The Double Double LRT – Make Hamilton Great Again

In 1870, Hamilton had a population half as large as Toronto’s. If it were to have kept that up, Hamilton would today be the 3rd largest Canadian city. The Bulldogs might be competing for the Stanley Cup right now.

But, Hamilton has been held back by two processes. One was the move from water transport to land transport. Hamilton’s main advantage was its port, which is still by far the busiest among Canadian ports in the St Lawrence/Great Lakes network. But in the modern era dominated by land transportation, Hamilton has been limited when compared to Toronto, as it is somewhat blocked in by the Hamilton Harbour or Niagara Escarpment (or, more distantly, by Lake Erie) on all sides.

The other was the move move away from manufacturing, and towards service-oriented metropolises. This too has held back Hamilton relative to Toronto, as Hamilton’s port (and its position between Lake Ontario and Erie, near the Welland Canal) had made it a manufacturing leader.

But things may be changing again:

Many services that cities like Toronto specialize in may face outsourcing or automation
As industry continues to automate, it may allow some “re-shoring” to high-wage countries like Canada. (And, if services are automated or outsourced, wages may fall in countries like Canada, relative to other countries)
If fuel prices (or pollution concerns) increase, it may lead water transportation (for cargo) or re-shoring manufacturing to become more important
If machines remain unable to compete with the dexterity of human hands, manufacturing may need to remain located in cities, with human workers operating alongside machines
E-commerce and automated warehousing may free up some urban commercial real estate for industry

In other words, it is becoming increasingly possible to imagine that mid-sized port cities like Hamilton, and large service cities like Toronto, will both reindustrialize to a certain degree going forward.

Indeed, cities in Ontario may be particularly well-suited for (partially) automated industry. Ontario has the highest disparity between surplus overnight power (generated by nuclear plants and wind farms, which cannot turn off at night) and relatively expensive daytime power. This disparity automated factories might be able to take advantage of, as machines can run overnight.

What follows is a joint transportation plan for both Hamilton and Toronto, aimed at transporting people during the day and transporting cargo during the day and night, while maximizing fuel-efficiency in both cases.

The Double-Double

Cargo is heavy, and so requires a lot of energy to transport. Luckily, as mentioned above, Ontario has a lot of surplus nighttime electricity (especially on windy nights). Overnight is also the best time to transport cargo, because there is no traffic on the roads and because green light-red light cycles can last far longer than they can during the day. This is important for transporting cargo in a fuel-efficient manner, as the weight of the cargo means that acceleration and deceleration requires a lot of fuel. Being able to drive at a constant speed without having to constantly stop and start because of traffic jams or red lights is a big benefit. Today overnight transport is held back because it is expensive to pay workers to drive vehicles, or to load and unload vehicles, overnight. But if machines are doing the driving and loading/unloading, that could change.

Electric vehicles are ideal for overnight transportation, not only because of Ontario’s surplus overnight electricity, but also because electric vehicles are quiet — and being quiet is obviously very important overnight. But electric trucks are simply not efficient enough. Light rail would be better.

Overnight transportation can help solve one of the main challenge faced by light rail/streetcars: namely, the fact that are less efficient at accelerating and decelerating than wheeled vehicles are (because there is less surface friction for rail than road), so having to stop and start constantly because of traffic and red lights makes light rail/streetcars much less efficient than they would be at night when there is no traffic and far longer green lights. This is particularly true of longer, heavier LRTs that would otherwise be more efficient, for example those that will be used by the Eglinton Crosstown (which will be able to handle three of the new long Toronto LRT vehicles strung together to create a really long LRT train). Longer LRTs are also slower at turning; overnight, however, they could turn slowly without causing a traffic jam of cars waiting behind them.

Cargo LRTs could also capitalize on one of light rail’s main advantages over heavy rail: flexibility. LRT tracks can branch off of the main route to travel directly into an industrial building, in order to be directly loaded or unloaded. a

But what about the daytime? How do you maximize light rail efficiency when a vehicle in the daytime would have to stop constantly for red lights, or stop to drop off/pick up passengers, or stop (if it is forced to share a lane with cars) because of traffic jams? Toronto’s answer to this question has been the Eglinton Crosstown tunnel. But Hamilton obviously cannot afford a subway like the Crosstown. It’s possible that even Hamilton’s surface LRT plan will soon be cancelled by Doug Ford.

In theory, there are two ways to maximize LRT fuel-efficiency. One is an express method: allow an LRT to run quickly in its own lane (not shared with cars), and have as few red lights and pickup/drop-off spots for passengers as possible. This is obviously difficult to do in a downtown setting in the daytime, without a Crosstown-like tunnel. Moreover, unless you have two lanes in each direction, to allow an express LRT to overtake a non-express LRT, the lack of pickup/dropoff spots on the express LRT would mean that the LRT might be less accessible and cost-efficient.

The other method would be to have the LRT travel as slowly as possible, in order to reduce the amount of fuel need to constantly accelerate and decelerate, and allow it to share its lane with cars. But here too, while fuel-efficiency might be maximized, travelling at a slow speed might also reduce cost-efficiency, since it would carry many fewer passengers per hour than a faster service.

The solution to these daytime challenges (if there is one), would seem to me to be to do the following: have two parallel LRT lines on the same street, one a Really Fast Lane and the other a Really Slow Lane.

The Really Fast Lane would run express in the middle lanes of the street, and would not have to share its lane with cars. It would make all of its passenger pick-up/drop-off stops in the Really Slow Line, so that trains in the fast lane would be able to minimize their stops by running express routes. (Overnight, having two lanes would also allow for one of the lanes to be used for loading/unloading cargo, without causing backups).

