Several weeks ago, Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) became an official member of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' '20 Percent Club'. Members of this club are dedicated to reducing their municipal greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent of their 1990 levels within a decade of joining (in Halifax's case, 2008). Increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) from anthropogenic sources are expected to cause changes in the global climate.
According to the booklet 'The 20% Solution', published by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, transportation accounts for close to one-third of Canada's carbon dioxide emissions and that each litre of gasoline used by a vehicle produces 2.64 kilograms of carbon dioxide!
The booklet describes Vancouver as a city the 'walks the talk' because it is instituting by-laws to increase bicycle parking spaces and amending building by-laws to ensure that shower and changing room facilities are available to cyclists. In addition, the city is encouraging car pooling by reserving `car pool only' parking lots and is designating high occupancy vehicle lanes on city roads. The booklet makes a further observation that reducing the number of automobiles on our streets is beneficial to our health and our environment.
Another approach that the booklet suggests to meeting the 20 percent reduction is to encourage the use of public transportation and mixed-use zoning (that is, allowing people to live closer to where they work and shop). Sadly, Halifax's past performance does not bode well for the future, consider:
Clearly, if HRM is to reach the 20 percent target, the current municipal council must be changed. Fortunately, there are at least three municipal elections to be held in HRM before 2008.
Sent: 9 June 1998. Published (Daily News, 15 June 1998)
In his criticism of the article "Green Target Can't be Hit", Paul Calda's letter of 16 June contains a number of statements that are both confusing and misleading.
First, Mr. Calda states that "Somebody has the math or probably the metric system, wrong. A litre of gasoline weighs about three quarters of a kilogram. It cannot therefore produce 2.64 kilograms of carbon dioxide."
From this statement it is clear that Mr. Calda is in desperate need of a course in basic chemistry. Gasoline, made up of hydrocarbons such as pentane and octane, produces about 3 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every kilogram of gasoline combusted. Using Mr. Calda's weight of a litre of gasoline (three quarters of a kilogram), means that about 2.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide is produced for every litre of gasoline burnt.
Second, Mr. Calda claims that "throwing figures at readers does not make an article credible."
Supplying (not "throwing") figures such as one litre of gasoline produces 2.64 kilograms of carbon dioxide is a means whereby interested readers can:
Sent: 18 June 1998. Published (Daily News, 20 June 1998)
Last summer's success of the Windsor and Hantsport Railway's "Evangeline Express" has been hailed as a means whereby the public will be attracted back to the train [1, 2]. Although a pleasant Sunday afternoon excursion between Windsor and Wolfville,it is unlikely that the "Express", in its present form, will encourage anyone other than the most diehard of rail afficionados to advocate a return to passenger rail travel.
The reason can be summed up in one word: speed.
The times and distances associated with the Windsor to Wolfville run are as follows [3, 4]:
Place | Mile | Via Evangeline | W&H Evangeline
| | Depart | Arrive | Depart
--------------------------------------------------------
Windsor | 47 | 18:52 | | 11:40
Hantsport | 54 | 19:02 | 12:00 | 12:10
Avonport | 59 | 19:09 | |
Grand Pre | 62 | 19:14 | 12:35 | 12:45
Wolfville | 65 | 19:18 | 12:55 |
Totals: | 18 | 00:26 | 1:15
Via's Evangeline travelled the 18 mile Windsor-Wolfville run in 26 minutes, or about 41.5 miles per hour. The W&H Evangeline Express covers the same distance in 1 hour and 15 minutes if station dwell-time is included -- a speed of 14.4 miles per hour; however, if dwell-time is ignored, the speed increases to 19.6 miles per hour. This is still roughly half the average speed Via maintained on its Halifax-Kentville run (37.6 miles per hour).
If there is a latent interest in restoring passenger rail service from the Valley to Halifax, Transport 2000 Atlantic should spearhead a movement to rekindle it. A good first step would be to produce a report examining:
How many people live in the Kentville-Windsor corridor and work in Halifax? How many of these people would be willing to switch from private to public transportation?
With the current political landscape comes a not-to-be lost opportunity to revive passenger rail travel in this province. Copies of the report should be given to all MLAs whose constituencies are adjacent to the line.
