To listen to the promoters, the Vancouver to Seattle and Portland high-speed rail proposal may look like a great idea. For many, high-speed rail is a panacea that promises to solve all of our transportation and environmental problems. It behooves governments and...
Transportation
eZine: Ideas that change your world (Quarterly) Issue 1
Frontier Centre for Public Policy is proud to release its new premier quarterly magazine Ideas that change your world is our premier quarterly magazine delivering to you some of Frontier's latest thought-provoking, eye-opening, and captivating content from the past 90...
Airbus A380: Death of the “Plane Born to Die”
Airbus’ cancellation (February 14) of the four engine, wide-body A380 jumbo jet ends the troubled life of a plane that always was too big and out of sync with changing market realities. Little more than 11 years after its October 2007 maiden commercial flight by...
No Easy Way to Pay the Ferryman: A Valuation of Marine Atlantic
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has just released No Easy Way to Pay the Ferryman: A Valuation of Marine Atlantic by Ian Madsen, a senior policy analyst with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. The paper conducts an in depth valuation of the alternative...
Featured News
Our Health Ministers Need to Take a Lesson from Hockey Coaches
Those of you who are tired of my rants about the demise of our once great health system will be pleased to know that this is my last editorial. I am retiring from the BCMJ Editorial Board; currently, I am the longest-serving member (more than 20 years). I have been a...
Zinchuk: Oilpatch Only Spending Half What It Spent in 2014
Back in the lofty, pre-Justin Trudeau government days of 2014, back when oil was booming, pipelines were planned to east and west coasts, and Alberta and Saskatchewan were swimming in money, around $81 billion was spent in capital expenditures (CAPEX) in the Canadian...
Nationalism in the Skies and the bête noire of the 21st century
Emirates CEO Tim Clark says the airline industry considers the Gulf giant its “bête noire” –the “monster of the Middle East.” With two-thirds of the world living within eight hours of its Dubai hub, it seems the whole world is now changing planes in the Middle East....
Frontier Centre releases Nationalism in the Skies: The square peg in a round world
Today the Frontier Centre for Public Policy issued Nationalism in the skies: the square peg in a round world, authored by Mary-Jane Bennett. Nationality in a global business like aviation has made little sense Convened in 1944 by U.S. president F.D. Roosevelt to...
Deregulate Taxis To Improve Mobility in Winter Cities
Few urban experiences are less pleasant than waiting for a taxi in the middle of a Canadian winter. When temperatures dip, demand soars. Ordinary citizens begin to hijack other peoples’ taxis to avoid intolerable waits. It’s every man, woman, and child for him, her,...
Cabbies, customers deserve better
Winnipeg's taxi business represents a textbook case of what economists call "regulatory capture" -- the Taxicab Board pays more attention to protecting cab owners' capital gains than the needs of their customers, who want more cabs, better service and lower prices. In...
Losing Canadian Travellers To American Airports
Five million Canadians cross the border each year to fly from U.S. airports and save hundreds of dollars on the cost of a single vacation. Travelling from a Canadian airport costs more in several ways, especially when you add up airport fees and taxes. The U.S. sees...
High-Speed Rail Not Best Use of Taxpayer Money on the Prairies
There is renewed discussion in Alberta about building a high-speed rail link between Calgary and Edmonton. The idea has been around in one form or another for more than 30 years, but experience elsewhere in the world suggests that a high-speed train on the Canadian...
Dispatches From the American Midwest
Canadian cities face a myriad of challenges. Aging infrastructure and worsening traffic are undermining mobility, with immense costs. The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area alone loses $6 billion in productivity due to gridlock each year, which is expected to increase...
Who should pay for Toronto transit projects?
Financing infrastructure projects is typically a complex process, involving transfers between provinces, cities, and neighbourhoods. While it is possible (though not easy) to track transfers between provinces, it is difficult to track transfers between cities, and...
Look at options for STC, Frontier Centre says
Joe Couture, The StarPhoenix, December 12, 2013 The latest transfer of cash from provincial coffers to the Saskatchewan Transportation Company is for a needed capital project, not increasing operating costs, according to the minister responsible, Don McMorris....