Traffic Index, Vancouver was ranked the 36th most congested city in the world, beating out New York, Seattle and every other Canadian city. However, Pachal says TomTom has unfairly and improperly saddled our region with a negative score.
“One of the things that is a little bit of a challenge with their report is it looks at the change in speed and that’s how it determines congestion,” said Pachal. “This idea that Vancouver is the apocalypse for driving (is) just because of how the scoring works.” …
Using Statistics Canada’s numbers from the last National Household Survey, Vancouver has one of the lowest commuting times in the country when it comes to a major city, he discovered. …
An Insights West survey conducted in May of this year found only 25% of British Columbians feel their weekday commute is worse now than it was five years ago, including 30% of Metro Vancouver residents. Of note, 63% of British Columbians described their commute as “moderately pleasant,” with 29% calling it “annoying.”
Let’s see if the Sun and Province pick up this piece of rational analysis as self-satisfactorily as they relay every apocalyptic TomTom report.