Thank you for the question.
I would say that fundamentally from an economic perspective it's about two things.
One is that it's about keeping goods and services moving. I mentioned in my presentation that the Toronto region is a funnel through which the central and eastern Canadian economy flows as it approaches the United States.
Whether it's rail-based or road-based, the implications of congestion in places such as Montreal or Toronto and what happens at the 401 and 400 interchanges impact the ability of Oshawa to get just-in-time delivery of its goods. So I think the first thing I would say is that it has a very immediate impact in terms of the productivity of our trading economy.
In terms of the quality-of-life side, which I think is an important part of global cities as well, impacting millions of our citizens, the productivity impact of time not spent at work—or of not spending time with your family, on the other side of the equation—is significant as well. Moving towards being an 82-minute-a-day jurisdiction for the average commute time leaves us in a worse case than Los Angeles, worse than New York, and worse than Chicago. I don't think it's what we want our global cities to be known for.
When we do surveys through the Toronto Board of Trade of both local and international businesses as to what they see as the benefits and the issues with locating in the Toronto region, transportation is always one of the top issues identified. The Toronto region used to be known as “the city that works”, the city with an efficient transportation system. At Metrolinx, we see our object over the next years being to try to get back our reputation, so that transportation would be something you talk about as a reason to come to the region, rather than a barrier. Right now, it's a barrier.