The Really Slow Lane, on the other hand, would overcome its slowness problem by doing the following: share its lane with cyclists, with cars, and allow cars using the Really Slow Lane to drive autonomously. By driving at really slow speeds, you can allow for autonomous driving without having to pay for LIDAR (and LIDAR has challenges with snow anyway) and with a reduced chance that fatal accidents involving autonomously-driving vehicles will occur, and you can allow cyclists and cars to share the same lane safely and comfortably. As such, you can potentially make a slow lane not only more fuel-efficient than a normal lane, but also cost-efficient.

So, that’s the basic idea behind the Hamilton Double-Double: one Really Fast Lane, for express LRTs carrying passengers or cargo, and one Really Slow Lane, shared by LRTs travelling slowly, fast-lane LRTs making stops to pickup/droppoff passengers or (at night) cargo, cyclists, cars, and autonomous (/advanced cruise control) cars.

For downtown Toronto, however, where the density of red lights and passenger stops is so high that even a Double-Double would not be able to maximize fuel-efficiency (let alone cost-efficiency), since the fast lane would still have to stop too much, while the slow line would be too crowded by traffic, a somewhat different plan could work: a plan more similar to the Crosstown.

Okay, this idea is pretty crazy, I admit, but here it goes:

The problem with subway tunnels in downtown Toronto has been one of expense: they would (unlike the Crosstown) have to tunnel through bedrock, and avoid a lot of underground utility lines and nearby buildings that exist. But what if, instead of having one subway lane in each direction, you only have one lane? What if, on Queen Street, you have 2 surface LRT lanes (one really slow lane and one really fast lane), and one underground lane (travelling in the opposite direction as the surface lanes)? Not only would you have half as much tunnelling as a conventional subway, and more easily avoid underground utilities and buildings, but you would also then have room underground to create turning lanes, so that the underground LRT could branch off to go directly into nearby buildings for the loading/unloading of cargo overnight. So long as the two surface lanes were fast enough to prevent the tunnel lane from being underutilized, maybe this could work….?

Finally, a last crazy idea: connect the LRT systems of Hamilton and Toronto, by having LRTs that can drive directly on and off ships travelling between the Hamilton port and Toronto Port Lands.

North America

North Side, South Side: Real Estate in the Greater Golden Horseshoe

The horseshoe-shaped region that includes Toronto and Buffalo is one of North America’s most populous, with more than 10 million inhabitants.The Horseshoe’s northern half extends roughly 100 km from Oshawa in the east to Burlington in the west, and 50 km from downtown Toronto north to Newmarket. The Horseshoe’s southern half is also close to 100 km in length, from Hamilton in the west to Lockport in the east. It is 50 km from the St Catharines-Niagara area south to Buffalo.

In order for us to analyze real estate in this region, we first need to discuss three basic differences between the Horsehoe’s northern and southern halves: political, geographical, and historical differences.

Political

The political distinction is the most obvious of these. Whereas the northern half is entirely within Canada, the southern half is split between a Canadian side and an American side. The Canadian side of the southern half is home to roughly 1 million people, of whom 550,000 live in Hamilton. The American side is home to 1.2 million people, most of whom live in the suburbs of Buffalo. The international border runs directly through the Niagara-Buffalo urban area, making it by far the most populous urban area shared by the two countries with the exception of Detroit-Windsor:

US-Canada Border Cities

Geographical

There is also a geographic difference between the Horseshoe’s northern and southern halves. Namely, it is that the Horseshoe’s southern cities are characterized by their relationship to water and to wind:

Hamilton’s significance comes historically from the city’s harbour, which is by far the largest in the western half of Lake Ontario. The harbour facilitated shipments of bulk goods, helping Hamilton to become Canada’s Steeltown. It continues to host Canada’s largest Great Lakes port.
The St Catharines-Niagara urban region, which is the 12th most populous in Canada, derives its significance from two water features. One is Niagara Falls, which draws both tourists and hydropower. The other is the Welland Canal, which connects Lake Ontario to the other Great Lakes via a series of locks, bypassing the Falls. Niagara Falls was the site of the world’s first major hydroelectric station, built in 1895. It continues to generate more power than any single dam in the United States. The Welland Canal was first built in the 1820’s, and is a key link in the St Lawrence Seaway shipping route that was opened in the mid-twentieth century.
Upstate New York was shaped by a canal too: the Erie Canal. The canal is the main reason why Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse were able to grow as cities despite the heavy snowfall they receive (they are, by some estimates, the three snowiest major cities in the world, outside of cities in Quebec, Newfoundland, or Japan). In the present day the canal is used primarily (but not entirely) by pleasure-craft. However during its heydey in the nineteenth century it was one of the most economically significant waterways in North America.

Average Snowfall; Source: Current Results

Snow in upstate New York comes mainly from winter winds blowing atop the relatively warm water of the Great Lakes. Because of these wind patterns, Buffalo actually receives twice as much snow per year on average than does Toronto. Indeed Buffalo gets more snow than any of Canada’s 18 most populous cities (a lot more snow, in most cases), with the exception of Quebec City.

Buffalo and Rochester are located in the middle of a “snowbelt”, which extends from Cleveland’s eastern suburbs all the way to the Adirondack Mountains east of Lake Ontario. The only other snowbelt cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants are Sudbury, Barrie, Syracuse, and Grand Rapids.

