July 21, 2025 • 26 mins
Can commuter cities thrive in a future where cars aren't the driving force? Discover how these pivotal urban hubs, which have long balanced the allure of lower housing costs with the trials of car ownership and commuting, are navigating an evolving landscape. Through historical insights, we explore the origin of commuter towns, which have transitioned from industrial worker havens to automobile-reliant communities in the 20th century, and consider why they remain vital in our modern world.
Everett J.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I would call myself one, a commuter,
somebody who travels from the outskirts
into the edge of the city to go for work.
But why do I do it?
And why do I live 20 minutes away from any
major commercial hub?
Well, space, and, for me, costs as well.
The price of my house is actually less than
what I would have paid to live in the city
and my taxes are less.
(00:22):
But this comes with added costs the cost of
owning multiple vehicles, the cost of lost
time rushing home and the wear and tear on
my automobile.
But in all reality, why do we even have
these tiny little commuter cities, or even
small commuter towns, and why are they
still prevalent today, when most of us are
starting to look towards a future with less
(00:45):
of an automobile presence?
Well, today, AutoLooks is going to take a
trip back and explain why the commuter
cities of today are still going to be
kicking around in a future of tomorrow.
Welcome back to the AutoLooks podcast.
I am your host, as always, the doctor to
(01:05):
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(01:27):
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So, like I said in the beginning, commuter
(01:49):
cities myself I am a commuter and if I
essentially didn't have to rush home to get
kids or daycare or you know anything like
that, I could take the city bus to get to
work.
I would be regulated by my hours at work by
taking the city bus, because I literally
would have to catch the first bus in the
morning at seven o'clock, just so I'd be
there before eight, because if I don't
(02:09):
catch the first bus, I won't be getting to
work until after eight o'clock.
So I would literally have to get there
earlier and, leaving, I would have to make
sure I left a proper time to catch my bus
to come home.
Now I could do it if I actually wanted to,
and I could still live in a commuter hub
For myself.
My small little commuter hub is on the
outskirts of a major city.
(02:31):
There is a small town just up the road from
me.
There's a grocery store, there's gas
stations, the convenience stores, there's a
liquor store, there's a couple pizza places
Not every single thing I need.
If I'm looking for a good burger, I got to
go into town.
If I need to do some full-scale grocery
shopping and want to save a bit of money, I
got to go into town.
If I got to get some home renovations done,
well, I can get some of the things out here,
(02:52):
but not everything unless I'm willing to
wait.
So I got to go into town For myself.
Most of the stuff I need.
I have to go into town.
I have to commute into the city, into the
city and even for myself.
Before, at previous jobs that I had had, I
may have lived in the industrial hubs
outside of the major urban centers, but I
still had to commute to get there.
Because, trust me, taking a bus to my old
(03:12):
job, that would have never happened.
I would have got off the road and had to
walk nearly three kilometers to get to work
every single day, just because the bus
didn't go into the industrial park.
So in a sense I had to commute.
These small communities essentially house
the workforce of larger cities.
Now in my home city there's all kinds of
little towns all over the place because of
all the small mines that once existed or
(03:34):
still exist today.
So back in those days people had to be able
to walk to work.
So when they put one smelter in and one of
the main towns, Falconbridge, they had to
have employment close by, because at that
point in time, when it was built in the
early part of the 20th century, not
everybody had an automobile and hell, not
everybody was willing to take a horse to
(03:54):
get there and because of our rocky terrain,
a horse and buggy just really wasn't in the
cards.
So they built towns and they built them
close to the industrial center.
So even though this town wasn't made for
commerce and wasn't made for major
manufacturing, it was made to house all the
people for the smelter.
And what's the purpose of the smelter?
Well, they're taking the ore and they're
(04:14):
smelting it down into nickel ingots.
They can be shipped out and then made and
processed into actual workable products
they use in your daily life.
You know I pay attention in school and I
pay attention at our hometown Dynamic Earth
Science Center.
Yeah, plus, I've learned from it from my
entire family.
Mining's deep in my blood.
But I love cars, so for myself these small,
(04:36):
tiny little towns all had to have walking
distance to them.
Now, one of the original towns in the
Greater Sudbury area was Copper Cliff and
the entire thing was built to house
everyone for the original smelter, for
International Nickel Company, or as it was
later called, INCO.
Now, if you've ever seen the movie Men with
Brooms, one of the top-grossing
Canadian-made movies with Canadians in it,
(04:57):
was made right here in Copper Cliff, Ontario.
The small little community made to house
all the people to be within walking
distance or even a trolley or a horse ride
to work.
Well, as the automobile became more
prevalent by the late 40s and into the 50s,
the small little towns like Copper Cliff
essentially became tiny little hubs for
(05:18):
people to live with smaller incomes.
And the people who could make larger
incomes no longer had to live in these
small little towns and walk by foot to get
to work.
They could live further out and drive to
work, they could commute into the main city
and essentially, even in the world today, a
lot of people still commute by vehicle.
The cities of Los Angeles in the United
States and Toronto or actually let's put it
(05:41):
in a better perspective we're going to go
by traffic volumes Los Angeles in the
United States and Montreal in the province
of Quebec in Canada.
Both of them have major traffic problems
because both of them were made off
commuter-based industries.
Remember, Los Angeles was there and had
perfect public transit for people to move
about without the use of an automobile all
(06:03):
the way up until the 1950s.
By the 50s these big highways started
coming in and making it easier for people
to live further and further out.
Then we developed these small little
communities with all the amenities that
they needed to house the people.
So we're not talking about a giant
skyscraper in the middle of every single
one of these places.
No, we're talking about malls, convenience
(06:24):
stores, hardware stores, tiny little
fabrics of communities.
So you remember like centuries ago we all
lived in major little urban centers, unless
we lived on the outskirts and we were the
farmers, or we lived in the bush and the
loggers and the miners.