If Transport 2000 fails to take the lead on this important issue, the Evangeline Express will be yet another example of how passenger rail travel in Canada is being reduced to the status of a museum curiosity.
References
Sent: 2 April 1998. Published T2000 Summer Bulletin (August 1998)
MT&T's recent announcement that it will consolidate all its Halifax call centres at Scotia Square has been hailed by the Mayor, the president of Atlantic Shopping Centres, and the VP of MT&T's network services as beneficial for the downtown in general and Scotia Square in particular. Given the sorry state of Halifax's downtown core, one can only hope that these predictions will come true; however, there is the nagging issue of how these additional workers will be moved into and out of the downtown.
At present, some of the 750 workers predicted to move to Scotia Square work at four sites throughout the region (three in Halifax and one in Dartmouth). Given the nature of MT&T's business, that is, communications, and given that we live in the "information age", it seems incongruous that the province's major provider of high-speed information exchange technology cannot use the same technology and operate in a distributed manner. That is, allow these "remote" offices to continue operating, but interconnect them, creating a single virtual office; after all, MT&T does remind us that "it's no longer business as usual". Technologies such as the Internet are being touted as the new means whereby organizations can run effectively without many of the `traditional' problems associated with centralized offices.
By foregoing the virtual office, many of the workers who once were employed outside the downtown core will now be required to commute an additional distance. These people will add to the growing and lengthening rush "hours" that Halifax is experiencing throughout the day. To make matters worse, those who choose to commute by car will be competing for limited amounts of parking space. In other words, the very knowledge workers who are intended to propel Nova Scotia into the twenty-first century will be contributing to a distinctly twentieth century problem!
It is not as if the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) is unaware of the problems brought about by additional vehicular traffic. Tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars have been spent by HRM on the "GoPlan", proposing answers to problems of vehicular traffic, namely congestion, environmental degradation, and public health. In the 1996 "Transportation Infrastructure Profile Plan", the top 5 proposals that were deemed to offer the best long-term cost savings included urban growth management, telecommuting, park-and-ride, and connecting Bayers Road with Robie Street (widening the Macdonald Bridge was well down the list, ranked sixteenth). Interestingly, telecommuting (the use of telephone, fax, and modem from one's home or remote office) was ranked second and projected to employ about 15 percent of the workforce by 2016 -- something from which an information provider such as MT&T is sure to benefit.
Realistically, all our traffic problems cannot and should not be heaped on MT&T, since MT&T's consolidation decision was taken for corporate reasons. However, their move to Scotia Square has high-lighted an important issue that can no longer be ignored, notably the use of vehicles such as cars and light trucks for daily commuting. Without a long-term strategy that encourages the switch from private to public transportation, the traffic problems confronting HRM will continue to get worse.
It will take more than trendy monikers such as "Smart City, Smart Move" and "Love the way we live" to improve HRM. A sustainable transportation policy would be a good first step.
Sent to Daily News: 6 October 1998. Unpublished
Although predicting the future is a risky business at the best of times, some decisions and their eventual consequences are more predictable than others. Take, for example, Halifax Regional Municipality council's recent decision to embrace fiscal responsibility by increasing the fares, reducing the services, and terminating various routes of Metro Transit.
Many councillors and City Hall bureaucrats are producing figures that predict that these changes will make for considerable financal savings this year and for years to come. On the surface, the logic is hard to dispute: by increasing the cost of a service and offering less of it, one could assume that savings would be made.
Over the near term (say the next few months), some savings might well be made; however, given the history of public transportation in the region serviced by Metro Transit, these savings will be short-lived. Consider:
Over the next year or so, the declines in service will cause ridership to slump further. HRM council will then adopt a "use-it-or-lose-it" mentality, pointing to the decline in ridership as an excuse for further rounds of service cuts.
During the upcoming vicious circle of ridership decline and service cuts, existing and potential users of Metro Transit who can make the change, will seek other modes of transportation. Despite claims that these people will turn to the bicycle or walk, the vast majority will opt for private vechicles such as the automobile, `light' truck, and other `recreation' vehicles.
