We like to say that Sudbury is too spread for transit and cycling. It’s a myth.

There are a few myths about Sudbury that hold us back from achieving our full potential as a city. Eventually I’ll get to them all, but here’s one that’s particularly relevant to recent discussions of transportation in the nickel city:

“We’re too spread out for transit / walkability / cycling.”

How can this be a myth? We’re the largest municipality in Ontario by geography, but we’re only the 12th largest city in the province by population. Here’s a map that seems to prove the claim:

Land area, divided by population gives you population density, and ours is 49.7 people per square kilometre based on 2011 census data. The extreme contrast to that is Toronto, with a density of 4,149.5 people per square kilometre (you can look up any city you want).

Therefore, so the narrative goes, don’t compare Sudbury to Toronto when talking about the cost of our roads or sewers, our sidewalks, transit system or the provision of any other public service.

“We’re just too spread out.”

This myth prevent us from moving forward on lots of different projects.

It comes up whenever we talk about transit in Sudbury because the success of transit depends on people being able to conveniently walk to the bus stop, and the buses being able to efficiently cover the area they serve.

As long as we believe we’re too spread out to walk to a bus stop, or provide efficient transit service we’ll keep making decisions that favour driving instead of transit.

This also comes up when we talk about active transportation infrastructure like sidewalk improvements and cycling. “No one rides bikes in Sudbury” because everything is so spread out, they say.

And because “we’re so spread out” everyone has to drive everywhere, so all new development needs lots of parking, and that’s why the downtown is failing. So they say. This is why some folks want to replace our downtown arena with a sprawling entertainment complex on the edge of the city.

But there’s a huge problem with this line of reasoning: we’re nowhere near as spread out as we pretend to be.

According to the 2001 census Sudbury’s population density is 49.7 people per square kilometre. It’s not true, it’s just the number you get when you divide our population (160,274) by our geographic area (3,227.38 square kilometres).

If it was true the average home in Sudbury would have a frontage of more than 100 metres and a depth of more than 200 metres.

Here’s a map I created using the municipal boundary provided by the city’s open data portal and by tracing the approximate boundaries of the built up areas of the city:

The orange areas are where people work, live, shop, go to the dentist, go to school, play in parks and so on. This is the true size of Sudbury. There are people who live outside those orange blobs and there are businesses there and things to do, but there should be no expectation of providing transit service to those areas and we shouldn’t pretend that the low population density of the areas outside the orange blobs should have any influence on the decisions we make inside those orange blobs.

The total area of these built-up parts of the city (according to google) is: 126.21 square kilometres. That’s small enough to fit in the green spaces between the GTA cities in the map above.

That’s 3.47% of the area of the municipality as a whole (including lakes). So when we say Sudbury is so much less dense than any municipality in southern Ontario and that’s why we can’t have nice things, it’s a lie.

126.21 square kilometres, divided by approximately 157,765 people = 1,250 people per square kilometre.

This puts us between Oakville and Ajax on that density graph at the top. We’re average. Sudbury has an average density compared to GTA cities.

It’s true that some of those orange blobs on my map are far from other orange blobs, but with the exception of the former city of Sudbury, each of those orange blobs is a size that is easily walkable and bikeable from end to end. Aside from individual’s physical limitations, there’s no reason to drive for any trip within those orange blobs.

Except that the infrastructure isn’t there.

There are no bike lanes to the grocery stores in Chelmsford, even though the vast majority of their customers lives within 3km.

Coniston, Falconbridge, Capreol, Lively and Levack are all dense, tiny, walkable hamlets.

Chelmsford, Val Caron and Hanmer all have commercial centres surrounded by homes, none of which are more than a 10-15 minute bike ride to all those shops and jobs and services.

Distance has nothing to do with the low rates of cycling and walking within these communities, but the roads are very inhospitable to pedestrians and cyclists (I’ll have a post in the future looking at the areas of the city where drivers are most likely to kill a pedestrian if they hit one and places like Val Caron and Hanmer seem to be at the top of the list).

Making these communities friendlier for pedestrians will also help make transit a more viable choice for people who need to commute to other communities in the city.

Within the former City of Sudbury the distances become greater, but the number of commercial districts, schools and jobs is also greater. There is potential for much higher rates of cycling, walking and transit use in this part of Sudbury and it would be completely dishonest to apply the overall density of Sudbury to the former city of Sudbury.

All it takes is a desire to do it, but as long as we pretend we’re “too spread out” for transit or biking to be viable it won’t happen.

Moving Forward

We heard a lot this week about how the Maley Drive Extension represent a progressive move forward for the community. On twitter one critic of the decision suggest we should be building light rail rather than new roads.

@scottbrooks @RealAndreDumais Reg.of Waterloo: 507,100 ppl, 1369sq km. CGS 160,300ppl, 3201 sq km. Bombardier says we lack pop.density — Deb McIntosh (@SudburyDeb) March 23, 2016

Councillor Deb McIntosh dismissed the idea using our favourite myth, comparing our density to Waterloo’s. Of course, Waterloo’s LRT won’t be serving all 1,369 square kilometres of its geography, just a specific corridor where new development and intensification is planned.

We could do that eventually, but not if we allow what little development we get to be spread out across our whole geography. What is feasible is increased bus service, peak-period HOV lanes so buses can by-pass single-occupant vehicles, and a minimum grid of safe cycling infrastructure so people don’t feel like they have to drive for trips under 5km.

We need to throw that stupid map at the top of this post in the recycling bin and replace it with a map that shows the true size of Greater Sudbury:

As long as we keep making decisions on the basis that the blue part of this map represents our city instead of the orange part we won’t be making any progress at all.

I swear I’m going to bite you hard and taste your tinny blood If you don’t stop the self-defeating lies you’ve been repeating since the day you brought me home I know you’re strong. “Plea from a cat named virtue“ – The Weakerthans