Now that he’s in Windsor, he has the opportunity to do the next best thing. A professor in political science and Ontario Research Chair in Cross-Border Transportation Studies, Dr. Anderson will measure the local impact of Ontario’s most significant single highway investment ever—the $1.6 billion Windsor-Essex Parkway linking Highway 401 with the new border crossing proposed for construction downriver from the Ambassador Bridge.
“I’ve always wanted to follow a project like this on a month-by-month basis,” said Anderson, who will oversee the study with colleagues Chris Lee and Hanna Maoh, both professors in civil and environmental engineering. “You’ve got the construction phase, which will create hundreds of jobs, but after it’s done, you’ve really changed the framing of the city. You’ve changed the patterns of accessibility, so how is that going to affect land use?”
Funded by a three-year $115,000 commitment from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, Anderson will study the economic impact of the project by examining two categories—employment and income stimulus due to construction, and the spin-off benefits of improved mobility and access.
“Unlike conventional economic assessments, which are conducted before the project’s inception, this study will proceed over the lifetime of the project,” Anderson said.
One of Anderson’s goals is to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the employment the project creates. MTO officials estimate the parkway will create about 12,000 project-related jobs, with the majority in the Windsor-Essex region. Anderson will monitor hiring data to measure not only how many jobs are created, but what types of jobs are created and how many are filled by local workers. He will also distinguish new jobs from those that simply shift workers from other projects to understand the parkway’s real impact on the local unemployment rate.
The study will also produce a digital data map of accessibility improvements to illustrate which parts of the region benefit most from them. The magnitude of benefits will be measured through a statistical analysis linking accessibility to land development, real estate values and firm location choices, he said.
“If you improve accessibility, you should improve the value of the land and more businesses will want to locate there,” he said.
Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne called partnering with the University “ideal” for her ministry.
“Windsor-based research specialists will follow our work and be able to tell us how the parkway will improve regional mobility,” she said. “We also hope to be able to apply what we learn from the research to future transportation projects.”
— Stephen Fields