While Hamilton lies outside of any snowbelts (it gets the same amount of snow as Toronto, on average), it too is impacted by wind, being hit by among the most windstorms of any Canadian city:

Historical

Today, the Greater Toronto Area has an estimated 6.4 million inhabitants. The southern side of the Horseshoe (Hamilton + the Niagara Region + the Greater Buffalo Area) has just half that, 3.2 million.

A little over a century ago these positions were reversed. Back in the late nineteenth century Buffalo’s population was more than twice as large as Toronto’s. In 1900 Buffalo was the eighth largest city in the US, and the fourth largest without an ocean port. Even Hamilton was not much smaller than Toronto in those days:

Toronto-Hamilton-Buffalo Populations.png

Relative population sizes; Toronto = 100

There are a number of reasons for this historic reversal, but they all have to do with the price of energy:

Oil
Automobiles
Air Conditioning

Cheap oil in the twentieth and late nineteenth centuries, and the technological advances of automobiles and air conditioning that cheap energy helped to make feasible, resulted in the decline of Buffalo and Hamilton relative to Toronto.

-Home air conditioning began to become widespread in the middle of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, it led many Americans to move from cities like Buffalo to the Sunbelt. An estimated 28 percent of Americans lived in the Sunbelt in 1950; 40 percent did in 2000.

-For Sunbelt cities in the arid American Southwest, cheap energy was also necessary to ensure freshwater supplies, given the energy-water nexus. And for cities in the western half of the United States in general, cheap energy was needed to facilitate long-distance intercity transportation.

-Cheap oil also allowed land transportation — trains and automobiles — to supplant water transportation. Water transportation is far more energy-efficient than any other type of transportation, but it is also slow and inconvenient. With land transportation becoming dominant during the twentieth century, the importance of cities which were based around water transportation declined. Buffalo and Hamilton were two such cities.

-Buffalo and Hamilton were also not ideally suited to land transportation. For the Niagara peninsula, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie serve as transportation barriers for cars, trucks, and trains; so too does the Niagara Escarpment, which divides the peninsula (and Hamilton) into upper and lower segments. For Buffalo, lake-effect snow also frequently serves as a severe transportation barrier.

Toronto, in contrast, has been able to use automobiles and low energy prices to expand approximately 50 km deep into its GTA suburbs to the east, west, and north. Because it is a Canadian city, Toronto has also not had to worry as much about people moving south to the Sunbelt, as Buffalo has.

Speculating About The Future

Since we do not know what future energy prices will be, prudence suggests that we should prepare for the worst: high prices. Indeed, it seems far from implausible that high prices will become a reality, whether because of carbon pricing or because of a diminishing supply of “conventional” oil. Even in spite of the current shale oil boom in the US, few people have predicted a repeat of the low prices of the 1990s or the 1880-1970 era.

If energy prices do become high, the Golden Horseshoe may look more like it did in the late nineteenth century. Just like how cheap energy allowed the Greater Toronto Area to grow relative to Buffalo and Hamilton, so might expensive energy allow Buffalo and Hamilton to grow relative to the GTA. Similarly, what growth the GTA does experience in an energy-expensive world would be likelier to occur mainly within the City of Toronto, rather than in the GTA’s sprawling suburbs as has occured in recent decades.

At the same time, we can also expect technology to have an effect on the region. In the last century new technologies like automobiles and air conditioners had the largest impact. But how will today’s new technologies – digital technologies – impact the Golden Horseshoe?

One impact of digital technology is likely to be that computers and machines will allow more work to be outsourced or automated. As such, people’s leisure time will increase faster than will their disposable income. From a transportation perspective, this will probably benefit water transportation, which is the cheapest but also the slowest form of transportation. Only someone with a limited budget and a lot of free time would find travelling by water useful; especially if they are trying to avoid carbon emissions.

In particular, water-based shortcuts could become popular. It is just 47 km from St Catharines to downtown Toronto by water, but 113 km by road. Given that ferries are already more energy-efficient than automobiles or even trains on a km-by-km basis, having such a significant shortcut could be highly useful. Buffalo is in a somewhat similar position: it is 93 km from Buffalo to downtown Toronto as the crow flies, but 161 km by road.

Technology could also make intermodal transportation more convenient. For example, one lesson of the failed Toronto-Rochester ferry was the importance of the “first-mile/last-mile” challenge. Because downtown Rochester is over a dozen kilometres inland from its ferry port, and because downtown Toronto did not have good transit ties to its own ferry port in the Portlands, the ferry was not very useful. The ferry had to reserve most of its space for cars rather than for passengers, so that passengers could drive to and from its ports. The cars also accounted for most of the weight on the ferry, reducing the ferry’s energy efficiency.

With new technologies, however, such as car-sharing services or even self-driving cars, the challenge of getting to and from the ferry port could be eliminated. The ferry would no longer need to be a car-ferry.

More leisure time could also help cities like St Catharines, Welland, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo. It is difficult for cars to cross the Welland Canal because, given the large ships that use the canal on a frequent basis, the only bridges allowed over the canal are lift-bridges. Traffic backups frequently ensue when the lift-bridges are raised. This is why urban development in St Catharines, Welland, and Port Colborne has been mostly limited to only the western side of the canal.

If people have more free time, however, they may not mind waiting as long — particularly if their car is driving autonomously while they are waiting. A similar thing is true for waiting in a long line of vehicles to cross the US-Canada border.

Autonomous vehicles could be useful in other ways as well. In areas where human drivers face difficulty or delay, such robots could be highly useful. For example in upstate New York’s snowbelt, cars and trucks with high-tech safety features could be a game-changer for transportation during the winter.

