An auditor’s report says the skyrocketing cost to build and operate transit in Edmonton means it is time to re-evaluate how much the city wants to spend on the system. The report is a classic case of a bean counter missing counting all the beans. It says car trips cost the city less than transit, but the report doesn’t factor in the true costs to our society or the true costs of driving for individual citizens.

The Transportation Planning Branch Audit says the price of each transit ride is expected to reach $9.37 in 2020 from $3.23 last year, while the cost to the city of every car trip will actually drop from 71 cents to 56 cents over the same period. By using that as a rationale, the report recommends that the overall transportation strategy needs to move the city forward in a “cost-effective manner,” and look at the proportion of spending for roadways versus transit.

“The results indicate that for every dollar spent on capital expenditures for transit, an additional dollar will be required for operating expenditures over a 20 year period,” the report by city auditor David Wiun states. “Comparatively, for every dollar spent on capital expenditures for roadways, an additional 50 cents will be required for operating expenditures over a twenty year period.”

The same kind of now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t economics could well provide ammunition to kill off Edmonton’s electric trolley buses. Such misguided thinking spelled the end for Edmonton’s streetcars more than a half century ago when they were replaced by cheaper and more flexible diesel powered buses. Now, with fuel prices going through the roof and air pollution and asthma in children ever more epidemic, cities that hung onto their trolleys and non-polluting streetcars are looking positively visionary.

The report notes that 77 per cent of Edmonton travellers use private vehicles and only nine per cent take the bus and wonders how, given the usage, such expenditures for public transit can be justified. It’s the same old chicken-and-egg argument that has long plagued Edmonton’s transit system.

Yet the solution can be found in any of dozens of cities around the world that move millions of people everyday with public transit. If transit is put where people want it, and the system is properly resourced, citizens will use it. Local examples abound. Just look at the immediate surge in Light Rapid Transit ridership when University Station opened. But until our leaders shake loose the old way of thinking, the city’s public transit system is condemned to a less than ample level of service that dooms it to low ridership.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, of which Edmonton is a member, urges the adoption of sustainable infrastructure which considers full life-cycle costs across social, economic and environmental dimensions. Other jurisdictions have started to do it. Why not Edmonton?

Last summer, San Francisco became the first city in the United States to enact legislation requiring the use of full-cost accounting principles to guide city purchasing.

Under the law, some $600 million in spending a year, on everything from toilet paper to computers, is being made according to criteria that considers materials, transportation, environmental and health costs. By using such a formula, the city gets a true cost and can help encourage market development of new products which are healthier and more environmentally friendly.

The leadership is out there to find and use a better way. Transport Canada’s vision of a sustainable transportation system is guided by principles of safety, efficient movement of people and goods to support economic prosperity and a sustainable quality of life and respect for what we leave for future generations. The federal government agency concedes that any reach towards sustainability must include user pricing that better reflects the true costs of transport and coordinated and harmonized actions across all modes of transport.

Experience around the world and most particularly in Europe conclusively shows that, if you look at transit systems in isolation of other cost factors, public transit won’t necessarily come out ahead. After all, what is the true cost of air pollution? What is the true cost of congestion on our roads? How do you measure the lost time of citizens, or stress, or road rage?

Last year, the busy Greater Toronto Area -- where congestion is expected to double by 2020 -- announced its “Smart Commute Initiative.” Billed as Canada’s largest-ever traffic reduction program, the $8 million project is aimed at encouraging people to trade a solitary drive to work for carpooling, public transit, or even a human-powered alternative.

Apparently Toronto’s leaders didn’t listen to their auditor.

The Centre for Sustainable Transportation says the number of kilometres travelled by personal vehicles in Canada increased by 13.6 per cent between 1990 and 2000, from 230 to 261 billion. Such an increase means greater adverse effects of transport on the environment, with a 21 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the centre notes. During the same decade, energy use for transport in Canada increased by 21.5 per cent, from 1,878 to 2,282 petajoules – a large increase in the consumption of non-renewable resources for transport.

It’s also costing all of us more to get around. Between 1982 and 2000, before runaway fuel prices of the last couple of years, the share of household spending on transport increased from 16.1 per cent to 19.2 per cent, according to the centre.

Even with the mounting evidence of the toll that bad air takes on human health, Edmonton City Council continues to underfund the public transit system and, in many areas of the city, life without a vehicle is not a viable option. As fuel prices soar, consumers will be ever more squeezed to pay the bill.

As the Conference Board of Canada notes, in a knowledge-based economy of developed countries such as Canada, a city’s competitiveness is determined primarily by its ability to attract and retain highly skilled people and fixed capital investments.

Competitiveness is also determined to a lesser extent by a city’s environmental and social performance, the Conference Board says. Environmental quality can impact a city’s competitiveness directly by affecting its access to natural resources, its mobility, and its urban form and spatial structure.

Availability of public transit impacts development. Communities served by transit are more livable and walkable and those without it attract only car centered “power centres” and other developments that gobble up land and encourage urban sprawl. Proximity to public transit enhances property values.

So, when the bean counters tell us that we cannot afford a public transit system, or cannot afford to keep it – and the profiteers come calling to privatize it – don’t be too quick to believe. The cost of a city without public transit would be paid not just out of our pockets, but out of quality of life and the quality of the environment we call home.