We all lived all over the place.
But if we're gonna go way back, there were
kingdoms and there were people who lived in
the kingdom that supported the kingdom, but
(06:46):
then there were people from the outskirts
that had to bring stuff into the cities to
sell them.
They had to commute every once in a while,
but because they were too far out it was
not plausible.
Henry Ford realized this when he was a
teenager, when he left home just north of
Detroit and walked into town.
It took him a few hours to get into town,
to only go a few miles.
But by the time he came back from Detroit
(07:08):
he was able to do it in a mere minutes
because he was able to drive home, which
means now he can live on the outskirts of
town.
But when you live on the outskirts of town
you eventually want to have things around
you, so we build these urban centers.
Essentially it's a suburban urban life.
Now this was really prevalent between the
40s and the 70s.
(07:30):
Suburban life was blowing up and cars
became king.
As the men and women came back from World
War II and the fighting was over, renewed
interest in the automobile came about.
Now they had money and they had time.
They all wanted to have families and they
all wanted to have kids.
The baby boom caused this mass influx and
demand for houses.
Well, urban sprawl started happening, and
(07:51):
sure we already had these major urban
centers, big cities Like.
Look at New York City.
It had skyscrapers way back in the 1920s
and they had the skyscraper wars during the
1920s and the city was going up and up and
up and up and up and up.
But to work in New York city you had to
live in New York city.
When the automobile really started to be
pushed, you were able to work in New York
city but live in new jersey.
(08:13):
You could live across the river and work
there.
It's all because of the automobile, and a
great invention around the turn of the
century really helped spawn suburban life
cookie cutter homes, homes Building small
little modular homes, all based off the
exact same principle and layouts, which
means not every single house was different
from the one next to it, which means houses
(08:33):
can go up even faster and because of that
we can now build things faster.
We can build our strip malls faster, we can
start adding industries.
The freeways that slowly started to appear
during the 1950s and all the way up until
the 1980s across the globe started allowing
us to live further away from urban centers.
This created commuter life, but not
(08:54):
everybody was into commuter life.
But late 80s and into the 90s traffic
started snarling all major centers and
commuter life just became a hassle.
And even though we started realizing that
we needed to make more highways, those
highways would never help because all these
small commuter cities were eventually
becoming urban centers, with so many people
(09:14):
moving to them.
Because of the prices being lower, there's
more room to move about, taxes are lower,
they can move out of the city, get away
from that cluster of people, have freedom.
But when you start moving out there and
your neighbors start moving out there and
your friends, your family all start moving
out there, it will start to get crowded.
In the 1970s a businessman decided to buy
(09:36):
out a massive amount of farms outside of
the city of Toronto.
It's a tiny little village called
Mississauga and he was going to build a
fully functioning commuter city on the edge
of Toronto.
Because Toronto was growing and even though
they were building big highways, there were
still a multitude of different cities all
vying for all the differences between the
(09:57):
city.
So to build a brand new expressway, you had
to go through all of these communities to
build it.
This new development was going to take that
life out of it.
Mississauga was going to be a purposely
planned commuter city of wide main roads,
built on a perfect grid system, mazes upon
mazes of streets Connecting to these cookie
(10:17):
cutter houses all over the place and in the
center of all of it, for everyone to enjoy,
the biggest mall outside of downtown
Toronto, square One, was going to be built
right next to a brand new highway that was
going in the 403.
This originally had plans to go all the way
down to Hamilton but kind of ended right at
the edge of Mississauga.
It was a couple of years later, but now
(10:38):
it's technically the 407.
The 403 doesn't go straight down.
It should but it doesn't.
And with that the commuter life grew.
Mississauga I watched it throughout the 80s,
90s and early 2000s of my lifetime.
I watched it go from this tiny little
suburban-esque subdivision on the outskirts
of the city of Toronto into being the
second biggest metropolitan in the province
(11:00):
of Ontario.
Yeah, Mississauga is the second biggest.
You can fight with me and say, oh, Ottawa's
bigger.
But technically, Mississauga and its
surrounding areas that it's now
encompassing is slowly taking this over.
Well, that was between the 70s and 80s.
In the early 2000s, the city of Vaughan,
just north of Toronto, where Canada's
Wonderland is, was another commuter city.
It was planned to be the brand new
(11:20):
development of houses and to spearhead it
all off, a brand new highway the 407, was
put in and at that major interchange, the
pinnacle of movie theater experiences, the
Colossus by Famous Players, oh yeah, one of
the biggest movie theaters in the entire
country, massive IMAX screens sitting right
there for all these people, plop down an
Ikea, plop down a big Walmart and tons and
(11:43):
tons, tons of houses.
And a brand new commuter city was born when
I started college in 2001,.
The very first population sign ever went up
for the city of Vaughan 30,000 people.
The city of Vaughan now is getting close to
cracking 400,000 people.
It blew up because more people found it
cheaper to live on the outskirts and
commute in All because at that point in
(12:05):
time we had a new highway.
Well, this is where the problems were
starting to take off and, with the
automobile still being prevalent in
commuter cities, we need to move away from
this.
The city of Toronto finally started to
realize maybe we should put some subways
and light rail systems in too for all the
people that live in these outskirts
communities, all the people that want to
(12:26):
commute in should get off the highway and
start getting on two trains.
That was a great idea, but when covid hit,
that whole idea went out the window yet
again.
Because we can now work from home.
A reliance left our foot traffic of urban
centers to propulsion systems of our
automobiles, e-bikes and even scooters and
motorcycles.
(12:47):
The cost per mile or kilometer is way
greater in suburban areas, stretching
infrastructure to its limits.
Having infrastructure in an urban core is
cheaper to operate than it is in suburban
areas.
You might think, oh, it's just underneath
the roads.
In suburban areas it's easier to get to.
Yes, but one house pays for a massive
section of pipe as opposed to one condo
(13:07):
building with hundreds of people in it
paying for that pipe.