So too could autonomous snowplows. Snowplow drivers are expensive to employ, given that it takes a long time to plow snow and given that they are often hired to work in the wee hours of the night. Autonomous snow cleaners could also help a lot in hard-to-reach places where snow can be very damaging: on rooftops.

Autonomous trucks could also help Buffalo and the Niagara Region by making it cheaper to cross the US-Canada border, where currently it is often expensive to pay truck drivers to wait in long, slow border lines.

Autonomous cargo ships could benefit this region too. They could allow for smaller vessels to be used on the Great Lakes at times when they would otherwise not be employed, such as at night during the winter. They could help save on labour costs for ships traversing the Welland Canal, which because of its locks takes around 10 hours to cross despite being just 43 km in length. They could also save on labour costs on the Erie Canal, which takes over a week from Buffalo to New York City and cannot be used by very large ships.

Finally, cargo shipping on the Great Lakes and their canal systems could be used more because of autonomous machines loading and unloading containers, thereby saving on labour costs and so perhaps allowing intermodal transportation to become competitive even for relatively short-distance water shipping.

Conclusion

If a world of high energy prices and even higher technology does come into being, it might have three major effects on the Golden Horseshoe. First, it would be likely to cause the Horseshoe’s southern half to grow more quickly than its northern half. Second, it would be likely to cause the City of Toronto to grow more quickly than its surrounding suburbs. And third, it would be likely to cause Toronto to become more connected to the Niagara-Buffalo region, via Lake Ontario’s shortcuts.

North America

Waterworld: 10 Cities To Watch On Lake Ontario’s Southern Shore

Living next to a river, lake, or sea can have both benefits and drawbacks. Some of the benefits include access to shipping, the ability to relax on a beach or a boat, and the fact that large bodies of water tend to have a temperate effect on their local climates, keeping their cities cool in summer and warm in winter. Some of the drawbacks include being an impediment to road travel (you usually can’t drive a car on water), flooding, and Snowbelts.

While most US cities continue be located next to major rivers or bodies of water, these cities have tended to sprawl away from their bodies of water in recent decades, forming suburban areas further inland, such as Akron, Ohio or Warren, Michigan. In addition, many of the fastest-growing American cities have been in inland areas, like Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas, or Austin. Water has taken a backseat.

In this article we will look briefly at ten places — 4 in Canada, 6 in the US — near Lake Ontario that have been shaped by water, and that might soon experience a revival because of water.

1. Hamilton

The city of Hamilton has the only significant natural harbour in the western half of Lake Ontario. Back in 1870, when water transportation was still more important than it is today, Hamilton’s population was half as large as Toronto’s. Hamilton’s land transportation, however, has been limited by its harbour, as well as by the Niagara Escarpment. Thus Hamilton has not been able to expand (or sprawl) in the way Toronto has. Hamilton’s population today is only 10-15 percent as large as Toronto’s.

The Niagara Escarpment

2. Niagara-on-the-Lake

Niagara is shaped by water — and not just because of the nearby Falls. It is an example of what we will call a “crow-flies city”: it is far closer to Toronto as the crow flies than it is via land. In fact it is only 48 km from downtown Toronto via Lake Ontario. To put that it perspective, Barrie is 85 km away from downtown Toronto, and Hamilton is 60 km from downtown Toronto. Via land, however, Niagara-on-the-Lake is roughly 25 km from downtown Toronto. As such, if crossing Lake Ontario were to become easier, Niagara-on-the-Lake may benefit. In a forthcoming article we will discuss whether or not this is likely to happen.

The Niagara River meets Lake Ontario

3. Fort Erie

While the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake (population 18,000) and its neighbouring cities St Catharines (population 130,000) and Niagara Falls (pop. 80,000, plus 50,000 more who live on the US side of the city) are crow-flies cities vis-a-vis Toronto, via Lake Ontario, the small city of Fort Erie (population 31,000) is a crow-flies city vis-a-vis Buffalo, via the Niagara River. Although the Peace Bridge crosses the river, it tends to be crowded with border traffic, and it is an out-of-the-way route for the southern areas of Fort Erie. So, if it becomes easier to cross the 3 km-wide river border between Fort Erie and Buffalo’s harbour, Fort Erie may benefit.

The Peace Bridge

4. Youngstown

Niagara is a crow-flies city via lake, and Fort Erie via river, but the village of Youngstown (population 2000) in upstate New York is both.

Like Niagara-on-the-Lake, Youngstown is less than 50 km from downtown Toronto via Lake Ontario, but more than 125 km from Toronto via land. In addition, the Niagara River blocks Youngstown from the nearby town of Niagara-on-the-Lake and city of St Catharines. As the crow files, Youngstown is only 1 km from Niagara-on-the-Lake and 18 km from downtown St Catharines. However because theres is no bridge over the Niagara River north of Lewiston, Youngstown is 23 km from Niagara-on-the-Lake by car and 28 km from St Catharines. Youngstown would benefit from easier crossings of the river, the lake, and the US-Canada border.

The nearest US city east of Youngstown, meanwhile, is Lockport (population 21,000), 30 km away next to what was once America’s most important canal, the Erie Canal.

The Erie Canal

5. Buffalo

Buffalo too owes its significance to the Erie Canal. Indeed, prior the modern era of plentiful railways and highways, the canal allowed Buffalo to become America’s 10th largest city in the 1860s — and the fourth largest among cities without an ocean port. Buffalo remained the fourth largest city in the US without an ocean port until the 1900s. Today, however, the canal is used mainly by pleasure craft, and Buffalo’s location within the Great Lakes’ Snowbelt has made the city languish. Buffalo is now thought to be just the US’ 76th most populous city and 46th most populous “urban area”. It is the snowiest in the top 100.

