Land Use Patterns - The use of land means many different things to different people. The deep ecology movement believes that land has its own fundamental rights requiring profound respect for its use. At the other end of the philosophical spectrum is the Gross Domestic Product enumeration systems which count land degradation as positive factors. Most people do not really care about these philosophical arguments as they are interested in leading healthy, productive lives. However I suggest, like many others, that wise Land Use decisions are necessary for the very survival of life on this planet. I believe that factors like the loss of topsoil, destruction of forests and river watersheds have passed the critical point of possible remediation. I believe the best we can achieve now is damage control. Perhaps in more remote places like Ottawa the collapse will not be as severe.
Consider one recent news item the floods in Oregon. Scientists and environmentalists have been saying for at least a hundred years that if you cut down the forests the result will be mud-slides and flooding. Yet, the residents of Oregon are shown in the media saying; Why did this happen to us? Obviously environmental facts have not reached the average person.
What does this have to do with transportation? Once one begins to ask the difficult questions one finds out facts like, there are more kilometres logging roads in Canada than all the highways and streets in public use. Coming to the city where most of the people live the effects of the car culture are all far too familiar. Fourteen pedestrians and three cyclists killed by cars in the Ottawa-Carleton region in 1994 (RMOC Traffic Collision Statistics Report). The official unemployment rate goes down because so many people give up looking for work while the supermarkets are full of vegetables and fruit trucked from distant places. Surely it is more efficient for these people to be living in communities while growing their own food.
This issue of the Auto-Free Zone presents some facts ideas and local initiatives aimed at creating viable alternatives to the car culture. I suggest that creating communities which are possible to live in and travel between by foot, bicycle or public transport are essential. This seemingly simple statement requires a society wide shift in priorities.
by Mike Gifford
If you are reading this article, you are most likely familiar with the local regional, and national effects that 10 million Canadian cars are having on your life and how their use is seriously threatening the survival of life on Earth. It is also quite safe to say that most of the drivers in Canada have heard about global warming and its link to the car and perhaps also the problems of ozone depletion, acid rain and smog to list just a few. They may believe the reports of media government, scientists and environmentalists on this issue, but often cannot understand how it relates to their lives or how they are contributing to the problem let alone what they can do to help solve it.
Unlike many past environmental problems, consumers and not producers are responsible for the majority of automobile pollution. Furthermore, the automobile has been so finely interwoven into our social andeconomic lives that it is often difficult or impossible to imagine life with out it. For Canadians to actually reduce their use of and dependence on the automobile, millions of people will have to change the ways in which they judge and meet their personal transportation needs.
In most cases, people have a better understanding of the problems around them than experts usually give them credit for. By examining people's experiences of the problems of transportation through focused exercises, a well-equipped facilitator can lead a group to a much better understanding of the series of problems presented by our current transportation system. When there is an understanding about common problems, it is then possible for a group to begin examining and strategizing for solutions. One individual taking the responsibility to reduce his/her auto use is commendable, but even more desirable is when communities of people begin to work together towards this goal.
For the last year I have been sketching out a workshop kit to be used by communities to reduce automobile use. I hope to be able to fill in the details and have it made freely available to as many people as possible. Before I start actually writing the kit, however, I would like to organize a number of workshops to test the methodology and also to provide concrete examples of communities in which it has been used.
AFO has agreed to work with me to organize a workshop on Saturday March 2/96 at 440 Wiggins Private (the Co-op near Chapel and the Queensway) between 10 am and 4 pm in the common room there. Lunch will be potluck and a microwave is supposed to be available. Several AFO members have committed themselves to attending. If you are interested in participating, please call me (Mike Gifford 233-2530) or AFO, for more information.
Mike Gifford is the author of Friends of the Earth's Ozone Protection Workshop Kit. a lead facilitator with the Alternatives to Violence Project, and has been involved in transportation issues for a number of years.
Next AFO meeting at the Cock Robin on ByWard street in the ByWard market on Feb. 20, 1996 at 6:00 pm.
Do not forget the Transportation Workshop (see article) Saturday March 2 at 440 Wiggins Private between 10 am and 4 pm in the common room there.
