So, where and what are my alternatives to using a car? (Continued from the previous post.)
We just came out of a messy election. None of the 5 parties’ platforms (nobody was elected for the 6th) actually addressed the public transportation issue. Sure, there was lots of posturing, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing for the ordinary person like me. We’ve heard a lot of gibberish for and against carbon taxes. And some dust in the voters’ eyes as promises for funding of subway line extensions. Funding has been promised by all level of governments every election since I’ve been here, and many would say since they were born here. Where are the results? Billions lost in planning, cancelling existing projects, changing plans, and utter political paralysis. Really, what are my alternatives to using a car? Now retired, we own only one car. But I don’t want or need a car on a daily basis.
If we look from a climate change perspective, 66% of Canadians who bothered to cast a ballot voted for climate change action. But where is the action? Where is the vison really?
Back to public transport, or as we say in North America, public transportation.
In 2018 we crossed Scotland by train. Excluding a touristy steam train, the cost of eight trips covering about 1200km for the two of us was CAD 276 (that is 138 per person). Earlier the same year we traveled from London to Manchester, through the Lake district to York and back on nine trains including on some scenic railways like Carlisle to Settle covering just over 1000km for about CAD 238 for the two of us ($139 pp). Try to take a train 400km from Toronto to Ottawa and tell me what was your cost? And how long did it take? And did it depart and arrive even close to on time? But wait, how do I get to Toronto’s Union Station? That is relatively easy if you live near public transportation. But not if you are in the suburbs. And then how do I get from Ottawa’s suburban train station to the city’s remote west end, where we usually stay. What is my alternative?
We even managed to do some significant train travel in rail-poor South America in 2017.
In previous years we travelled primarily by train through Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Denmark.
Oh, Denmark! Have you ever been there? It is a cold, windy and wet country. A country in which weather changes so fast that driving with lights on is mandatory. But just open the map and choose two points for a journey. You’ll find easy, reliable and fast public transportation. Nowhere did we wait for more than 10 min for a bus.
And the Danes bike in their thousands, snow or ice storm included. They bike between cities, they bike in the cities, to and from work, they bike in Copenhagen, where the bike lanes are often larger than the car lanes.
I was first in Denmark in January 1993, working on an environmental project. My memory doesn’t retain the details that far back; however, I remember that the environmental research facility was next to the nuclear research centre located outside a populous area in open fields some 40 km (my memory could be wrong here) away from Copenhagen. There was nothing in the surroundings. No city, no village, no café or restaurant, no grocery store. Only a visitors’ residence and the research institutes. Ah, and a bus stop to take you to the nearest city (Rosklide comes to mind, but again my memory may be wrong here) from where you could commute wither your heart desire. I remember admiring all the women, with long wool skirts and coats, on their bikes in the middle of nowhere, shopping bags in a front carrier basket. I remember my colleagues telling me that owning a car in Denmark was expensive. A family could not afford more than one car and they keep it and maintain it until it dies. But they all had viable alternatives of public transportation and safe lanes for pedal power.
Moving away from old Europe, this spring we traveled from Auckland on the North Island to Milford Sound on the South Island of New Zealand by train and bus. We took trains from Sydney Australia to Wagga-Wagga and on to Melbourne. Will not include crossing the continent from Adelaide to Darwin on The Ghan, which is not really a commuter train. In the previous post I mentioned the public transit of Sydney. But the Australians say that Melbourne’s is the best. They don’t have a metro (subway) system, but their tram lines cover most of the city and the area. What impressed us there was the free tram grid network in the city centre (what they call CBD). We then used buses to move from Singapore to and through Malaysia and parts of Northern Thailand. Easily!
Oh, I almost missed another great and a totally different experience we had in La Paz Bolivia. Located in the Andes’ Altiplano plateau at over 3,500m and stretching up to El Alto at 4,150m in the highlands, this is the highest administrative capital in the world. Imagine you live in a bowl with very steep and narrow streets.
How do you commute when a mini bus can hardly make the turns, and a regular bus can’t fit? They have found a great solution – an aerial cable car system, Mi Teleferico. This is considered the largest cable car network in the world. We rode two of the lines.
