Living in communities with plenty of opportunity for active transport — bike trails, transit and walking paths — are viewed as increasingly desirable, a new study shows.
Yet the report on the top Canadian cities for alternative transportation painted Calgary in a rather unfavourable light, ranking it near the bottom of the 100 urban centres surveyed.
“We were examining how communities may be more desirable because they offer transport accessibility outside of using your car,” says Romana King, director of content with Zolo, a national online real estate brokerage, which published the study late last month.
In this respect Calgary ranked 79th with a negative score for alternative transport. The score is compiled using a variety of metrics, such as elevation change, precipitation, along with the quality of bicycle and walking paths, and mass transit.
Montreal and Ottawa ranked No. 1 and 2 in the study, with Edmonton in 36th place.
King says Calgary’s ranking — while interesting — is not a damning indictment of its active transport opportunities. “Larger urban areas are always going to outshine smaller ones because they have larger public purses to build more infrastructure,” she says, adding Calgary has the fourth largest population among Canadian cities.
Zolo included several other factors to balance large cities, which typically have rail transit and extensive bike lanes and paths, with smaller centres like Okotoks and Cochrane, which ranked 33rd and 34th respectively.
The elevation change metric no doubt hampers Calgary’s score, she adds, given it is hilly making riding a bike to work more challenging, for example.
King further notes the study examined alternative transport because of its growing importance to buyers.
On that point, realtor Tim Jones agrees.
“Being active is important to Calgarians in general,” says the broker/owner of Re/Max Prime in Calgary. “Proximity to bike paths, walking paths, parks and green space all have a positive effect on the value and saleability of homes in the Calgary region.”
He further notes in the last few months, because of COVID-19, that properties located near pathways and parks are especially seeing higher demand from buyers.
But being near public transportation is less of a concern among buyers. Jones says this demand trend could also be a result of the pandemic with more people working from home.
“Both large and small organizations have been forced to have staff work from home this year, resulting in many cost saving benefits” for people, such as lower gasoline and parking costs.
Consequently the focus for buyers is more on communities with active transport options that are recreational as opposed to those offering alternatives to commuting to work by car.
Still, King suggests the study reflects that when people are looking for a home, considerations like proximity to these amenities can be just as important as what’s inside the home.
“When people are looking for a home, quite often what they want is something that is going to satisfy their budget, but they also look for things like being close to a school, close to work or easy access to grocery stores,” King says.
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Edmonton Journal: Alternative transport study ranks Edmonton ahead of most big Canadian cities
Joel Schlesinger, for the Edmonton JournalPublished on: November 13, 2020
Edmonton ranks well among major Canadian cities for alternatives to the automobile for getting around, a recent study reveals. The capital city placed 36th among 100 municipalities in Canada, according to a new study by Zolo, a national online real estate brokerage.
“It’s not just about the transit score,” says Romana King, Zolo’s director of content. “It’s also about the ability to bike and walk.”
The survey ranked communities according to a number of metrics from walking and biking paths to transit access, and even other variables like elevation change and precipitation.
King says the purpose behind measuring several factors was to balance out the advantage big cities have — with extensive transit systems — over smaller ones, which may feature better walkability but less robust public transportation.
An Edmonton bedroom community, for example, “might not be the best for public transportation, but it likely ranks better for walkability,” she says. “So while you can’t walk from your home to downtown Edmonton in a lot of cases, you can get around with walking and biking in these smaller communities so that would allow them to rank higher in some respects.”
The only community near Edmonton to appear in the study was Spruce Grove, ranked 38th. (Other surrounding communities such as St. Albert and Sherwood Park were not ranked.)
Nationally, Montreal and Ottawa ranked first and second, while Calgary sat in 79th place. The highest ranking Alberta city was Fort McMurray at 32nd place.
For Edmonton realtor Kathy Schmidt, active transport amenities are becoming more and more important to buyers.
“Every buyer has individual priorities … whether it’s being close to the airport for frequent business travel, close to their work especially if they’re someone who may be on-call, or close to family for help with child care or caring for aging parents,” says the broker/owner of Schmidt Realty Group Inc.
Increasingly, many buyers are seeking to live closer to downtown, which has more options for transit as well as access to the river valley trail network, she adds.
Additionally, homes with good access to alternative transport and amenities tend to appreciate better than average in the city.
Schmidt cites neighbourhoods like Ritchie, adjacent to Mill Creek and close to Whyte Avenue, along with Greenfield and Sweet Grass, both a little farther south. All have good access to transit and paths for walking and biking to shops and restaurants — though Ritchie offers more in that respect, as well as being closer to downtown.
“Looking back 10 years, you can see that single-family homes in these neighbourhoods have held their value or increased in value over time,” she says.
The average single-family detached home in Edmonton increased by 10.5 per cent in value while the average home in Ritchie grew by 20.7 per cent. A home in Sweet Grass slightly also outpaced the city average with a gain of 12.8 per cent.
Yet Schmidt further notes LRT and bike paths — particularly those on major thoroughfares — can be “controversial.” While homeowners appreciate these amenities, many prefer to be 10 minutes’ walk from an LRT station as opposed to adjacent to these amenities. With respect to bicycle options, some buyers driving to work find their commute negatively affected by lanes on key arteries, she notes.
Still, King and Schmidt argue alternative transport is increasingly a positive for home values.
“It’s more than likely homes offering better active transport accessibility hold value better in downturns and accelerate better in upswings,” King says.