Rob's Ramblings

The StopThePave Earth Day Action has inspired a serious of tweets from Dan at http://bctrucker.com/ Unfortunately these tweets promulgate myths about greenhosue gas (ghg) emissions and transportation.  I guess there is still a lot of work to be done to educate the public around these issues.  And in that spirit here are some of those myths: 1. Building more highways will reduce congestion, fuel consumption and ghg emissions.   There is no evidence to support this idea. In fact, the evidence all points to highway expansion increasing emissions.  The proponents of the SFPR and the other gateway program projects even admit this in their own documentation. The provincial government studies, conducted as part of the Environmental Assessment Process, project an increase of 176,000 tonnes per year in greenhouse gas emissions ( http://a100.gov.bc.ca/appsdata/epic/documents/p247/d24666/1189031210771_a472fd1478e9414c83aed4d70a214df5.pdf ). Gordon Price of UBC has iss...

With recent announcements of investment in cycling infrastructure some are predicting economic disaster if Vancouver reduces the number of light duty vehicles on the road.  The table below compares transportation modal share in Vancouver with other selected cities. All of these cities have significantly less personal car use than Vancouver.  In many cases it is less than half.  Are these cities suffering economically? city country walking cycling public transport private motor vehicle Vancouver Canada 12% 4% 25% 58% Metro Vancouver Canada 11% 2% 13% 74% New York City US 8% 1% 54% 32% Bern Switzerland 11% 11% 54% 24% Zürich Switzerland 8% 5% 63% 25% Copenhagen Denmark 6% 36% 29% 26% Berlin Germany 30% 13% 26% 31% Stockholm Sweden 15% 7% 43% 33% Dresden Germany 24% 17% 21% 38% Helsinki Finland 12% 6% 40% 41% München Germany 9% 8% 41% 41% Aarhus Denmark 7% 27% 19% 43% Bilbao Spain 23% 0% 34% 43% Frankfurt Germany 11% 7% 39% 43% ...

A recent article (also here ) is perpetuating one of the most persistent myths of modern society - that cyclists aren't paying their fare share for road use. In fact private car ownership is one of the most subsidized aspects of our society.  In Metro Vancouver taxpayers subsidize car owners to the tune of $6.6 billion per year.  In places like Ontario it is even higher. So cyclists who drive little or never are actually helping to subsidize the polluting habits of frequent car drivers. rob_'s ramblings

With the recent announcement of a 10 lane monster bridge here in Vancouver it might be timely to examine the idea of the efficient car.  Some supporters of the highway expansion project claim that we don't need to worry about greenhouse gas emissions or local pollution because the increased traffic will sometime in an unspecified future be replaced by magical super efficient cars. A recent article in The Progressive, The Myth of the Efficient Car , examines this issue. The article points out that, "...the looming catastrophe of global pollution, including climate change, will never be solved by building more cars – efficient or otherwise." Meanwhile the private partner involved in building the bridge, Macquaire Group, is having problems .