Buffalo

6. Welland

While the Erie Canal was America’s most important, the Welland Canal was and continues to be Canada’s. Whereas the Erie Canal is nearly 600 km long, the Welland Canal is only 43 km. But in order to bypass the Niagara Escarpment between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, it covers almost as much elevation as Erie’s does. The city of Welland (population 52,000) sits on an oval-shaped island formed by two branches of the canal, one in use (approximately 3000 ships use it each year) and the other branch not.

Because it is still used for shipping, the eastern branch of the canal in Welland is crossed only by two lift-bridges and two tunnels. Most of Welland remains next to the canal’s western, recreational branch (which was used from 1932, when it was built, until 1973, when the eastern branch was added). The western branch is less of an impediment to road traffic than is the eastern branch, since the western branch is crossed by seven bridges that do not ever need to be raised in order to let ships pass beneath them.

Welland is the largest island city in Ontario, and the largest one in Canada (I think) apart from Montreal, St John’s, Victoria, or Nanaimo. The city is 70 km from Toronto by air, 110 km by land. Downstream from Welland is St Catharines, upstream is Port Colborne (population 18,000).

Welland Canal

7. Grand Island

20 km east of Welland, back on the US side of the border, is another small island city, Grand Island (population 20,000). It is located on a circularly-shaped island roughly 10 km in diameter, which is linked, by two bridges, to Buffalo in the south and to Niagara Falls in the north. Yet no bridges link Grand Island to either Canada in the west or to Tonawanda (population 100,000) in the east. While Grand Island is only around the 140th largest island in the United States terms of area, it is in the top ten in terms of island populations.

The circular shape of the island might perhaps also prove significant — circles are, at least in theory, the most efficient shapes to build cities within. Grand Island also gets less snow per year on average (82 inches) than nearby Buffalo (95 inches), but more than nearby Niagara Falls (76 inches). Finally, Grand Island is next to the large hydroelectric dams at Niagara Falls. These have made New York the largest hydro producer in the country behind only Washington state and Oregon —without even counting the 45 percent of Niagara hydropower produced in Ontario.

The Falls

8. Rochester

Much like Buffalo, Rochester (population 210,000) is an Erie Canal city in the Snowbelt. It gets 100 inches of snow per year on average, more than any city in the US with a population of 100,000 with the exception of Syracuse (124 inches of snow; population 140,000), 120 km to Rochester’s east. The only other US city which comes even close to Rochester in terms of both size and snow is Erie, Pennsylvania (101 inches of snow; population 99,000). The future of all these Snowbelt cities may be tied to questions such as: “will smarter cars and trucks allow driving on country roads during a snow squall to become less dangerous?”, or “will aging Baby Boomers take up cross-country skiing en masse?”

Rochester, unlike Syracuse or Buffalo, is a middle-of-the-lake city: Lake Ontario stretches approximately 150 km to Rochester’s east and 175 km to its east. It is a bit of a crow-flies city vis-a-vis Toronto (150 km vs 250 km). But across the lake from Rochester there are no major Canadian cities. There are only smaller cities, such as Cobourg, Belleville, Oshawa, and Peterborough. Rochester is not the biggest middle-of-the-lake city on the Great Lakes; it is second to Milwaukee (population 600,000). However Rochester is the biggest mid-lake city within the Snowbelt, ahead of others like Sudbury, Erie, and Grand Rapids.

Rochester

9. Ovid

Many of the cities in upstate New York were given Classical names. Of the 20 most populous cities in the state, five fit this bill—Syracuse, Utica, Troy, Rome, and Ithaca. The tiny town Ovid (population 600), which along with Romulus (4,000) is one of the two seats of Seneca County, fit the pattern too. Though it is very small, and located 62 km from Lake Ontario, Ovid arguably deserves our attention here anyway. This is because of Ovid’s position between New York’s largest “Finger” Lakes: Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake.

With the exception of Lake Michigan, Cayuga and Seneca are by far the two lengthiest, and most voluminous, lakes that lie entirely within the northeastern United States. Ovid sits at an elevation roughly 100-150 metres above the surface of the lakes, roughly five km from shores of the two lakes and 30 km from both the northern and southern tips of the lakes.

Ovid is different from all of the larger cities in the Finger Lakes region, such as Ithaca (where Cornell is located), Auburn (population 28,000), Geneva (13,000), Seneca Falls (located on the canal that links both lakes to the Erie Canal), or Canandaigua (11,000). Unlike Ovid, all of these cities are located by the tips of the lakes, rather than by their middles.

The reason for this is partly because the tips of glacial lakes like the Fingers tend to be where lowlands are located: unlike Ovid, none of these cities sit at elevations that are tens of metres above lake-level. Mostly, however, these cities are located at the tips of the lakes for the same reason that Toronto, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland are located at or near the tips of the Great Lakes. Cities in the middle of lakes have fewer directions available for roads.

Thus Ovid faces a similar question to that faced by most of the other cities we have discussed thus far: can crossing its adjacent lakes become easier? Cayuga and Seneca lake are both only around 5 km wide in most areas, and in many places are far narrower than that. Were Cayuga, Seneca, and the other Finger Lakes to become easier to cross, a place like Ovid might become one of the more unique and interesting locations in the US.