The 11th annual Walk for Peace, the Environment and Social Justice (Marche pour la Paix, L'Environment et la Justice Sociale) is being organized for Saturday May 25, 1996. For more information contact Hassan Husseini from the Walk Committee PO Box 176 Station B Ottawa Ontario K1P 6C4 235-3944. Next organizational meeting Monday Feb. 26 at the Stone Angel Institute at 7:00 PM. I (D.W.) volunteered AFO to run a booth at the walk this year.
AFO has tentatively set up a screening of 2040 a video about the end of the car culture by David Engwicht with OPIRG at Carleton in March. Also AFO is preparing a radio show presenting some of our ideas. Watch the Internet site AFO-Announce or your favourite poster board for more information. Volunteers for these events are needed and should contact AFO at 237-1549.
Recycled from "Cycle and Recycle" Calendar 1995
as well as via the National Capital Freenet (at a prompt):
type: Go WWW
choose: 4) Launch Pad to the Web
7) Ottawa/Hull Region
36) Auto-Free Ottawa
If you need any help, please send email to: rmcormon@flora.ottawa.on.ca
Editors: Dennis Whitfield can be contacted at 565-0578 ci456@freenet.carleton.ca and Cathy Woodgold 231-4311 an588@freenet.carleton.ca. Our Events Coordinator is Caroline Vanneste 236-9370 and Richard Briggs 237-1549 rgb@conscoop.ottawa.on.ca is the general contact person. Auto Free Ottawa's mail address is Box 57006 797 Somerset St. W., Ottawa Ontario CANADA K1R 1A1.
AUTO-FREE ZONE is published quarterly and is mailed to subscribers or members of Auto-Free Ottawa (see form inside last page). Opinions expressed in AFZ do not necessarily reflect those of Auto-Free Ottawa members. Articles should be submitted on diskette (WP 5.1) or by E-mail and limited to 1,000 words. Letters to AFZ must be marked "For publication" (include address and phone number which will not be published), and are subject to selection and editing. Articles reprinted from other publications are abridged to save space.
Thanks to the following for contributing articles (original or borrowed), graphics, ideas or their time: Mike Gifford Linda Hoad, Cathy Woodgold, Amy Kempster, Richard Briggs and Caroline Vanneste AFZ Graphic: Cathy Woodgold
Deadline for next issue: May 20, 1996. Tentative Topic: Subsidized Car Parking
ISSN 1195-1958
When a particular mode of travel is subsidized, more people choose it thanotherwise would have. Our current practice of subsidizing automobile trips, by providing free, wide roads, encourages air pollution, danger to pedestrians from fast driving, etc.
On Bank Street, for example, the roads are too wide and the sidewalks are too narrow. The narrow sidewalks are crowded,so that it is not possible to go for a brisk walk or a relaxed stroll along them. The only possible walk on a busy shopping day is a relatively slow and stressful dodging around other pedestrians. Surely more people would choose to walk along Bank Street if the sidewalks were more pleasant, which would require them to be wide enough to accommodate the pedestrian traffic levels easily.
What is a good objective criterion for deciding how wide the sidewalks should be? Here's a rule of thumb: a sidewalk which carries 100 people per hour should be allocated at least as much resources (land and maintenance) as is usually allocated to a road for cars that carries 1000 people per hour, ten times as much. To demonstrate how I arrived at this rule of thumb, I'll give an example.
Let's suppose that cars usually go ten times as fast as people walking. Imagine a workplace with 2000 workers. Let's say that 1000 of them decided to buy cheap housing 20 km away from the workplace, and put their money into cars to get them to work;while the other 1000 decided to put their money into more expensive housing only 2 km from work, and walk to work. Let's also suppose that the car-driving employees are all able to use the same 20-km road to get home, while the walking ones make use of 10 different 2-km-long footpaths. Both groups spend 30 minutes each way commuting to work.
How much money should the city put into maintaining the road and footpaths? City workers might measure the traffic and note that the road has 1000 users per day, while each footpath is used by only 100 people per day. They might wrongly conclude that the road is more important and more worthy of resources. Not so.
Giving equal weight to the car users and pedestrians on a given street is equivalent to saying that since car users can cover more territory in a day, they get to influence thedesign of a larger number of streets. Those with cars have more power.
The ten 2-km footpaths, taken together, make up a total of 20 km of footpaths: the same as the 20-km road. And the footpaths,taken together, are used by 1000 people per day: the same as the road. So the city workers should spend just as much effort removing snow and otherwise working on the footpaths as they do for the road. A case could also be made for having the footpaths as wide as the road.
