Mayor David West’s trip to Germany may be framed as economic outreach, but in a city like Richmond Hill it could also have an unexpected long-term payoff: easing congestion by bringing jobs closer to home.
By Editorial board
Who would think a traffic jam at 5 p.m. could be a sign of something deeper than just bad timing?
In suburban cities like Richmond Hill, congestion is often treated as a transportation problem: not enough lanes, not enough capacity, not enough infrastructure. Even transit can reflect this peak-focused mindset—the Richmond Hill line, for example, has historically offered limited service and does not run in off-peak hours. The instinctive response—widen roads, optimize signals, or in more ambitious cases, build entirely new corridors—assumes that people will continue needing to travel long distances every day. But that assumption is worth challenging.
For decades, many suburban municipalities have operated with an implicit mandate: move residents efficiently to jobs located elsewhere. In the Greater Toronto Area, that usually means commuting into Toronto or other major employment hubs. Local planning, in this model, prioritizes housing and mobility over job creation. The result is a built-in imbalance—places where people live, and different places where they work—connected by increasingly strained transportation networks.
That’s where a different approach begins to shift the conversation. Under Mayor David West, Richmond Hill has shown signs of leaning into economic development as part of its long-term strategy. His recent outreach efforts, including international engagement in countries like Germany, point to a recognition that attracting employers is not just about growth—it’s about reshaping how the city functions day to day.
If more residents can find work closer to home, the implications go beyond shorter commutes. Local employment strengthens municipal finances through a broader commercial tax base. It supports small businesses by increasing daytime population. And importantly, it begins to reduce the structural demand that fuels daily traffic peaks.
Contrast that with a more infrastructure-heavy mindset. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has, at times, emphasized large-scale transportation solutions—like highway expansions or even tunneling proposals—as ways to ease congestion. These approaches focus on accommodating travel demand rather than reducing it at the source.
But congestion is not just a function of road space; it’s a function of patterns—where people need to be, and when. If a significant share of residents no longer has to leave the city each morning, the pressure on roads changes fundamentally. Traffic doesn’t just move more smoothly; in some cases, it simply doesn’t materialize.
None of this suggests that transportation infrastructure isn’t important. It remains essential, especially in a growing region. But treating congestion solely as an engineering problem risks overlooking the economic geography that produces it in the first place.
Economic development, however, is often narrowly interpreted as attracting large, multinational firms—sometimes with subsidies or incentives that can be difficult to justify at the local level. But growth doesn’t have to arrive from the outside to be meaningful. In a city like Richmond Hill, it can also be cultivated from within. Locally rooted small businesses tend to hire nearby residents, circulate money within the community, and build a more resilient economic base. Supporting them is not just a softer alternative to big-ticket attraction strategies—it’s a complementary one that shapes a more balanced local economy.
That support can begin well before a business is fully established. Creating low-risk opportunities for entrepreneurs—through flexible spaces, temporary uses, or incremental development—can lower the barrier to entry and allow ideas to take root. In parts of downtown Richmond Hill, where stretches of underused land remain, there is room to experiment with this approach. Repurposing these spaces into accessible, small-scale commercial environments could help local entrepreneurs grow into stable employers over time, reinforcing the same goal at the heart of the broader strategy: building a city where more people can live and work in the same place.
A traffic jam, then, isn’t just about cars. It’s a reflection of how a city organizes work, housing, and opportunity. And in places like Richmond Hill, the path to less congestion may start not with asphalt—but with jobs.