By relentlessly attacking Metro Transit and ignoring public transportation, thereby encouraging the use of private vehicles, HRM council is creating a far larger problem that will haunt this region for years to come. More vehicles on the roads will lead to more road wear (requiring additional maintenance), more traffic accidents (putting more strains on the health care system, police,and fire services), a demand for more parking spaces (resulting in the loss of more public spaces), and the release of more pollutants such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen dioxides (putting further strains on the health care system). Rather than saving money, the decisions taken by HRM's council will increase the tax burden of the ratepayers.
There is now talk of HRM council re-examining the 1996 GoPlan to find ways of 'solving' HRM's traffic problems, many of which are due to the council's own actions. For whatever reason, council and its bureaucrats continue to talk of road widening when, of the top ten road network and transit improvements proposed in the GoPlan, only three had anything to do with road widening; the others included education, user pay schemes, park-and-ride, and adopting better land use strategies.
Thanks to the short-sighted transportation decisions of the council members and various senior bureaucrats in Halifax Regional Municipality, we can expect worsening road conditions, more traffic, a gradual deterioration in the quality of life in the region, and, of course, increased taxes.
Sent to Daily News: 17 November 1998. Published: 26 November 1998.
Most employed Canadians will tell you that for the first 26 weeks of every year they are working for various levels of government, paying taxes. Another interesting fact, often overlooked, is that a growing number of Canadians spend some 250 hours (equivalent to 6 working weeks) to 500 hours (more than 12 working weeks) sitting in small containers being subjected to various damaging chemicals, elevated stress levels, in some cases being maimed or killed (or worse, maiming and killing others), polluting the atmosphere, and paying a great deal of money for the privilege.
If you happen to be a commuter and your round trip commute time (home-office-home) takes an hour, then every year you are behind the wheel of your car, light truck, or other vehicle for about 250 hours. If your commute takes two hours, then the number of hours doubles to 500.
In addition to everything else, this is time lost. The time can't (or at least shouldn’t) be spent sleeping, reading, planning for a meeting, day dreaming, talking on the telephone, or playing a computer game. Drivers of commuter vehicles must be alert, concentrating on the road and the other commuters, regardless of the time of day or state of mind.
The majority of commuters in the Halifax Regional Municipality work on the peninsula of Halifax and in the Burnside Industrial Park. Those commuters working in Halifax are `funneled' onto the peninsula through one of five entry points: the MacDonald Bridge, the MacKay Bridge, Fairview interchange, Bayers Road, and the Armdale Rotary.
The volume of traffic in the "core service area" (Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, and Sackville) has increased some 10 to 15 percent over the past decade. Since the principal places of employment have not changed markedly over this period, the increased volume in traffic can be attributed to two primary factors:
Despite the rise in population, the number of passengers carried by Metro Transit has declined from some 15 million in the late 1980s to about 13 million in 1997. Much of this decline can be attributed to the cycle of fare increases and service cuts, followed by declines in ridership, which have prompted further fare increases and service cuts, and so on.
Metro Transit's ridership has taken a more dramatic fall over the past year (some 7 percent, from October 1997 to October 1998), because of June's bus strike, immediately followed by July's fare increase. Given the past history of decline after service cuts and fare increases, ridership can be expected to fall even further with the January fare increase and service cutbacks recently announced by Halifax Regional Municipality council.
Within a few days of Halifax Regional Municipality announcing cutbacks and fare increases to Metro Transit, the Sunday Herald, the Chronicle-Herald, and CBC television, all announced that Halifax has a traffic problem. The Sunday Herald devoted almost two pages to the subject, including a lengthy interview with former traffic consultant, and now HRM's new traffic and transportation services "manager", David McCusker. In the Sunday Herald interview and the subsequent CBC interview, Mr. McCusker re-stated the worn-out mantras chanted by all traffic consultants -- that all our traffic woes will be solved through widening existing roads by a few feet and, failing that, by adding some computerized traffic lights.