This leads to the rule of thumb. Since cars go about ten times as fast as pedestrians, the presence of a pedestrian on a footpath or sidewalk should be considered ten times as important, from the point of view of deciding how much land and other resources to allocate to that footpath, as the presence of a car on a road. The application of this rule of thumb would lead to the widening of many crowded sidewalks in the downtown area, at the expense of the removal or narrowing of parking lanes and driving lanes. Walking would become more pleasant and more people would choose to walk.
Alan Francis, Green Party Transport Speaker, Article reproduced with permission of the U.K. Green Party. Note that PPG13 and PPG6 are U.K. government discussion papers on the environment.
Randall Denley, in his Opinion column titled "Developers are the winners as reg ion moves to trash official plan review," (Ottawa Citizen, January 10, 1996) rai ses some important questions about how land use planning is done in this Region. At the January 9 Planning and EconomicDevelopment Committee meeting, staff pre sented the conclusions of the first phase evaluation of possible growth scenario s. Extensive analysis of the implications of growth (above and beyond what is pe rmitted in the existing Official Plan) indicate that it is much more expensive t o develop outside the Greenbelt, especially in the south-east part of RMOC. The reasons are precisely the same as those given by Pamela Blais in the analysis u ndertaken for the Greater Toronto Area: urban sprawl is expensive and heavily su bsidized by the taxpayer. In a move that Denley characterizes as "astounding," the Committee, led by Chair Peter Clark, voted to suspend the review of the Offi cial Plan "because there is almost no development in the region, (so) there's no rush to plan for a future influx of people. Also, the provincial government is no longer forcing municipalities to update their plans regularly." The Officia l Plan Review, as Denley reminds us, "started out with visioning, poll-taking an d community consultation galore and is costing taxpayers $570,000. The idea is to come up with a plan for development for the next 25 years that will determine where future growth is to go and what roads and services we will need to suppor t that growth." This consultation process resulted in a "Community Vision" that is, in fact, a very powerful statement based on input from many of the region's residents, who overwhelmingly chose the protection and enhancement of the natur al environment as a top priority. Why should you care about the Official Plan? "The official plan review sounds like dry stuff, but it involves a virtual rewri ting of the development rule book and can have profound impact on the future nat ure of our community. Work done so far by regional planners has offered hope, p erhaps false, to those who believe that urban sprawl can be stopped. It has also raised fears among builders and land developers that the glory days of land speculation may finally be over." As Denley rightly points out, "portraying the plan review as an expensive, bureaucratic waste of time lets politicians spike the whole thing without having to discuss the details. ... People who favor intensification of development within the Greenbelt will not only lose that goal in the plan but will also lose theopportunity to argue their case." Denley's conclusion is that the "astounding" motion to suspend the Official Plan Review was made to please developers who fear the "vision" of the Region's citizens and who want the status quo, taxpayer subsidized urban sprawl method of development to continue. "Why, but to please developers, would regional politicians suddenly sour on the task just when staff is getting down to the meaningful work? ... The fingerprints of developers are all over this latest scheme. The failure to create a new plan leaves the status quo in place. Politicians, you can safely wager, will continue to permit urban sprawl. ... All that this latest move does is let regional politicians play turtle until it's time to stick their heads out and help their development friends again. If the politicians who are trying to save us now from over-zealous bureaucrats were serious, they had their chance last February before money was squandered on consultants who told us the obvious. Councillors Peter Hume, Robert van den Ham and Clark all supported the waste of public money then. We need to be duly suspicious about what they are really up to now." If you want a chance to argue the case for a halt to urban sprawl in this Region, call Chair Clark (560- 2608), Gord Hunter, Chair of the Planning and Environment Committee (560-1215) and your Regional Councillor to demand that the Official Plan Review continue. Don't let developers take over the agenda.
The Federation of Citizens' Associations of Ottawa-Carleton wishes to express its shock and dismay at the vote of the Planning and Environment Committee to suspend the Review of the Regional Official Plan and perhaps change its scope. These sentiments were expressed by our members at our Jan. 11 meeting and by some members not at the meeting who have called me since. Proposed changes in Ontario planning legislation would not prevent municipalities from putting environmental and other measures in their plans; none of the proposed changes warrant a suspension or narrowing of the Official Plan review. We believe it is a betrayal of the thousands of citizens who in good faith participated in the Vision process. This suspension and any narrowing of the scope of the review will make most residents distrust Regional politicians.
