Toronto is the worst

Global News: Toronto ranked worst city for commuting in North America: study.

The report said an average commuter in Toronto spends 14 minutes waiting for a bus or a train each day. But even worse, the average person spends a staggering one hour and 36 minutes for their daily commute with an average journey distance of 10 kilometres.

If the average guy works 23 years in this case, then he would have destroyed a full year of his life in traffic. For too many people, it's worse.

I had to attend a conference in Toronto many years ago. I went with a colleague who drove his car. He wanted to leave at least two hours before the start of the event and so we did. We got to Toronto in about one hour. I thought to myself, "That wasn't so bad."

Then, it took us an additional hour to travel within Toronto to get to our destination. Obviously, my co-worker was fully aware of the atrocious traffic. So, we burned four hours in our commute.

Canada is the second largest country in the world. Of course, most of the land -- let's say 90% -- is not fit for habitation. Still, this means that the livable area in Canada is larger than Germany and France combined. So, why does Canada have crazy real estate prices in spectacularly tiny cities like Vancouver and Toronto? Why is Tokyo -- a city metro that can hold the entire Canadian population -- cheaper than the crazy cities of Canada? What's stopping people from building more houses in the stunningly empty parts of British Columbia and Ontario?

Government regulation is the likely culprit.