As of September 2018, there were 25 stations on 8 lines. This is the first system that uses cable cars as the backbone of an urban transit network. (As they say: where there’s a will there’s a way…)
There is no lack of examples of good transit systems around the world, from where our politicians could learn. As a matter of fact, there is no lack of ideas and good plans for rapid transit in Toronto and the GTA. Check “Rapid transit in Toronto: A Century of Plans, Progress, Politics and Paralysis”, that publishes rare historical maps and plans dating back to the early 20th century. I am sure that every city, big or small, has similar plans showing only how short-sighted our politicians are. I am yet to see one politician, regarding a party or city who appears to think beyond their 3 to 4 years mandate in office and their re-election. ONE?! And public transit and intercity transport requires a vision, a vision for 100 years ahead. Why can’t Canada produce one such politician? (I think there have been a few over the years, but they haven’t been able to convert the vision to action: Alex)
I don’t think I have to justify why public transit is better for the cities than a single user car (or even if there were 4 occupants). Highway 401 through Toronto has 18 lanes at its widest and is still congested. Parking lots are full and awfully expensive. Commuters are frustrated. Perhaps every Canadian city has studies on climate change and public transport. You can check data for Winnipeg public transport for example.
Currently we have cities paralysed with congestion, we have highways throughout Canada also paralysed with traffic and no end in sight. Governments continue investing in more roads, but little in public transportation. I will put this bluntly here, if you are not willing to support building and maintaining public transport you are not serious about actions on climate change. And you as a politician have to be among the first to give up your car to commute (some exceptions for security reasons may apply). No, wait, don’t put electric cars before the horse. Aside from the practicality of millions of cars on the roads of snowy Canada, and charging them, there are multiple environmental issues with production of these cars: lithium for the batteries being one of them (but this is an issue of the developing world that many don’t see or care about). From sourcing the lithium to battery production to disposal. This is only one tiny aspect of the environmental impact of electric car production and I don’t want to go deeper into arguments of replacing one type of car fuel with another.
A car, no matter what powers it, is expensive (electric will be unaffordable for many), roads are congested (how is an electric fleet going to solve this?), snow storms are often a huge factor in moving from point A to point B (how is an electric car going to be charged in an event of ice storm and power outage for weeks? This is the Canadian reality).
And I am not getting younger. Nor are you. As many, living in and around big cities, I need a car for simple things like grocery shopping. Where is the urban planning? (This is a totally different conversation, but it too relates to climate change.) Let’s stay on topic. Where is the vision for solving: a. commuters’ problems in the cities and b. intercity public transportation challenges?
We do have railways; however, they are mainly used for freight. Passenger trains in Canada, where they exist, give the right of way to freight, since they run on tracks built for that purpose. They are slow, unreliable and not very cost effective.
The entire approach to transit and public transportation is wrong. If you plan it right and build it, people will use it. I would love to move out of the GTA gridlock. I know many others who want to do so. And with the price of housing so high, the younger generation wants to move out to smaller communities too. The problem again is the commute to and from work/hospital/families & friends in a reasonable time and affordable price.
In my previous post I talked about a model I worked on for car-free zones based on air pollution forecast in mid 1980s. If this was a radical idea then, it is no longer.
In the city of Tallinn Estonia public transport has been free for city residents since 2013. The city banned cars from some roads and increased parking fees in the effort to reduce congestion. And it worked. Last year Estonia set its sights on free public transport nationwide.
There are a number of cities in France and across Europe considering or have already implemented free public transit and although not comparable in size, Luxemburg is to implement free public transport in 2020 across the country.
As mentioned in the previous post, a public transport network has to be affordable (if you want to change human behaviour, make it cheap or free), available (when you need it, from and to where you need it), accurate (fast, frequent and on time), reliable (anyone using Toronto subways in rush hour knows what I mean).
There are other solutions that can help in congested cities. Dedicated safe bike lanes on every road being one of them.
But this requires redesign of all roads in a big city like Toronto, redesign of subway cars, trams and buses to accommodate more bikes during rush hours, which could prove expensive. Perhaps there will be some benefit from the growth of telecommuting, but there are many – usually low-paid – jobs that can’t be done from the home.
It is about time for our politicians to stop bickering, get out of their, often tax-funded, cars and see what it’s like for those who aren’t guzzling at the public trough. We need vision, translated into long-term actionable plans and measurable deliverables, that won’t be scrapped or unnecessary changed by the next government in power. And most of all we need commitment, accountability and action. Soon. Some will say it is too optimistic or too naïve. But is it?
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