Ovid is also a minor crow-flies city, vis-a-vis both Toronto (235 km vs 325 km) and Syracuse (65 km vs 90 km). And in addition to being a middle-of-the-lake town in relation to both Cayuga and Seneca, it is also, in a sense, a middle-of-the-lake town for Lake Ontario. It is only about 80 km away from Rochester, and 135 km south of areas in Ontario.

the-statler-cornell-university-hotel-ithaca-new-york-1-top.jpg

Ithaca, NY

10. Watertown

The final city on our list is the aptly named Watertown (population 28,000), which is a sort of mirror image of Hamilton (population 537,000), only a lot smaller, snowier, and not Canadian. Like Hamilton, it is located at the tip of Lake Ontario (though the eastern tip, not the western tip), has an excellent natural harbour, and is sandwiched between its harbour on one side and highlands on the other. But whereas Hamilton’s highland is the top of the Niagara Escarpment, Watertown sits in the shadow of the much more formidable Adirondack Mountains.

Watertown’s nearest significant neighbours are the cities of Oswego (population 18,000) and the Canadian city Kingston (population 160,000). Watertown is a bit of a crow-flies town vis-a-vis Kingston: it is 50 km as the crow flies across Wolfe Island, but 90 km via bridge.

More notably though, Watertown is an extreme Snowbelt city. The Watertown-Oswego-Adirondack region is the snowiest in the United States apart from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, parts of the Rockies, and parts of Alaska. Watertown gets about a third more snow than Buffalo or Rochester do, and nearly double the amount of snow that Toronto does. Areas in the western foothills of the nearby Adirondacks get even more: the town of Boonville (population 2,000), for example, 70 km southeast of Watertown, gets more than 200 inches of snow per year on average, making it perhaps the snowiest place in the US among towns or cities with at least 1,000 residents, excepting only Valdez, Alaska (population 4,000), Crested Butte, Colorado (pop. 1,500) or Hancock, Michigan (4,500).

Watertown is also just 200 km away, across the Adirondacks, from Lake Champlain, which is by far the largest lake in the United States east of the Great Lakes and north of Florida.

Lake Placid, NY, in the Adirondacks

North America

The Blessings of St Catharines

If extremely high taxes on greenhouse gas emissions were to be enacted worldwide, which part of Ontario would be poised to lead in terms of population growth and economic development as a result?

My guess would be St Catharines-Niagara, which at the moment is Canada’s 12th most populous census metropolitan area (just ahead of Halifax-Dartmouth), home to approximately 400,000 people.

A low-emissions city should at least a few of the following five characteristics, all of which define Niagara. One, it should be easily accessible by barge, as water remains far and away the most fuel-efficient mode of transportation. Two, it should not have much suburban sprawl. Three, it should be located close to other major cities in order to create urban economies of scale. Four, it should have a mild climate: not too cold or snowy in the winter, not too hot in the summer. And five, it should have an abundant source of clean power — and ideally also the ability to store up its energy in order to assist clean but intermittent power sources like solar, wind, and run-of-river hydro.

1. Water Transport

St Catharines-Niagara is one of only two urban areas in Canada or the US to be situated on more than one Great Lake. (The other is Sault St Marie). It links Lake Ontario to Lake Erie via the Welland Canal, a canal 43 km long and, in most places, 100-150 metres wide. The canal has seven locks on its northern end and one lock on its southern end; it takes ships around 10 hours to cross in full. However it has a lock-free middle stretch that is close to 25 km long, next to the city of Welland (pop. 50,000). It runs perpendicular to the Erie Canal, the longest shipping canal in the United States, which links Niagara Falls and Buffalo to New York City and Lake Champlain via the navigable Hudson River, passing by Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany along the way.

LR Welland Canal Map

Canals, when they are not frozen in the winter, are in many ways the ideal form of water transportation. They lack the difficulties of rivers (bends, rapids, shallows, etc.) and seas (storms, tides, waves, etc.), and are not too wide to make building bridges or tunnels across them too expensive. According to the New York Times, “one gallon of diesel pulls one ton of cargo 59 miles by truck, 202 miles by train and 514 miles by [Erie] canal barge… A single barge can carry 3,000 tons, enough to replace 100 trucks”.

Erie Canal

As recently as the 1890s, prior to the modern age of highways, cars, and trucks, the Erie Canal allowed Buffalo to become the eighth most populous in the US and fourth most populous inland city in the US. And while Niagara never shared in Buffalo’s prominence (in part as it was too close to the US border for comfort; it was captured in the War of 1812, and became the refuge for William Lyon Mackenzie and his supporters during the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837-38), the adjacent city of Hamilton did. Hamilton was Canada’s fourth most populous city during the 1890s, and was about half as populous as Toronto in 1870. Today, in comparison, Hamilton is only around 13 percent as populous as Toronto.

As land transport became dominant, however, Hamilton found itself blocked in by the Hamilton Harbour (which until then had been the main source of its success) as well as by the Niagara Escarpment. Toronto, in contrast, has been able to expand barrier-free, now reaching to Lake Simcoe in the north, Oshawa and Clarington in the east, and Hamilton’s suburbs in the west.

Hamilton and Toronto.png

Niagara Escarpment

Admittedly, it is still quite expensive to build bridges across harbours or wide canals; they must be either high enough to let large ships pass below, or else be lift-bridges. The Welland Canal overall has two tunnels and ten bridges, all but one of which are lift-bridges. Given that the population of the region is split by the canal (St Catharines and Hamilton are to its west, Niagara Falls and Buffalo are to its east), these lift-bridges and tunnel crossings could lead to traffic bottlenecks if its population or economic activity were to experience growth.

