Ease traffic congestion by making it more efficient

Cities are increasingly competitive on the national and global stages.  One consideration on productivity and quality of life among any civic workforce is the dreaded morning commute.  A 2022 Pub Med study outlines the effects of long, stressful commutes: “The longer the commute time workers use, the lower satisfaction with work and life they have; the long commute also causes health damage, affecting physical health and causing inactivity.”  (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819363/)

This proposal is not intended to suggest a singular, catch-all solution to all traffic problems.  It is, rather, best regarded as a useful piece in a complex social puzzle, to be considered alongside other components, such as effective urban design, smart traffic control systems, teleworking capability, public transit, and bicycle or pedestrian infrastructural investment.  However, the scope of this proposal is restricted to singularly efficient temporal traffic distribution, which is applicable to cars and public transit.  Its objective is less about providing financing to businesses and much more about addressing the problem of traffic congestion in Canada's urban centres.

One might hastily address road congestion during peak periods including the morning rush by adding traffic lanes on highways, broadening streets for motor-vehicle use, or augmenting the number of busses in service, for instance.  However, the principles of induced demand indicate that facilitating car infrastructure produces additional popular interest in car use, which even surpasses added capacity, exacerbating the problem, while augmenting pollution, draining city coffers due to the investment, and encouraging less-safe environments for those not using an automobile.  One key study which refutes induced demand is performed by Duranton and Turner in 2009 for the University of Pennsylvania.  (https://www.nber.org/papers/w15376). That strategy should therefore be discarded in favour of more enlightened solutions.

To what extent does it even make sense anymore to have a city run
from nine to five, local time?

The Canadian Automobile Association laments a lack of public information about innovative solutions for urban congestion: “The Government of Canada or the Council of Ministers of Transportation could play a useful role in identifying the disseminating good practices,” it writes in a 2021 report, also recommending focusing infrastructure spending on bottlenecks.  It identifies congestion charges as a punitive deterrent, which I identify as politically unattractive and punishing toward people who may have no opportunity under the current social configuration to avoid peak-hour commute; instead, I recommend incentivizing preferable driving behaviour.  (https://www.caa.ca/app/uploads/2021/01/Congestion-solutions-Summary-ENG-V2.pdf)

But incentives directed at commuters have proven ineffective, as flexible work-schedule options are found not to support off-peak distribution of traffic by Munch and Proulhac in a 2023 study for Université Gustave Eiffel. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0966692323001849)  Therefore, incentives must compel employers to schedule staff in work schedules that do not conform to typical standardization.

And consider the unrelenting advance of globalization and the resultant trend away from localized hours of operations.  To what extent does it even make sense anymore to have a city run from nine to five, local time?  Employees increasingly demand non-standard work-hour options (https://www.shiftboard.com/blog/employee-scheduling-trends-for-2024/) and a compelling 2022 article in The Telegraph reveals an explosion in demand for round-the-clock business operation (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/ready-and-enabled/the-future-of-24-7-business/).  So it makes sense even from the perspective of modern innovation in a nonlocalized business climate.

Businesses large and small as well as non-governmental
organizations are inclined to grasp at opportunities
for financing.

Therefore, an incentive directed at employers to impose non-standardized work hours could be more effective.  In a neoliberal capital context, businesses large and small as well as non-governmental organizations are inclined to grasp at opportunities for financing wherever available; accordingly, it is my contention that the monetary amount of incentives can be modest.  I propose a per-employee structure and the price is determined by leveraging the estimated average size of an area business at 25 employees, in which situation the incentive would produce $1,000 of benefit to an employer.  The expenditure is markedly less than physically expanding city infrastructure to accommadate a bloated congestion during existing peak hours.

Here is a sample legislation that could be introduced at city councils to enact such an incentive, which I encourage legislators to adopt and adapt as needed.  Social reorganization can be a key component in moving workers between their homes and workplaces with better efficiency, an attractive alternative to costly infrastructure spending: