Rob's Ramblings

One of the big news stories here in Vancouver this morning is the announcement of a funding proposal for the long delayed Evergreen line. Rather than focus on the benefits of expanding cleaner transportation options most of the media seems focused on the two cent gasoline tax increase that will be used to fund the project.  CBC radio is encouraging drivers to phone in and complain about the tax. But there is no mention of the fact that driving is highly subsidized here in the Lower Mainland.  Reports by Metro Vancouver and the provincial Ministry of Transport estimate the subsidy to be as much as 6 billion dollars per year.  It is unlikely that this small tax increase will come close to covering that subsidy. There is broad consensus that we need to make significant cuts to our greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions.  Both the provincial government and some municipalities have set targets of 80%.  With transportation being the largest source of ghg emissions in...

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...

In the ten years leading up to 2009 Copenhagen reduced CO2 emissions by 20% ( 40% since 1990 ).  During that time the cycling modal share increased by over 19% and the amount of "cycle tracks" (segregated bike lanes) increased by over 9%.  Copenhagen found that adding cycle tracks to a road section resulted in a 20% increase in cycling.

GHG Emissions from Cars & Light Trucks Originally uploaded by Rob__ Apologists for the Gateway Program have begun to claim that we can expand highways and reduce ghg (greenhouse gas) emissions because cars are getting "cleaner" and "total emissions continue to decline." The problem is that they are confusing different types of emissions. It is true that emission controls for automobiles have reduced some types of toxic emissions. But these controls do NOT reduce CO2 - the major ghg emission. Fuel efficiency does reduce ghg emissions. But after a sharp decline in fuel efficiency in the 70s and early 80s the combined fuel efficiency of light duty vehicles started rising in the 1990s (partly because people started switching to SUVs, vans and trucks from cars). see: http://www.oee.rncan.gc.ca/english/programs/gif/mfev_figure_05.gif GHG emissions from cars actually declined from 1990 -2005 but the total ghg emissions for car and light trucks incre...