Big Topics & Big Ideas
Urbanization
RTD is Sinking
The RTD ship is sinking and Colorado legislators want to fix it by rearranging the deck chairs. According to U.S. Department of Transportation data, RTD carried less than 64 percent as many riders in May 2024 as in May 2019, well below the 77 percent average for...
Frontier Live on X – The Good, Bad & Ugly of Winnipeg Plan 20-50 – with Randal O’Toole
Big Topics & Big Ideas
Building a 21st Century Transit System for Calgary
Calgary Transit is mired in the past, building an obsolete transit system designed for an archaic view of a city. Before the pandemic, transit carried 45 percent of downtown Calgary employees to work, but less than 10 percent of workers in the rest of the Calgary...
Featured News
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Revival of Rail Transit in Canada Questioned by Latest Policy Report
WINNIPEG, [March 12 2024] Canada's transit landscape is experiencing a profound transformation as eight major cities embark on the ambitious journey of developing rail transit systems. This marks a significant departure from the conventional wisdom of the 1950s when...
What Will Become of Cities?
Brownstone Institute
How to Kill a Country
Much of Seoul is a sea of high-rises. And not just Seoul: Busan and other cities in South Korea have lots of high rises. More than half of all South Korean households live in high rises, and well over 60 percent live in some kind of multifamily housing. South Korea...
High-Rise Datacenters: Potential to Assist Downtown Recovery
The largest Central business districts (CBDs or downtowns) face a serious crisis as working from home has seriously reduced the demand for five-day on-site employment. The CBDs most at risk are typically those with the strongest transit work trip market shares, at...
The Death Of The Great American City
The flight of office workers to the hinterlands will have profound effects on society.
Improving Transportation Access and the Economy in Winnipeg
The debate continues about the Route 90 expansion (Kenaston Boulevard) and whether it is a good investment for Winnipeg. Some arguments have been tabled to the extent that there is no use in expanding highways, or that transit would be better, or that nothing should...
Downside of Calgary Downtown Residential Conversions?
The Calgary Herald reports that some office tenants are being forced out of their buildings in the city of Calgary’s program to convert office buildings to residential uses. We had covered this program recently, noting that “that the City has adopted an aggressive...
Leaders on the Frontier: Debunking Myths about Urban Sprawl with Randal O’Toole
David Leis' guest here, Randal O'Toole has dedicated decades of research and analysis to policies that help citizens live and thrive rather than be held hostage to the demands of green belts and bureaucratic restrictions. In this conversation he debunks myths about...
Playgrounds for Elites
The revival of America’s core cities is one of the most celebrated narratives of our time—yet, perhaps paradoxically, urban progress has also created a growing problem of increasing inequality and middle-class flight. Once exemplars of middle-class advancement, most...