You're literally stretching your
infrastructure to its bare minimum, and I
know this from my home city.
In the community I live in, I have cable TV,
I have high-speed internet, I have water, I
have gas lines, I have garbage and
recycling pickup, I have fire, I have
police.
I have everything, all major amenities, and
(13:29):
I'm 20 minutes away from town, 20 minutes
from a major urban center.
Think about the cost of maintaining and
keeping that infrastructure up, the cost
per kilometer to keep those roads
maintained, plowed and up to code.
Well, this is stretching things thin.
Our love affair with suburban life is great
only if our population is blowing up.
(13:50):
But when population's not growing as fast
as it needs to be, the infrastructure is
stretched to its limits.
So now all these small commuter cities,
these hubs, these little villages, if
they're not growing up, these little
villages, if they're not growing up to city
status, then they're just tiny little
villages.
Like I said, by the end of the 90s the
automobile was starting to give way.
We were starting to lose our love affair
(14:11):
with the automobile and commuting into town.
By the time my generation started getting
out into the public, we decided we wanted
to live in urban centers.
We thought it was great living close to
everything, be able to walk to everything,
bike to everything, take the subway, take a
bus.
It's all within our limits.
Yeah, it's a great idea, until you start
having kids and you try and raise kids in a
condo.
(14:31):
And you try and raise kids, well, you got
to go pick them up from daycare and make
sure you catch your subway to get there in
time, or ride a bike or run there.
It gets more hectic and that's why commuter
cities are still kicking around, no matter
what technology comes out and how much we
Autonomize to move, for us the commuter
city is here to stay.
And even though there's small villages and
all that outside of major urban centers
(14:53):
that are still growing exponentially, the
commuter city will not disappear.
Our format for commuter cities is starting
to disappear, though.
Where originally, our commuter cities were
based off full, functioning automobile
services and that is it, the commuter
cities of today are now taking more of a
personal transportation out of the equation.
Yes, commuter cities of today.
(15:14):
If you take a look at the city of Barrie,
Ontario, just north of Toronto, they've
just now not when I lived there 20 years
ago, but now have a GO train that goes from
the edge of essential urban living.
The condo central space on their waterfront,
where most urban dwellers will live, is
within walking or biking distance of their
main transportation hub for buses and
(15:37):
trains.
You can have a car to live in Barrie to go
in and about and do all your groceries, but
if you live in the urban core, you're still
within walking distance of everything that
you would love to have.
Your automobile gets used a lot less.
Even though you need space to store it.
You still use it less.
But we're now building up our
infrastructure.
We're building taller buildings, we're
(15:57):
condensing our footprints, we're making it
so that these commuter towns and commuter
villages and commuter cities are growing up
to a point where transportation corridors
only go around the outside of the town.
They can be utilized within the towns, but
now light rail systems, HOV lanes, subways,
buses, dedicated bike routes and autonomous
(16:18):
travel are starting to take preference over
our love affair with the automobile.
Commuting around our commuter cities is
still plausible with our automobile, but
not 100% applicable to the situation.
Today we started realizing that we need to
start integrating more forms of
transportation into not just our urban
cores but our commuter cities.
(16:40):
So cities like Barrie and Vaughan and
Milton are getting connected to the urban
centers of Toronto.
Like I said when I was a kid, where I used
to live as a kid there were three buses a
day and if I walked like I walk faster than
the average person, I walk about eight and
a half kilometers an hour Used to be 10
when I was in high school, a little slower
now.
(17:06):
I was over an hour and 15 minutes away from
the main suburban area where everything was
close to me, from where I had to take a bus
In my tiny little hamlet or commuter town
only had three buses a day.
Today there's a bus at least every two
hours into that area because they realize
that people need to commute.
See, these small commuter cities are still
required in today's light because they have
more space.
It's still cheaper to build stuff out there
(17:26):
and with it being cheaper, it keeps prices
down.
Land is more valuable in an urban setting,
so trying to build geared to income or low
income subsidized living centers in an
urban center is more costly than putting it
on the commuter edge.
Building them within the confines of
commuter villages we can maximize our
infrastructure that's already existing.
(17:47):
Like I said, in my tiny little hamlet world
I could take a bus to work.
Now it's not perfect for me because it's
limited on the amount, but for specific
people, someone like me that just wants to
move down from having a three-car driveway
to, let's just say, say, a one-car driveway,
it is plausible for me to do that.
And these cities are starting to realize
that they're building bike lanes all the
(18:08):
way out to the outskirts so that I can
commute.
If I only work at the industrial fields at
the edge of the city, I could bike to work.
There's snow machine trails, there's a
TransCanada trail, literally across the
road from where I am, so I don't have to
use my automobile to commute to work.
I have other forms and, like I said, the
city, like Barrie, Ontario, putting its
(18:28):
main transportation infrastructure into one
main spot.
You can now get off the train and get onto
a bus and if you live a city up in Aurelia,
you can get off your train and get on the
PMCL or Ontario Northland bus and go up the
road.
Hell.
You can get off your GO train, take the bus
to the edge of the city for where you
parked your vehicle and a carpool lot.
(18:49):
We can now live in commuter cities and not
have to fully utilize our automobile.
In the world of today, our cities are
becoming more interconnected and, as Toyota
put it together, building their woven city,
a fully integrated, autonomous city where
the use of an automobile is limited to its
minuscule form, cities like this are what's
shaping the future.
(19:09):
You might just think oh, it's a new type of
city, it's a new urban center within an
urban center, but that urban center still
has to be a commute-friendly place.
And that's the world we're slowly starting
to get into, a reliance on free-flow travel
that we are in control of is starting to
diminish, and I'm not just talking about
autonomous technology coming to automobiles.
(19:29):
No, I'm talking about a reliance on our
automobiles.
Like I said, I could take the bus to work
if I wanted to.