We repeat below some of the reasons for a comprehensive and integrated review (given at the September 1994 public meeting): 1. Since the environmental review process indicated that such a review is best integrated with a full review we feel that abandoning the idea of a full review at this point would be to ignore the expectations of the public raised by the document "From Principles to Practice: A Working Framework for Reviewing the Regional Official Plan". 2. Certain deficiencies in the current plan such as: storm water management planning; need for Transportation Master Plan; recognition of the role of economic development and the need to design a planning process more responsive to environmental issues should be addressed in an integrated fashion. 3. The "affordability" of the infrastructure needed to fulfil the current plan given present Regional Development charges (This problem will become more acute with recent provincial funding changes). 4. Coordination with NCC review of the Plan for Canada's Capital. We understand that, instead of this suspension rising to Council, staff are to report back on Feb. 13 to Planning and Environment Committee on this possible narrowing of the scope. We urge you to oppose any such narrowing and to support the continued review as it is now structured. Not doing so would clearly destroy the credibilityof any future planning process.
CC. Pamela Sweet, Acting Planning Commissioner
All members are urged to support this initiative by writing, phoning etc. your regional councillor, D.W.
Those of you who are regular readers of Auto-Free Zone may know that Friends of the Market has been promoting the idea of traffic calming for the By Ward Market over the past year. In the summer, we held a public meeting to discuss the issue. Then, one Sunday last September, a group of us spent the day in the Market offering to transport shoppers' goods to anywhere within a 1K radius. Our aim was to show how a porter service could be one way to reduce the need for shoppers to drive their cars right up to the produce stands.
While we would prefer that they leave their cars at home altogether...if people do choose to drive to the Market, a porter service might encourage them to take advantage of the plentiful cheap parking around the Market, rather than driving right up to the stands. That way they could have their goods taken to their car by porter, or perhaps even wheel them there themselves if some sort of suitable dollieswere available. Shoppers who live within a kilometre or two of the area, who either don't have cars, or don't choose to battle the car congestion in the area, could buy more goods in the Market, knowing that they could have their purchases delivered.
With this aim in mind, volunteers braved rather overcast and forbidding weather the Sunday of the Market Harvest Festival to offer their services to shoppers. During the course of the day, 13 volunteers showed up to take a turn. This number included a core of 5 committed individuals who stayed from start to finish. We were outfitted with a selection of bike trailers, shopping carts and dollies. A large trike with a plywood storage box served as a kiosk which we had gaily decorated with local flowers and produce.
Most of the day was spent chatting and snacking, as we were not exactly inundated with requests for help. In fact, we had a big 7 customers, each and every one of which was the cause of much commotion and excitement. A few trips were made to the surrounding parking lots and a couple to homes in neighbouring residential areas.
It wasn't much fun having cars driving by us all day but it gave us a better insight into the number of shoppers who drive right up to the stands on By Ward Street, many of them with engines left running. The exercise provided us with some useful food for thought on what shape such a service would have to take.
Despite their small number, the shoppers who did avail themselves of our services were very appreciative and some offered us tips. As we stood on the street and handed out our flyers, we got a consistently positive response from everyone who stopped to speak. The phrase, "What a great idea!", was heard over and over again.
Yet most people who stopped to speak carrying bags of produce declined our offer of help. The usual reason given was that they didn't have so much that they needed help. Some said, "Now that I know a delivery services exists maybe I can use it next time.". It was a shame to have to reply that it was a one day event only. It seems that people who are planning to do any amount of walking ontheir shopping trip have already planned out what they are able to carry themselves. Visibility and consistency would be key to a successful venture. If a service were known to be there on an ongoing basis, shoppers could plan to buy more.
Suspecting that we were trying to sell them something, some people just hurried by, waving us away with nod and a smile. Understandably, one might be uncertain about handing ones purchases over to a stranger. ("Ya, sure, pal, I'll take your groceries to your car for you, heh, heh, heh.") Once again, being a known entity would help with this. Also, a recognizable uniform of some kind might inspire more confidence.
