Highways and roads are the largest component of the five public assets in Canada. Their value amounted to $170.1 billion in 2007, which represented 59% of all five public assets considered in this study.
The road network was expanded substantially during the 1960s and 1970s to cope with increasing demand arising from strong population growth, urbanization, urban sprawl and increased car usage. Consequently, the average age of the stock was then considerably younger, and hit its lowest level ever in the early 1970s at close to 13.0 years. Its age then rose steadily to a peak of 16.9 years in 1994; in 2007, it had dropped back to 14.9 years.
Since 2001, the average age of roads has dropped in all provinces, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. More than half of this recent reduction in age was attributable to Quebec, where the average age of roads dropped by 2.8 years over a span of seven years, from 18.0 years in 2001 to 15.2 in 2007. There were also large drops in Nova Scotia (-2.2 years), Saskatchewan (-1.8 years) and Ontario (-1.6 years) for the same period.
A road has a mean service life estimated at 28.2 years in Canada.11 This figure is survey based and has been confirmed by empirical studies that link the value of gross stock with asset service life and other engineering information. Expressed as a percentage of useful life, the average age of roads in Canada stood at 53% in 2007. In other words, Canada's roads had passed just over half of their useful life in 2007. In 1973, this ratio was as low as 47%. During the 1990s, it rose to a peak of 60%, and has dropped since then. In 2007, this ratio ranged from a low of 49% in Ontario and Prince Edward Island to 61% in Manitoba.
More and more, the network of highways and roads is a crucial element of our growing economy and productivity. With elimination of trade barriers, rising online purchases and home delivery and "just-in-time" inventory strategies, goods are transported increasingly by road, and for longer distances, adding to local and inter-city traffic.
Each year, budgets are allocated to fix and expand the transportation network which is continually under stress. From 2001 to 2007, the value of the highways and road gross stock in Canada increased by 0.5% a year on average, compared with 0.9% for all five assets combined. However, this was much slower than the 1.8% increase for schools, colleges and universities, and 2.1% for hospitals and nursing homes.
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11. See text box entitled "Key concepts" at the beginning of the study.