My brother is 45 years old.
He has never once owned a vehicle ever.
He now has a family, so he lives in a more
commuter-friendly village.
He's within walking or biking distance to
everything he needs to go and access for
his family, pick his kids up, drop his kids
(19:50):
off and if he needs to go into town to go
to work, he can commute without the use of
an automobile, but for convenience.
If he did have an automobile, he could get
around his commuter lifestyle a little more
easily.
But that's where things like Uber and Lyft
have come in.
We're reducing our reliance on automobiles.
Even in the suburban areas, even within our
commute city, we can now take a train home.
(20:12):
We can get off the train and into an Uber
and we can be driven home to where our car
sits Most of the week in our driveway never
gets used.
We commute by foot, we commute, we commute
through automobile sharing.
Commuter cities are still here, and even
with some of these cities becoming major
urban centers.
Today, Mississauga is no longer a commuter
city.
It's the city people commute to.
(20:33):
On the outskirts of Mississauga, Ontario,
is a small, tiny little village was small
it's not anymore of Milton, Ontario.
Milton has now passed over 150,000 people
and is growing exponentially, but is still
considered a commuter city.
Eventually it'll turn into an urban center.
Vaughn is slowly moving into its
urban-style center.
(20:53):
It originally was a commuter city in the
early 2000s when I was there.
Now it's slowly transitioning into an urban
core.
Its outlining areas are where people live
in houses and can commute to the urban core.
We can now use different forms of
transportation and our modes of
transportation have been properly planned.
We haven't just been jamming every single
thing in there, thinking it'll all work.
(21:13):
That was the biggest problem with the
original suburbanized ideas.
You build one massive freeway that
everybody can get onto to come into the
main city, but that's not that smart,
because when the commuter town triples in
size, that's that many more vehicles on
that one highway going into town.
Oh, let's just build more highways, more
people could commute.
Well, that's good, but now we're spending
(21:34):
more and more and more infrastructure money
building more highways so more people could
commute into the town.
Well, instead of building dedicated
transportation lanes, instead of building
light rail systems, instead of building
more subways, instead of expanding our bus
routes, we need to commute and we need to
get into town, and not everybody can afford
to live in a major urban center, so there
(21:54):
are a lot of us out there that have to
commute.
I don't know how many times I've heard
stories about people who live in all kinds
of different cities, who either walk or
take a bus and spend like an hour and a
half of their day trying to get from the
outskirts of their commuter lifestyle into
the major industrial cores of urban centers.
They do that to get to their job, but they
can't afford to have an automobile, so they
commute on public transit.
(22:16):
But now that public transit is getting
better, this commute is getting better and
quicker, and that's where we need to
realize this.
The automobile plays a vital role in the
future of transportation.
You have to remember the automobile
essentially took over from where the wagon
left off and remember how long the wagon
was in existence, you know, like a few
thousand years.
You think the automobile is just going to
(22:37):
be kicked to the curb just because we feel
that we need to walk on our feet a little
more often.
No, the automobile is going to be here and
we're still going to be using it to commute
from our small hamlets and villages into
the urban centers, but a future of tomorrow
is going to give us more opportunities to
use different forms of transportation to
get in there.
As we try and bring down the costs of the
infrastructure to support suburban living,
(23:00):
we're finding more ingenious ways of
getting more people off our roads and more
people jammed into smaller confines.
A railway can carry more people than a
roads, and more people jammed into smaller
confines.
A railway can carry more people than a
single lane highway.
That's your infrastructure dollars Hard at
work.
So when we start believing this and seeing
that building the proper infrastructure to
our commuter zones allows people to still
stay in the commuter zones but have less
(23:22):
dependent on what they originally had, I
don't know how many times today I hear
about people talking about urban sprawl.
That's the reason why highways like 410,
427, even the 404 won't be extended further
north, because it's going to cause all this
massive urban sprawl.
Out there.
People will just get in their cars and go
into town.
Well, that is correct.
If we do do that, there will be more people
(23:44):
inclined to move to the small hamlets so
they can commute into town because they're
less occupied highways.
But if we build the proper infrastructure
there in the first place, add a light rail
system all the way out there, we can ease
congestion on the main infrastructure
corridor.
The city of Calgary is actually doing that
right now, as they're building their light
rail system all the way from downtown
Calgary to the small hamlet of Cochrane,
(24:06):
Alberta, which is exploding in population.
Now it's at the end of a major freeway, but
it's also going to be at the end of their
light rail system and the end of their
major transit hub.
They know that every form of transportation
has to be there to make it all work
properly so people can live where it's
cheaper to own a house and commute to where
they work, because in the end, that's all
(24:26):
we need.
We just need a roof over our head, food in
our stomach and a job that pays the bills.
And to do that we've got to commute from
somewhere and whether we like it or not,
some of us have no choice but to move to a
commuter city.
So if you like this podcast, please like,
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(24:48):
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(25:10):
knowledge with the rest of the world as
well.
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(25:31):
Big or small, we have them all car
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So from myself, Everett Jay, the host of
the AutoLooks podcast and the owner of the
AutoLooks.net website from Podbean.com and Ecomm
(25:54):
Entertainment Group, strap yourself in for
this one fun wild ride that our life in the
commuter lane is going to take us on.
Thank you.
I would call myself one, a commuter,
somebody who travels from the outskirts
into the edge of the city to go for work.
But why do I do it?
And why do I live 20 minutes away from any
major commercial hub?
Well, space, and, for me, costs as well.
The price of my house is actually less than
what I would have paid to live in the city
and my taxes are less.
(00:22):
But this comes with added costs the cost of
owning multiple vehicles, the cost of lost
time rushing home and the wear and tear on
my automobile.
But in all reality, why do we even have
these tiny little commuter cities, or even
small commuter towns, and why are they
still prevalent today, when most of us are
starting to look towards a future with less
(00:45):
of an automobile presence?
