How productive is Canada’s transportation sector? Major economic policy reforms were made in transportation, including price deregulation, privatization and other governance changes. What has been the impact on productivity growth?
The Productivity Performance of Canada’s Transportation Sector Market Forces and Governance Matter
The Productivity Performance of Canada’s Transportation Sector Market Forces and Governance Matter
Canadian Economic Analysis
Sustainable Economy
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Canadian governments have embarked on a major wave of spending in order to address bottlenecks and congestion in the transportation system. These projects will increase capacity and should improve the efficiency of the transportation system.
The Productivity Performance of Canada’s Transportation Sector: Market Forces and Governance Matter? provides a framework for analyzing the efficiency of passenger and freight transportation.
Productivity growth for most modes was much higher than the entire business sector over the 1981–2006 period, which in turn has led to lower prices for end users. This performance was largely driven by privatization of Crown corporations, devolution of ports and airports, and price deregulation.
The public transit sector did not enjoy such gains, as productivity decreased over this period. Although this sector faces special challenges, experience in Europe has shown that introducing competition in the procurement of transit services can improve productivity.
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