St Catharins .png

This canal-crossing problem can be managed, however, by switching over from cars to public transit. Luckily for St Catharines-Niagara, such a switch which would be necessary anyway if greenhouse gas emissions were to be highly taxed.

Public transit, including new transit services like Car2Go, Uber, and UberPool, can allow canals to be crossed more easily via bridge or tunnel, by reducing traffic bottlenecks and by letting its passengers relax rather than drive when there are traffic bottlenecks. In addition, public transit can allow for easier canal crossings via boat, pedestrian bridge, cable car, or even ice-sled, by making transit available upon crossing. For the same reason, crossing canals will also become easier as parking apps like Rover and PocketParker become common (and if cars that come equipped with parallel parking sensors or can parallel park themselves become common), as people will be able to park a car easily on one side of the canal and then take public transit after crossing.

In the St Catharines-Niagara area, public transit will be similarly useful in helping to cross the Niagara River (which is one of the widest and, in places, the most treacherous rivers in southern Ontario), Hamilton Harbour (which has two bridges crossing it at present, and no tunnels), and perhaps even the 45 km Lake Ontario shortcut that separates St Catharines (and Buffalo) from Toronto.

2. Suburban Sprawl

St Catharines-Niagara, as well as the nearby urban areas of Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo, are among the cities with a relatively high population density in Canada. Kitchener-Waterloo and Hamilton have the highest population densities among urban areas in Canada apart from Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, according to the 2011 census, while St Catharines-Niagara has the seventh highest population density (though this does not take into account the 50,000 people living in Niagara Falls, NY).

Niagara may be particularly well-placed to benefit if suburban sprawl in general is reversed as a result of eco-taxes. This is because many of the big cities around Niagara have had their suburbs sprawl away from Niagara during their recent generations of suburbanization. As a result, a reversal of this sprawl would bring people back closer to Niagara.

Toronto has sprawled north and to a lesser extent east, away from Lake Ontario and Niagara. Northern Toronto suburbs like King city, Caledon, and Whitchurch-Stoufville tend have population densities that are far lower than in suburbs closer to the lake, like Mississauga, Oakville, and Oshawa — nearly 30 times lower in the case of Caledon compared to Mississauga. Indeed some of Toronto’s lakeside suburbs, particularly to its west (towards Hamilton and Niagara), are themselves among the cities with the highest population densities in the country. Toronto’s easternmost suburbs, on the other hand, like Clarington and Scugog, have relatively low densities too.

Buffalo’s suburbs sprawl away from the border with Niagara, meanwhile, and Detroit’s sprawl away from Windsor (which is 315 km from St Catharines). Cleveland’s suburbs away from Lake Erie, mainly to the south and west. If, then, suburban sprawl gives way to urban re-densification, it could lead to population growth along the coasts of both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, which Niagara shares, as well as along the Buffalo and Detroit borders with Canada, which Niagara either shares or is at least not too far away from.

Another energy advantage of de-suburbanization is that it frees up land to be re-converted into farmland. This is important, as importing food is highly energy-intensive; food is much more bulky than most other goods, and also often requires refrigeration or freezing while it is being transported. This means that areas that are not suitable to agriculture — areas that include most of Ontario, as the Canadian Shield generally is not farmable in the economic sense — will not benefit as much from de-surbanization in an eco-tax world as areas that are best suited to be used for agriculture. For Ontario, these areas are Southwestern Ontario and adjacent lands of the United States.

3. Proximity to Major Cities

St Catharines is around 50km from Toronto by way of Lake Ontario and about 100 km from Toronto via land. To put that into perspective, Oshawa, Burlington, and Newmarket, all three of which are in the Greater Toronto Area, are around 45 km from downtown Toronto, and Barrie is around 85 km from downtown Toronto. St Catharines is also around 40 km from downtown Buffalo (and Niagara Falls is less than 30 km from downtown Buffalo), 65 km from downtown Hamilton, 120 km from Kitchener-Waterloo and from Rochester, 270 km from Cleveland, 300 km from Pittsburgh, and 320 km from Detroit, and 500 km from New York City and Washington, D.C.

Hamilton and Toronto

St Catharine’s proximity to the New York City-to-Washington “Megalopolis” is unique and, in an eco-tax world, could be economically significant. If you extend the Megalopolis all the way north to Boston, however, then St Catharines’ proximity is less unique, as Ottawa and Kingston are both closer to Boston than St Catharines is. That said, the population density of the area between New York and Boston is quite a bit less than between New York City and Washington, so it is not clear Boston really should be counted as part of the Megalopolis core. St Catharines is also around 40 km closer to New York City and 250 km closer to Washington than Ottawa is, whereas Ottawa is only around 160 km closer to Boston than St Catharines is. Only Kingston then, among notable Ontario cities, can be said to be closer in proximity to the Megalopolis than St Catharines is.

Population density, US

4. Climate

Niagara, because of its relatively southern location and the temperate effect of the Great Lakes that surround it, has a mild climate compared to most other cities in Ontario. It tends to be around a degree warmer than Toronto in the winter and a degree cooler than Toronto in the summer, and it is much milder than the weather in more northern cities like Ottawa or Thunder Bay. It is also located outside any of the Great Lakes Snowbelts, unlike, for example, Sudbury or Barrie.

average snow in canada

Niagara’s position next to the US border may also be significant, as eco-taxes could lead Americans to come north to where the climate is more mild, at least during the summer. The average annual daily temperature highs in Buffalo is 14 degrees celsius, compared, for example, to 29 degrees for Miami or 31 degrees for Phoenix. Cool climate zones may also end up using more eco-friendly energy for heating than hot climates do for cooling, because the weather gets coldest at night when there are typically surpluses of electricity available (including low-carbon sources, like wind, base-load nuclear, and run-of-river hydro), whereas it is hottest during the day when no such energy surpluses typically exist. Admittedly only seven percent or so of American households use electric heaters, but a high eco-tax could cause them to be adopted more widely. Plus, it is possible to stay warm using clothing and blankets rather cranking the heat.