Well, today, AutoLooks is going to take a
trip back and explain why the commuter
cities of today are still going to be
kicking around in a future of tomorrow.
Welcome back to the AutoLooks podcast.
I am your host, as always, the doctor to
(01:05):
the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay,
coming to you from our host website at
AutoLooks.net.
If you haven't been there, stop by.
Check it out.
Read some of the reviews.
Check out some of the ratings.
Go to the Corporate Links website page.
Big or small, we have them all car
companies from around the globe, all
available on one centralized location, the
(01:27):
AutoLooks.net website on the corporate links
page.
Yeah, you can find it all there.
And while they're stopped by, read some of
the reviews, check out some of the ratings
and find all the podcasts we have done over
the past six seasons up until now, all
available on autolooks.net.
The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by
Ecom Entertainment Group and distributed at
podbean.com.
If you'd like to get in touch with us, send
us an email over an email@autolooks.net.
So, like I said in the beginning, commuter
(01:49):
cities myself I am a commuter and if I
essentially didn't have to rush home to get
kids or daycare or you know anything like
that, I could take the city bus to get to
work.
I would be regulated by my hours at work by
taking the city bus, because I literally
would have to catch the first bus in the
morning at seven o'clock, just so I'd be
there before eight, because if I don't
(02:09):
catch the first bus, I won't be getting to
work until after eight o'clock.
So I would literally have to get there
earlier and, leaving, I would have to make
sure I left a proper time to catch my bus
to come home.
Now I could do it if I actually wanted to,
and I could still live in a commuter hub
For myself.
My small little commuter hub is on the
outskirts of a major city.
(02:31):
There is a small town just up the road from
me.
There's a grocery store, there's gas
stations, the convenience stores, there's a
liquor store, there's a couple pizza places
Not every single thing I need.
If I'm looking for a good burger, I got to
go into town.
If I need to do some full-scale grocery
shopping and want to save a bit of money, I
got to go into town.
If I got to get some home renovations done,
well, I can get some of the things out here,
(02:52):
but not everything unless I'm willing to
wait.
So I got to go into town For myself.
Most of the stuff I need.
I have to go into town.
I have to commute into the city, into the
city and even for myself.
Before, at previous jobs that I had had, I
may have lived in the industrial hubs
outside of the major urban centers, but I
still had to commute to get there.
Because, trust me, taking a bus to my old
(03:12):
job, that would have never happened.
I would have got off the road and had to
walk nearly three kilometers to get to work
every single day, just because the bus
didn't go into the industrial park.
So in a sense I had to commute.
These small communities essentially house
the workforce of larger cities.
Now in my home city there's all kinds of
little towns all over the place because of
all the small mines that once existed or
(03:34):
still exist today.
So back in those days people had to be able
to walk to work.
So when they put one smelter in and one of
the main towns, Falconbridge, they had to
have employment close by, because at that
point in time, when it was built in the
early part of the 20th century, not
everybody had an automobile and hell, not
everybody was willing to take a horse to
(03:54):
get there and because of our rocky terrain,
a horse and buggy just really wasn't in the
cards.
So they built towns and they built them
close to the industrial center.
So even though this town wasn't made for
commerce and wasn't made for major
manufacturing, it was made to house all the
people for the smelter.
And what's the purpose of the smelter?
Well, they're taking the ore and they're
(04:14):
smelting it down into nickel ingots.
They can be shipped out and then made and
processed into actual workable products
they use in your daily life.
You know I pay attention in school and I
pay attention at our hometown Dynamic Earth
Science Center.
Yeah, plus, I've learned from it from my
entire family.
Mining's deep in my blood.
But I love cars, so for myself these small,
(04:36):
tiny little towns all had to have walking
distance to them.
Now, one of the original towns in the
Greater Sudbury area was Copper Cliff and
the entire thing was built to house
everyone for the original smelter, for
International Nickel Company, or as it was
later called, INCO.
Now, if you've ever seen the movie Men with
Brooms, one of the top-grossing
Canadian-made movies with Canadians in it,
(04:57):
was made right here in Copper Cliff, Ontario.
The small little community made to house
all the people to be within walking
distance or even a trolley or a horse ride
to work.
Well, as the automobile became more
prevalent by the late 40s and into the 50s,
the small little towns like Copper Cliff
essentially became tiny little hubs for
(05:18):
people to live with smaller incomes.
And the people who could make larger
incomes no longer had to live in these
small little towns and walk by foot to get
to work.
They could live further out and drive to
work, they could commute into the main city
and essentially, even in the world today, a
lot of people still commute by vehicle.
The cities of Los Angeles in the United
States and Toronto or actually let's put it
(05:41):
in a better perspective we're going to go
by traffic volumes Los Angeles in the
United States and Montreal in the province
of Quebec in Canada.
Both of them have major traffic problems
because both of them were made off
commuter-based industries.
Remember, Los Angeles was there and had
perfect public transit for people to move
about without the use of an automobile all
(06:03):
the way up until the 1950s.
By the 50s these big highways started
coming in and making it easier for people
to live further and further out.
Then we developed these small little
communities with all the amenities that
they needed to house the people.
So we're not talking about a giant
skyscraper in the middle of every single
one of these places.
No, we're talking about malls, convenience
(06:24):
stores, hardware stores, tiny little
fabrics of communities.
So you remember like centuries ago we all
lived in major little urban centers, unless
we lived on the outskirts and we were the
farmers, or we lived in the bush and the
loggers and the miners.
We all lived all over the place.
But if we're gonna go way back, there were
kingdoms and there were people who lived in
the kingdom that supported the kingdom, but
(06:46):
then there were people from the outskirts
that had to bring stuff into the cities to
sell them.
They had to commute every once in a while,
but because they were too far out it was
not plausible.
Henry Ford realized this when he was a
teenager, when he left home just north of
Detroit and walked into town.
