After the opening of the Hamilton bypass in 2022 traffic congestion increased by over 5 percent on Hamilton’s three northern bridges, with 4,200 vehicles per day added to bridge traffic in 2023 and GDP has stayed the same. People should expect driving travel times in Hamilton to never be as reliable as they were before the bypass opened.
We are not seeing economic benefits from increased motor vehicle traffic. The 2023 Hamilton Annual Economic report states ‘While our GDP has continued to grow, the rate of growth has fallen from 3.4% in 2022 to 0.6% for 2023. (p.10) ... Hamilton continued to attract new businesses in 2023 with a net increase of 372 new businesses (2.2% more) opening their doors, bringing our total number of businesses to 17,403. This followed a net increase of 849 new businesses in 2022. (p.12). It gets worse: the 2024 Hamilton Annual Economic report states ‘Hamilton’s GDP fell towards the end of the year, finishing the year with an estimated fall of 0.6%’ (p.9) which cancelled the GDP growth in 2023. There was an increase of only 276 new businesses (2% on 2023), bringing the total to 17,730 businesses in Hamilton.
The Hamilton bypass benefits ‘were calculated on what was said to be a conservative estimate of 18,000 vehicles saving 15 minutes per day at a cost of $25/ hour, giving a yearly benefit of around $40 million’ (Wikipedia). The Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) has been calculated as being 1.4, 1.1 or 0.5: i.e. for every dollar of investment the return was estimated at between 140 cents and 50 cents. With only a year of data to work with, we are not seeing the GDP benefit as yet. But the bypass is ‘nice to have’.
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