Though business wasn't booming on our first and only day, the event was useful for putting the idea out there. The day was also useful in allowing us the opportunity to make some more positive contact with a few of the Market vendors. One vendor lent us the use of some produce for our display and another referred a customer to us.
The question for us now is - Where do we go from here?. We are considering whether or not offer a repeat of the trial next spring. Ideally, we would like to see the By Ward market Business Improvement Area (BIA) take up this idea and offer it as an ongoing service next summer with paid porters. We understand that both the BIA and the City have been toying with the idea for several years now. Hopefully our trial run has made them consider it more seriously. Or...if any enterprising individuals are out there reading this, may I suggest to you that it might be an opportunity, for a new summer business. Does it seem like something which could work well in combination with a rickshaw service?
Quick name Canada's biggest middle-class entitlement program. Old-age pensions? Recipients are taking out more than contributors are putting in, but middle and upper income earners will have to pay much of it back in income tax. The CBC? Be serious. Universities and colleges? Most students are middle class, but although the cost of education is still largely borne by the public purse, the subsidies are being rolled back, as students are asked to bear a greater share of the load.
Stumped? Here's a hint. Most, though not all beneficiaries are middle or upper income. They say they believe in fiscal restraint, in 'getting government off their backs," in cutting off those who need not be subsidized. Look at who they elected in Ontario last year. What's more many of Canadians wealthiest corporations also draw from this taxpayer-subsidized handout.
Still at a loss? Answer: the biggest red-ink bleeding, cash-gobbling robbing-empty-pocketed-Peter-to-pay-comfortable-Paul government program is the low-density urban form known as the suburb. The highways that make its existence possible are free, built by the state; it requires more secondary roads (also 'free') than more compact urban areas; and its sprawling nature means that the cost of providing suburbia with services such as water and sewerage (once again the hand of government) will be highest of all.
The Task Force on the Greater Toronto Area, a committee struck by the late New Democratic government and whose views are eagerly solicited by the newly arrives Tories, is due to present its final report next week, a report on the management of growth in Canada's megacity whose population is expected to hit six million in the year 2020. If preliminary indications are to be trusted, this task force will put the government in an uncomfortable bind, trapped between ideology and constituency. How so? Because a rigorous analysis of the nature of the current model of urban development can come to only one conclusion: Right now, costs and prices often bear little relationship to one another. This must change. Free rides must stop.
Such prescriptions are sure to sit well with right-minded economists. They are even more likely to anger suburban Tory voters, they who live in glass houses and do not know it, shielded by the misapprehension that the only beneficiaries or government largesse are bureaucrats, lesbian performance artists and immigrant welfare mothers.
"The Economics of Urban Form," a recently released study prepared for the commission by Pamela Blais, notes that "a conservative estimate would suggest that a total of about $700-million to $1-billion per year could be saved in the GTA by accommodating growth in more efficient urban patterns." A startlingly large amount, yet the key question here is not "how do we build cheaper cities?" Canada isn't running out of space any more than it is running out of food, and although it may be cheaper to eat bologna over prime rib, or macaroni and cheese rather than penne arabiata, what of it? What matters is not how much it costs, but who pays. Once costs are allowed to land where they should - on consumers - then those consumers are left to decide whether they are willing to pay the price flowing from their decisions.
Things are at present out of balance: Suburbs, and in particular their supporting arteries of highways, cost more than the price paid by the users (people and businesses) that choose to locate there. How would the their decisions be different if they had to bear the full cost of those choices? Hard to say. But keep in mind that while few people will turn down a free lunch they're never quite so eager when you ask them to pick up their own tab.
Reprinted with permission of the Toronto Globe & Mail, Jan. 12, 1996, p. A20.
A sigh and a stretch between traumas. Last year, Sunnybrook (Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Science Centre) admitted 588 trauma patients. Motor vehicles were involved un three out of every four traumas, while one in eight involved stabbings, assaults or gunshots. The average cost per trauma is $15,000.
From This Country Canada Magazine #8 (Spring/summer 95)
Cars with closed windows reports the Sunday Times of London, are often more dangerously polluted than the streets outside. U.S. and European studies have revealed that motorists breathe up to 10 times moreparticulates than pedestrians do. These pollutants, known as PM10's because they are less than 10-millionths of a metre in diameter, are responsible for the haze often seen over cities. Drivers are exposed to PM10's because the particulates cannot escape through the air vents in their vehicles.