It took him a few hours to get into town,
to only go a few miles.
But by the time he came back from Detroit
(07:08):
he was able to do it in a mere minutes
because he was able to drive home, which
means now he can live on the outskirts of
town.
But when you live on the outskirts of town
you eventually want to have things around
you, so we build these urban centers.
Essentially it's a suburban urban life.
Now this was really prevalent between the
40s and the 70s.
(07:30):
Suburban life was blowing up and cars
became king.
As the men and women came back from World
War II and the fighting was over, renewed
interest in the automobile came about.
Now they had money and they had time.
They all wanted to have families and they
all wanted to have kids.
The baby boom caused this mass influx and
demand for houses.
Well, urban sprawl started happening, and
(07:51):
sure we already had these major urban
centers, big cities Like.
Look at New York City.
It had skyscrapers way back in the 1920s
and they had the skyscraper wars during the
1920s and the city was going up and up and
up and up and up and up.
But to work in New York city you had to
live in New York city.
When the automobile really started to be
pushed, you were able to work in New York
city but live in new jersey.
(08:13):
You could live across the river and work
there.
It's all because of the automobile, and a
great invention around the turn of the
century really helped spawn suburban life
cookie cutter homes, homes Building small
little modular homes, all based off the
exact same principle and layouts, which
means not every single house was different
from the one next to it, which means houses
(08:33):
can go up even faster and because of that
we can now build things faster.
We can build our strip malls faster, we can
start adding industries.
The freeways that slowly started to appear
during the 1950s and all the way up until
the 1980s across the globe started allowing
us to live further away from urban centers.
This created commuter life, but not
(08:54):
everybody was into commuter life.
But late 80s and into the 90s traffic
started snarling all major centers and
commuter life just became a hassle.
And even though we started realizing that
we needed to make more highways, those
highways would never help because all these
small commuter cities were eventually
becoming urban centers, with so many people
(09:14):
moving to them.
Because of the prices being lower, there's
more room to move about, taxes are lower,
they can move out of the city, get away
from that cluster of people, have freedom.
But when you start moving out there and
your neighbors start moving out there and
your friends, your family all start moving
out there, it will start to get crowded.
In the 1970s a businessman decided to buy
(09:36):
out a massive amount of farms outside of
the city of Toronto.
It's a tiny little village called
Mississauga and he was going to build a
fully functioning commuter city on the edge
of Toronto.
Because Toronto was growing and even though
they were building big highways, there were
still a multitude of different cities all
vying for all the differences between the
(09:57):
city.
So to build a brand new expressway, you had
to go through all of these communities to
build it.
This new development was going to take that
life out of it.
Mississauga was going to be a purposely
planned commuter city of wide main roads,
built on a perfect grid system, mazes upon
mazes of streets Connecting to these cookie
(10:17):
cutter houses all over the place and in the
center of all of it, for everyone to enjoy,
the biggest mall outside of downtown
Toronto, square One, was going to be built
right next to a brand new highway that was
going in the 403.
This originally had plans to go all the way
down to Hamilton but kind of ended right at
the edge of Mississauga.
It was a couple of years later, but now
(10:38):
it's technically the 407.
The 403 doesn't go straight down.
It should but it doesn't.
And with that the commuter life grew.
Mississauga I watched it throughout the 80s,
90s and early 2000s of my lifetime.
I watched it go from this tiny little
suburban-esque subdivision on the outskirts
of the city of Toronto into being the
second biggest metropolitan in the province
(11:00):
of Ontario.
Yeah, Mississauga is the second biggest.
You can fight with me and say, oh, Ottawa's
bigger.
But technically, Mississauga and its
surrounding areas that it's now
encompassing is slowly taking this over.
Well, that was between the 70s and 80s.
In the early 2000s, the city of Vaughan,
just north of Toronto, where Canada's
Wonderland is, was another commuter city.
It was planned to be the brand new
(11:20):
development of houses and to spearhead it
all off, a brand new highway the 407, was
put in and at that major interchange, the
pinnacle of movie theater experiences, the
Colossus by Famous Players, oh yeah, one of
the biggest movie theaters in the entire
country, massive IMAX screens sitting right
there for all these people, plop down an
Ikea, plop down a big Walmart and tons and
(11:43):
tons, tons of houses.
And a brand new commuter city was born when
I started college in 2001,.
The very first population sign ever went up
for the city of Vaughan 30,000 people.
The city of Vaughan now is getting close to
cracking 400,000 people.
It blew up because more people found it
cheaper to live on the outskirts and
commute in All because at that point in
(12:05):
time we had a new highway.
Well, this is where the problems were
starting to take off and, with the
automobile still being prevalent in
commuter cities, we need to move away from
this.
The city of Toronto finally started to
realize maybe we should put some subways
and light rail systems in too for all the
people that live in these outskirts
communities, all the people that want to
(12:26):
commute in should get off the highway and
start getting on two trains.
That was a great idea, but when covid hit,
that whole idea went out the window yet
again.
Because we can now work from home.
A reliance left our foot traffic of urban
centers to propulsion systems of our
automobiles, e-bikes and even scooters and
motorcycles.
(12:47):
The cost per mile or kilometer is way
greater in suburban areas, stretching
infrastructure to its limits.
Having infrastructure in an urban core is
cheaper to operate than it is in suburban
areas.
You might think, oh, it's just underneath
the roads.
In suburban areas it's easier to get to.
Yes, but one house pays for a massive
section of pipe as opposed to one condo
(13:07):
building with hundreds of people in it
paying for that pipe.
You're literally stretching your
infrastructure to its bare minimum, and I
know this from my home city.
In the community I live in, I have cable TV,
I have high-speed internet, I have water, I
have gas lines, I have garbage and
recycling pickup, I have fire, I have
police.
I have everything, all major amenities, and
(13:29):
I'm 20 minutes away from town, 20 minutes
from a major urban center.