Mr. McCusker, one of the consultants who developed the ill-fated 1996 GoPlan, is planning to re-introduce a modified version of GoPlan to HRM council in February 1999. However, from reading his interview in the Sunday Herald, it is hard to believe that Mr. McCusker is actually familiar with GoPlan. For example, Mr. McCusker states that:
What Mr. McCusker and apparently many councillors and bureaucrats in HRM fail to realize is that the GoPlan is not a traffic document, it is a transportation document. Accordingly, of the top 10 GoPlan recommendations, only three had anything to do with road widening Bayers/Young with Robie (ranked fifth), Bayers/Young Corridor (ranked seventh), and the Armdale Rotary Flyover (ranked ninth). The remaining top 10 proposals can be summarized as follows:
Traffic consultants are interested in traffic problems and how to solve them; they are not interested in transportation problems. Halifax has a transportation problem -- how to move people from their homes to places of work and back again without destroying HRM's much vaunted quality of life.
Traffic consultants focus on the movement of traffic (i.e., road vehicles). When the volume of traffic reaches, and then exceeds, the capacity of a given stretch of roadway, congestion follows. The traffic consultant offers two seemingly contradictory solutions to congestion:
These solutions often work for a period of time; however, as all major western cities have discovered (and many in the developing world are in the process of discovering), the widening of roads simply attracts more vehicles, which lead to more congestion, which leads to the hiring of more traffic consultants, who recommend more road widening and more traffic lights.
A common argument put forward by traffic consultants is that "people want to drive to work -- they don't want to take the bus." This statement has been made so many times that politicians and other decision makers have accepted it, with the result that more and more of our tax dollars go into unsustainable road building at the expense of other public services.
Interestingly enough, a recent study in Brussels showed that there is a simple reason for people wanting to drive rather than taking the bus. It isn't because the fares are too high, even free bus rides are not enough to tempt people out of their vehicles. The study found that people would happily return to the buses if they kept to their scheduled departure and arrival times -- thereby allowing patrons to know with some certainty that appointments could be met, classes could be attended, or connections could be made.
However, anyone who rides Metro Transit will tell you that buses keeping to their schedules are becoming a rarity. Part of the problem lies with the growing volumes of traffic in Halifax, buses are subject to the same congestion as private vehicles since they both travel the same roadway. Poor planning on the part of Metro Transit is another reason for buses failing to meet their schedules: some routes have been lengthened while attempting to keep to the same schedule.
So, how can the transportation problems associated with HRM be solved?
The widening of existing roads or the construction of new ones or both will be a short term solution at best. Mr. McCusker said as much during his CBC television interview: travel times will not improve in 20 years time, despite the proposed road alterations (and despite the limited growth expected in HRM's population over this period). To make matters worse, HRM's budget crisis leaves little room for grand road projects.
As more people move to outlying areas it becomes prohibitively expensive to offer convenient home-to-office bus services. On the other hand, widening roads leads to more traffic, spiralling maintenance costs, accidents, and pollution. But, by leaving things as they are, congestion worsens.
What is required is a means whereby those commuters who want, or can be persuaded, to abandon their vehicles in favour of public transportation, are given the opportunity to do so. The logic is quite simple: by reducing the number of vehicles on the road, road wear is reduced, the need for road widening is reduced, and the general health of the populace and environment improve. In many respects, a major park and ride scheme, coupled with increased parking costs in the core areas could help, but if the buses are at the mercy of traffic, the attractiveness and advantages of the bus would soon disappear.
Most transportation studies have shown that to be successful, an urban public transportation system must be segregated from other vehicular traffic. One approach is to have lanes dedicated to buses and taxis; however, given the argument against more road building, dedicated lanes make little sense in HRM.
Many progressive cities, such as Dublin and Portland, Oregon, have recognized that to be successful, its citizens must be offered alternatives to the private vehicle. In Dublin's case, an old rail line that rings Dublin Bay has been upgraded and now brings people from the suburbs into the heart of Dublin. Rather than see its downtown core destroyed by a proposed 'freeway', Portland opted to install a series of rail lines into the surrounding suburban areas, once again, to bring people to the core of the city.