Globe & Mail Nov 20, 1995
Wouldn't it be nice if this parking lot were a park? This parking lot (see picture) was in a South Berkeley neighbourhood and mostly through community initiatives like "Adopt a Park" has been transformed into a park. Incidental benefits include the mysterious appearance of flowers around the street trees and the immediate crime rate has coincidentally declined over the past year.
by John Steere 510-849-1969
Stanford University has embarked on a comprehensive push to promote alternatives to automobiles.... More than 100 automobile parking spaces will be lost and will not be replaces elsewhere. Instead, new incentive programs will reduce campus parking demand. For example, the university is paying commuters $80 a year NOT to buy a parking permit....
Rick Cole, former mayor of Pasadena, pointed out that automakers spend $6 billion on advertisement each year, equal to the amount that the federal government spends on all rail, bus, and public transit programs.
by Nancy Bruning
The last four excerpts from Urban Ecologist (405 14th Street Suite 701 Oakland CA 94612 USA $40 US for Canadians). I highly recommend this magazine which AFO has a subscription to; back issues available from me, D.W.
At Silver Spring Farm there are 28 mentally handicapped who go to work each day by bus. In order to get to the bus stop they must walk in traffic merging lanes, run to cross Richmond Road's six lanes before the light changes and wait on the road because the bus stops are filled with snow. Several advocacy groups have complained to the Ministry of Transport but so far with no success. OC Transpo claimed they would remove the snow from the bus stop.
From the Ottawa Citizen Dec 21 1995 by Pat Bell
About 3:45 a.m. Saturday Yvon B‚lair's 17-year-old son was struck by a hit-and-run driver while walking with his bicycle along Archambault Boulevard in Gatineau, not far from his home on St. Louis Street. Roger the couple's only child, was taken to hospital in Gatineau then in Hull, but died later Saturday morning. Gatineau police are still looking for the driver of the vehicle that killed Roger; but have no leads.
From the Ottawa Citizen Nov 29 1995
Canada's auto industry says consumers will pay at least $1,400 more for a new car if environment ministers force dealers to sell only low emission cars by the year 2001... Federal and provincial environment ministers announced this week a surprise agreement on tougher national standards for tailpipe pollutants and cleaner burning fuels.
From the Kingston Whig-Standard Oct 27, 1995; submitted by V. Kidson an AFO member from Kingston
Business and residents are reminded that depositing snow or ice on a public street or sidewalk is prohibited by by-law. If you throw or deposit snow or ice on a public street it can obstruct vehicular traffic and present a safety hazard to pedestrians bicyclists and other users of the road and sidewalk system.
The by-law provision is enforced by City License Inspectors on a request-for-service basis Ph. Information :244-5600 The fine for contravention of this by-law is $105.00
Please help us keep our roads and sidewalks safe this winter.
From an Ottawa Citizen ad for the City of Ottawa Jan 13 1996. The on-road painted white line bicycle paths are basically a pathetic joke this winter. Would it be possible under this by-law to have this situation remedied? I would appreciate car free, snow free (at least partly) winter cycling routes particularly across the bridges where alternatives do not exist, D.W.
Speed of Collision Probability of Death 80 km/h 100% 60 km/h 85% 40 km/h 30% 20 km/h 10%
This table refers to pedestrian automobile collisions. The authors conclude that city streets should have speed limits of 20 km/h.
from "Monde Bicyclette" Vol XX (4) Hiver 1995-1996 C.P. 1242 succ. Place du Parc Montr‚al Qu‚bec Canada H2W 2R3. AFO exchanges Newsletters with this group and back issues are available from me, D.W.
by Derek Tidman Utron Inc.
This paper discusses the mass launch concept, "slingatron" in which a coriolis wave can be used to slowly accelerate a magnetically levitated projectile around a circular path in a long guide tube. The slingatron defies the velocity limitations of conventional slings and has the potential for launching large amounts of mass into Earth-orbit or interplanetary space at a relatively low cost, and without polluting the atmosphere.
From the Abstracts for the Space Manufacturers 1995 conference
From the Ottawa Citizen Jan 20 1996.