Think about the cost of maintaining and
keeping that infrastructure up, the cost
per kilometer to keep those roads
maintained, plowed and up to code.
Well, this is stretching things thin.
Our love affair with suburban life is great
only if our population is blowing up.
(13:50):
But when population's not growing as fast
as it needs to be, the infrastructure is
stretched to its limits.
So now all these small commuter cities,
these hubs, these little villages, if
they're not growing up, these little
villages, if they're not growing up to city
status, then they're just tiny little
villages.
Like I said, by the end of the 90s the
automobile was starting to give way.
We were starting to lose our love affair
(14:11):
with the automobile and commuting into town.
By the time my generation started getting
out into the public, we decided we wanted
to live in urban centers.
We thought it was great living close to
everything, be able to walk to everything,
bike to everything, take the subway, take a
bus.
It's all within our limits.
Yeah, it's a great idea, until you start
having kids and you try and raise kids in a
condo.
(14:31):
And you try and raise kids, well, you got
to go pick them up from daycare and make
sure you catch your subway to get there in
time, or ride a bike or run there.
It gets more hectic and that's why commuter
cities are still kicking around, no matter
what technology comes out and how much we
Autonomize to move, for us the commuter
city is here to stay.
And even though there's small villages and
all that outside of major urban centers
(14:53):
that are still growing exponentially, the
commuter city will not disappear.
Our format for commuter cities is starting
to disappear, though.
Where originally, our commuter cities were
based off full, functioning automobile
services and that is it, the commuter
cities of today are now taking more of a
personal transportation out of the equation.
Yes, commuter cities of today.
(15:14):
If you take a look at the city of Barrie,
Ontario, just north of Toronto, they've
just now not when I lived there 20 years
ago, but now have a GO train that goes from
the edge of essential urban living.
The condo central space on their waterfront,
where most urban dwellers will live, is
within walking or biking distance of their
main transportation hub for buses and
(15:37):
trains.
You can have a car to live in Barrie to go
in and about and do all your groceries, but
if you live in the urban core, you're still
within walking distance of everything that
you would love to have.
Your automobile gets used a lot less.
Even though you need space to store it.
You still use it less.
But we're now building up our
infrastructure.
We're building taller buildings, we're
(15:57):
condensing our footprints, we're making it
so that these commuter towns and commuter
villages and commuter cities are growing up
to a point where transportation corridors
only go around the outside of the town.
They can be utilized within the towns, but
now light rail systems, HOV lanes, subways,
buses, dedicated bike routes and autonomous
(16:18):
travel are starting to take preference over
our love affair with the automobile.
Commuting around our commuter cities is
still plausible with our automobile, but
not 100% applicable to the situation.
Today we started realizing that we need to
start integrating more forms of
transportation into not just our urban
cores but our commuter cities.
(16:40):
So cities like Barrie and Vaughan and
Milton are getting connected to the urban
centers of Toronto.
Like I said when I was a kid, where I used
to live as a kid there were three buses a
day and if I walked like I walk faster than
the average person, I walk about eight and
a half kilometers an hour Used to be 10
when I was in high school, a little slower
now.
(17:06):
I was over an hour and 15 minutes away from
the main suburban area where everything was
close to me, from where I had to take a bus
In my tiny little hamlet or commuter town
only had three buses a day.
Today there's a bus at least every two
hours into that area because they realize
that people need to commute.
See, these small commuter cities are still
required in today's light because they have
more space.
It's still cheaper to build stuff out there
(17:26):
and with it being cheaper, it keeps prices
down.
Land is more valuable in an urban setting,
so trying to build geared to income or low
income subsidized living centers in an
urban center is more costly than putting it
on the commuter edge.
Building them within the confines of
commuter villages we can maximize our
infrastructure that's already existing.
(17:47):
Like I said, in my tiny little hamlet world
I could take a bus to work.
Now it's not perfect for me because it's
limited on the amount, but for specific
people, someone like me that just wants to
move down from having a three-car driveway
to, let's just say, say, a one-car driveway,
it is plausible for me to do that.
And these cities are starting to realize
that they're building bike lanes all the
(18:08):
way out to the outskirts so that I can
commute.
If I only work at the industrial fields at
the edge of the city, I could bike to work.
There's snow machine trails, there's a
TransCanada trail, literally across the
road from where I am, so I don't have to
use my automobile to commute to work.
I have other forms and, like I said, the
city, like Barrie, Ontario, putting its
(18:28):
main transportation infrastructure into one
main spot.
You can now get off the train and get onto
a bus and if you live a city up in Aurelia,
you can get off your train and get on the
PMCL or Ontario Northland bus and go up the
road.
Hell.
You can get off your GO train, take the bus
to the edge of the city for where you
parked your vehicle and a carpool lot.
(18:49):
We can now live in commuter cities and not
have to fully utilize our automobile.
In the world of today, our cities are
becoming more interconnected and, as Toyota
put it together, building their woven city,
a fully integrated, autonomous city where
the use of an automobile is limited to its
minuscule form, cities like this are what's
shaping the future.
(19:09):
You might just think oh, it's a new type of
city, it's a new urban center within an
urban center, but that urban center still
has to be a commute-friendly place.
And that's the world we're slowly starting
to get into, a reliance on free-flow travel
that we are in control of is starting to
diminish, and I'm not just talking about
autonomous technology coming to automobiles.
(19:29):
No, I'm talking about a reliance on our
automobiles.
Like I said, I could take the bus to work
if I wanted to.
My brother is 45 years old.
He has never once owned a vehicle ever.
He now has a family, so he lives in a more
commuter-friendly village.
He's within walking or biking distance to
everything he needs to go and access for
his family, pick his kids up, drop his kids
(19:50):
off and if he needs to go into town to go
to work, he can commute without the use of
an automobile, but for convenience.
If he did have an automobile, he could get
around his commuter lifestyle a little more
easily.