Could commuter rail be successful in HRM? There are a number of rail lines in and around the core service area, feeding into the peninsula, Burnside, and Dartmouth. These lines extend to regions where many commuters already live, notably the Highway 101 (Sackville, Windsor, and the Valley) and Highway 102 (Waverly, Enfield, Elmsdale, and Truro) corridors. Railway right-of-ways also exist along the Highway 101 (Cole Harbour) and Highway 103 (Timberlea) corridors.
The last major commuter rail study, completed in 1996, recommended against a commuter rail system between Bedford/Sackville and Halifax, because of costs. It compared the purchasing of new rolling stock from various manufacturers with bargain priced 1950s technology ex-Via dayliners, recommending the dayliners because of capital cost, downplaying the cost of fuel and maintenance. Furthermore, the proposed station design, when coupled with the proposed decaying dayliners, was not conducive to the attracting commuters. (The report failed to mention that most manufacturers of commuter rail equipment will lease equipment, thereby making it a viable option.)
In many respects, now is the time for HRM to adopt a transportation policy based upon a sustainable, energy efficient commuter rail system. Not only will the region (and the province) be able to improve the quality of life, but it might be able to get someone else to pay for it.
At the recent climate change conferences in Kyoto and Buenos Aires, the federal government made significant commitments to combating global climate change. In a 1997 report, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) identified transportation as an unsustainable sector of the Canadian economy because of its impact on the economy, the environment and human health. Accordingly, NRTEE recommended that the federal government make major subsidies and incentives available for increased use of public transit.
By developing a transportation plan in conjunction with the surrounding communities, HRM would then be in a position to present a strong case for federal transportation funds to help reduce the province's carbon dioxide emissions.
With its budget deficit and growing transportation problems, Halifax Regional Municipality caught between a rock and a hard place. Building more roads will not solve our traffic problems, in fact, more roads will simply lead to more problems and higher municipal taxes. Public transportation is the answer, but it will take a major shift in the mindset of our local politicians if changes are to be achieved.
So on Monday when you walk out the door to get into your vehicle to commute to work (earlier than ever for a trip that takes much longer than it used to), remember, there are alternatives.
Published: Sunday Herald (13 December 1998)
It should not have come as a complete surprise to anyone that Scotia Advantage (a consortium made up of Nova Scotia Power and Enbridge Consumers Energy) and SaskEnergy have announced that they are withdrawing from the competition for natural gas distribution rights in Nova Scotia. These corporate decisions can be traced directly to two requirements recently announced by the provincial government, notably that:
On the surface, these requirements may seem innocent enough, but they will probably affect the cost of energy and the types of energy available in Nova Scotia for many years to come.
Ideally, every home in Nova Scotia would have access to Sable gas. However, this is an unrealistic scenario given the distribution of population around the province. According to 1986 census data, only 38 per cent of the population lived in towns or cities where the number of dwellings exceeded 500 and had a population density of more than 400 people per square kilometre. Although these numbers can only be used as a rough guideline, servicing communities much smaller than this can become extremely expensive.
Had the guidelines for natural gas distribution been such that both domestic and industrial customers would have been the responsibility of a single organization, the story of Sable gas would have had a more pleasant outcome. By sharing the pipeline, the higher costs of domestic distribution could have been offset by the larger volumes used by the industrial customers; this arrangement no longer appears possible.
As it stands now, there are only two companies left in the competition: Sempra Atlantic and Maritimes NRG (a partnership between Irving Oil and Westcoast Energy). Assuming that one of these companies wins the distribution rights and decides to proceed with construction, it seems highly unlikely that the 62 per cent target will be reached because of our population distribution. As a result, either the seven year deadline will have to be extended, or subsidies will be required to cover the cost of distribution, or the company will walk away from the entire project. In any event, without the volume demand from industrial customers, domestic natural gas rates will be forced to increase, hitting consumers in the pocket.
And what about all 'our' natural gas that leaves the province? Well, it appears that a good portion of it will be used in New England to generate electricity in the newly deregulated electricity market. Sooner or later Nova Scotians will be demanding access to the 'cheaper' electricity produced in New England -- from Nova Scotia gas.
Like so many other natural resources with which this province has been blessed, political short-sightedness will cost its citizens dearly.
Submitted to Chronicle-Herald, December 1998. Not published.