From the Ottawa Citizen Jan 20 1996.
"Those who still believe that urban environmental problems can be solved by bui lding more roads can take little comfort from a new OECD study. To quote: 'Buil ding more and more roads in cities and conurbations has enabled more people to travel by car, but has not reduced peak-period congestion to any notable extent. As soon as new road space becomes available in large cities, it is quickly filled. Even city regions with the most extensive road networks have high congestion levels.' The solution to sustainable city development lies instead, according to the study, in sharp successive rises in the taxes on motor fuel, causing a quadrupling of prices over a twenty-year period. In combination with other measures this would, it says, lead to distinct environmental improvement. Three years of research, in which traffic problems and policies were studied in more than 130 cities in twenty countries, have led to these conclusions. They are fully supported by the OECD working group on city problems and the conference of transport ministers (ECMT), which together commissioned the study. It was found that in the countries studied, car traffic had risen by 3.3 per cent a year over the last twenty years, and road freight carrying still faster, by 5.5 per cent per year. In many countries the current projections point to a doubling of car and freight traffic during the next 30-40 years. If that should happen, the problems of air pollution, noise and congestion, which are already very troublesome in urban areas, would obviously be greatly accentuated. Great changes will therefore, according to the authors of the study, be needed as regards city planning, the pricing of travel, vehicle design, and the management of traffic - all involving changes in people's habits and way of life. Since this change-over to a sustainable way of life will take time - the study says 20-30 years - it ought to be started as soon as possible. As a means of attaining the desired results, a three-level policy is proposed. It is also emphasized that the economic, environmental and social benefits of the change-over will greatly overweight the cost.[...]"
Eliminate taxes on fossil fuels and replace them with what I call the factor of ten solution. This entails making all regulations at all stages of fossil fuel use from exploration, drilling, wells, all stages of transportation including transfers to the actual burning and/or disposal of wastes a factor of ten stricter. For example, ten times less sulfur and nitrogen oxides emissions, ten times less aromatic hydrocarbons, ten time less CO2, ten times less leakage at transfer points, ten times less environmental impact during exploration etc. This would result in drastically lower environmental impact of fossil fuel use and since implementation would probably raise prices even with the tax concession it would allow alternate energy sources to compete more evenly. It would also create thousands of high tech jobs since numerous new facilities would have to be built or existing ones renovated etc. Given that many countries have best available technology provisions in their existing legislation this initiative should spur the creation of many new niche markets for the products necessary to achieve the factors of ten solutions.
letter sent to:
Peter Clark Regional Chair, Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton
I am writing to urge you and your colleagues to vote against the proposed increase in OC Transpo fares.
This suggested increase is just one more example of the disturbing priorities of the regional government, evident in the proposed budget for 1996. Offering regional residents a tax "rebate" while increasing bus fares is foolish. Adding entry and exit ramps to the Airport Parkway at Hunt Club while expanding the OC Transpo transitway to Hunt Club is foolish.
We can not afford to discourage people from riding the bus (by increasing fares) while encouraging them to drive their cars (by expanding access). The environmental, health, and plain old economic costs of thousands of cars on our roads far outweigh the costs of maintaining the current OC Transpo fares.
In addition to voting against the proposed fare increase, I urge you and your colleagues to reconsider the proposed Airport Parkway ramps. At the very least, it would be prudent to delay the construction of these ramps until a full study of the impact on traffic and transitway use has been conducted.
by Caroline Vanneste
Carole pointed out to me that the Monday Dec 4th Ottawa Sun cover shows a cyclist in snow. The caption says something to the effect of "Some people don't know when to put their bicycles away for the winter".
How about a strong rebuttal like: "Most people don't know when to put their cars away for the winter before they kill some innocent bystander".
Should we organize an event targeted at the Ottawa Sun?
by Richard Guy Briggs
Sign me up, and ..............................................send a complimentary copy to: ___ $20.00 individual or family ___ $10.00 un/underwaged ___ $50.00 corporate/institutional ___ donation (sorry, we don't issue tax receipts) _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Name Name _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Address Address Tel: (h)___________________(w)______________________ (e-mail) __________________ AUTO-FREE OTTAWA, Box 57006, 797 Somerset St. W., Ottawa River Bioregion, Ontario K1R 1A1 (613) 237-1549