But that's where things like Uber and Lyft
have come in.
We're reducing our reliance on automobiles.
Even in the suburban areas, even within our
commute city, we can now take a train home.
(20:12):
We can get off the train and into an Uber
and we can be driven home to where our car
sits Most of the week in our driveway never
gets used.
We commute by foot, we commute, we commute
through automobile sharing.
Commuter cities are still here, and even
with some of these cities becoming major
urban centers.
Today, Mississauga is no longer a commuter
city.
It's the city people commute to.
(20:33):
On the outskirts of Mississauga, Ontario,
is a small, tiny little village was small
it's not anymore of Milton, Ontario.
Milton has now passed over 150,000 people
and is growing exponentially, but is still
considered a commuter city.
Eventually it'll turn into an urban center.
Vaughn is slowly moving into its
urban-style center.
(20:53):
It originally was a commuter city in the
early 2000s when I was there.
Now it's slowly transitioning into an urban
core.
Its outlining areas are where people live
in houses and can commute to the urban core.
We can now use different forms of
transportation and our modes of
transportation have been properly planned.
We haven't just been jamming every single
thing in there, thinking it'll all work.
(21:13):
That was the biggest problem with the
original suburbanized ideas.
You build one massive freeway that
everybody can get onto to come into the
main city, but that's not that smart,
because when the commuter town triples in
size, that's that many more vehicles on
that one highway going into town.
Oh, let's just build more highways, more
people could commute.
Well, that's good, but now we're spending
(21:34):
more and more and more infrastructure money
building more highways so more people could
commute into the town.
Well, instead of building dedicated
transportation lanes, instead of building
light rail systems, instead of building
more subways, instead of expanding our bus
routes, we need to commute and we need to
get into town, and not everybody can afford
to live in a major urban center, so there
(21:54):
are a lot of us out there that have to
commute.
I don't know how many times I've heard
stories about people who live in all kinds
of different cities, who either walk or
take a bus and spend like an hour and a
half of their day trying to get from the
outskirts of their commuter lifestyle into
the major industrial cores of urban centers.
They do that to get to their job, but they
can't afford to have an automobile, so they
commute on public transit.
(22:16):
But now that public transit is getting
better, this commute is getting better and
quicker, and that's where we need to
realize this.
The automobile plays a vital role in the
future of transportation.
You have to remember the automobile
essentially took over from where the wagon
left off and remember how long the wagon
was in existence, you know, like a few
thousand years.
You think the automobile is just going to
(22:37):
be kicked to the curb just because we feel
that we need to walk on our feet a little
more often.
No, the automobile is going to be here and
we're still going to be using it to commute
from our small hamlets and villages into
the urban centers, but a future of tomorrow
is going to give us more opportunities to
use different forms of transportation to
get in there.
As we try and bring down the costs of the
infrastructure to support suburban living,
(23:00):
we're finding more ingenious ways of
getting more people off our roads and more
people jammed into smaller confines.
A railway can carry more people than a
roads, and more people jammed into smaller
confines.
A railway can carry more people than a
single lane highway.
That's your infrastructure dollars Hard at
work.
So when we start believing this and seeing
that building the proper infrastructure to
our commuter zones allows people to still
stay in the commuter zones but have less
(23:22):
dependent on what they originally had, I
don't know how many times today I hear
about people talking about urban sprawl.
That's the reason why highways like 410,
427, even the 404 won't be extended further
north, because it's going to cause all this
massive urban sprawl.
Out there.
People will just get in their cars and go
into town.
Well, that is correct.
If we do do that, there will be more people
(23:44):
inclined to move to the small hamlets so
they can commute into town because they're
less occupied highways.
But if we build the proper infrastructure
there in the first place, add a light rail
system all the way out there, we can ease
congestion on the main infrastructure
corridor.
The city of Calgary is actually doing that
right now, as they're building their light
rail system all the way from downtown
Calgary to the small hamlet of Cochrane,
(24:06):
Alberta, which is exploding in population.
Now it's at the end of a major freeway, but
it's also going to be at the end of their
light rail system and the end of their
major transit hub.
They know that every form of transportation
has to be there to make it all work
properly so people can live where it's
cheaper to own a house and commute to where
they work, because in the end, that's all
(24:26):
we need.
We just need a roof over our head, food in
our stomach and a job that pays the bills.
And to do that we've got to commute from
somewhere and whether we like it or not,
some of us have no choice but to move to a
commuter city.
So if you like this podcast, please like,
share or comment about it on any of your
social media or streaming sites that you've
found the AutoLooks podcast on.
Share it, like it, subscribe to us, click
(24:48):
the like button at the bottom so that we
know that you liked what we're talking
about, and send us a comment.
We love getting comments from our listeners
and we don't respond to every single one of
them, but we do love hearing about them and
we love it when people tell us that we
might inspire them, or maybe they have an
idea about how we can change these things
and they send it to us and it can inspire
us to do a new podcast to share your
(25:10):
knowledge with the rest of the world as
well.
That's why we're here.
That's why the AutoLooks Podcast is out
there.
It's not just for our knowledge to get out
there, it's for the entire automotive
community to get their voice heard in a
global scale all from one place, the
AutoLooks.net podcast.
And after that, stop by, read some of the
reviews, check out some of the rigs, go to
the corporate looks website page.
(25:31):
Big or small, we have them all car
companies from around the globe, all
available on one specific site, the
AutoLooks.net website.
The AutoLooks Podcast is brought to you by
Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by
Podbean.com.
If you'd like to get in touch with us, send
us an email over at email@AutoLooks.net.
So from myself, Everett Jay, the host of
the AutoLooks podcast and the owner of the
AutoLooks.net website from Podbean.com and Ecomm
(25:54):
Entertainment Group, strap yourself in for
this one fun wild ride that our life in the
commuter lane is going to take us on.
Thank you.
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