The arid climate and diffuse population settlement in the US Southwest in particular leads to a high energy footprint. Any extended drought in the Southwest, for example, would necessitate water desalination, water treatment, or increased food imports, all three of which are extremely energy-intensive. The most extreme of these, Las Vegas, which is a gambling and tourism competitor of Niagara to a certain extent, relies on long-distance air travel, long-distance food imports, air conditioning during the day, and heating at night (the desert can get cold at night, after all).

Owning, renting, or Airbnb-ing a home or cottage in upstate New York or upstate Pennsylvania, in contrast, will help keep air conditioning costs down in summer. Moreover, because both are located in the Great Lake Snowbelts and Appalachia, these also be used recreationally during the winter. This may be an advantage too, given that eco-taxes will make it far more expensive to fly to the Rockies to ski, and given that aging Baby Boomers are going to be switching from downhill skiing to cross-country skiing. Similarly, eco-taxes could make Canadian vacationers who head south to escape the winter forgo flying to places like Arizona, California, and Mexico, and instead travel by train or bus to the US Southeast (and perhaps from there on by cruise or plane to islands in Cuba or the Bahamas). Such train and bus journeys will usually pass through Niagara.

Great Lake Snowbelts

US average annual snowfall map

5. Energy Production

In a world in which greenhouse gas emissions are highly taxed, it would no longer be viable for Ontario to import so many manufactured goods from Asia, since Asia is so far away and relies on burning coal to power its industrial activity. Ontario would instead have to manufacture more products locally, making up for its lack of low-wage labour by using machines, having foreign engineers and other skilled labour e-commute from afar, etc. Such industrialization, particularly as it will depend on machines to assist or replace human workers, will need a lot of low-carbon energy.

Niagara Falls hydro (not counting the American side of the border) accounts for around 5-6 percent of Ontario’s power generation capacity, but more than 7 percent of non-fossil fuel generation capacity and more than 20 percent if you also ignore nuclear power. Niagara accounts for about a quarter of all Ontario hydropower, and its dams also happen to be located far further south than the majority of other dams in the province or country, meaning that the energy and capital used to maintain Niagara’s dams (and to maintain the electricity grid infrastructure that is connected to them) tends to be less than it is for other hydroelectric facilities. Most of Ontario’s other dams are either located near to or north of Ottawa – far north, in many cases – while most of the hydropower in the country comes from central or northern Quebec.

In addition, the hydropower facility on the US side of Niagara Falls produces 25 percent more power than those on the Canadian side of the Falls; it produces more power than all but three other dams in the United States and accounts for nearly 60 percent of New York state’s hydropower (and New York ranks third in hydropower among US states). It also has a pumped storage capability that by itself is larger than the hydropower storage available in all of Ontario outside of Niagara, which is significant since hydro-storage remains the leading method of assisting intermittent energy sources like wind and solar. (Batteries are still not generally up to the job of storing energy in a cost-effective or eco-friendly manner, in spite of all the hoopla surrounding Tesla).

Niagara is, similarly, home to nearly all of Ontario’s pumped storage hydro capacity. Moreover, it is located relatively close to the pumped storage facilities across the United States (apart from the pumped storage in California, but those have been under-utilized in recent years as a result of drought), not just those on the US side of Niagara Falls.

Niagara is also, along with the rest of Southwestern Ontario and the adjacent Bruce Peninsula, home to most of the province’s wind power production and solar power potential.

While 60 percent or so of Ontario’s electricity comes from nuclear, people do not want to live in urban areas that contain nuclear facilities. In addition, more than half of Ontario’s nuclear power capacity is located directly on the coast of Lake Ontario, 30-60 km east of downtown Toronto, which means that, when you combine their output with that of Niagara’s dams (not even counting the US Niagara dams), the coastlands of western Lake Ontario account for more than 40 percent of Ontario’s non-fossil fuel power capacity and nearly 40 percent of Ontario’s overall power capacity.

If, finally, you look at natural gas storage – both underground storage and LNG storage – Niagara is also well-placed. Natural gas could be useful in assisting intermittent sources like solar and wind, because like hydro, but unlike coal or nuclear, a gas-fired power plant can ramp up and down energy rapidly in response to the wind suddenly slowing or the sun suddenly being blocked by clouds. Most US underground storage is surrounding Niagara, in a broad sense.

Storage07

In Ontario, which in contrast to the US has very little gas storage capability, much of the gas storage is around Sarnia, with potential further development in Goderich, both of which are not too far away from Niagara. Most LNG storage and peakshaving capacity, meanwhile — which, while smaller in scale than underground storage, is better for delivering gas quickly in order to assist wind or solar intermittency — is located mostly on the Northeast coast, much of it within New York state.

storage

lngpeakshaving

The gas pipelines that bring US gas to Ontario also mainly run through or near to Niagara. Ontario used to get its gas from Western Canada, but with the shale boom in nearby US states, particularly in Pennsylvania which has led the shale gas boom, the province has begun to use US gas instead. The shale boom has revolutionized the gas industry, and should it continue it may be likely to put the border areas of Ontario in a strong position relative to non-border areas, in terms of their energy economics.

Future Economics

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