The other day, a friend of mine dropped by my office to recount a strange and terrifying nightmare that has been going on for several months now. In the nightmare, my friend is a fly on the wall at a closed HRM council meeting discussing the planned Metro Transit cuts.
The meeting proceeds with the usual banality of the Tuesday night open council meetings televised on channel 10. Suddenly, a menacing, shadowy figure starts to speak in a deep, ominous tone:
"Councillors, the old methods of discouraging Metro Transit ridership are simply not working fast enough. Despite your puny attempts -- last summer's Transit strike, two fare increases within six months of each other, and stretching routes to make connections difficult -- the transit-using public are still with us. This is not good enough!"
There is a pause and one of the councillors squeeks, "But...".
"Silence!" roars the shadowy figure, "or I'll see your discretionary funding cut off!"
"I propose a new approach, called operation 'Kill-A-Bus', intended to reduce Metro Transit ridership through uncertainty. The plan is as follows: First, announce sweeping route cuts without any consideration for those who actually ride these routes. Second, wait for the inevitable public outcry. Third, claim to be reconsidering the entire matter, while at the same time, posting signs at bus stops, announcing the termination of these routes.
"It would take a very determined Transit user to continue in the face of these tactics. We can always get rid of those few (once the majority are safely back in their own vehicles) by instituting more route cuts, using declining ridership figures as justification."
About this time, my friend wakes up in a cold sweat, but realizes that this scenario could only occur in a nightmare world. Then again, reading the papers might make you wonder.
Published 20 February 1999 (Halifax Herald) 9 March 1999 (Daily News)
A salt depot in Bayers Lake "Industrial" Park resides on a "deteriorated lot", so HRM council votes to spend $143,776 on landscaping and installing curbs and gutters. Coincidently, the salt depot is beside an indoor tennis court.
Meanwhile, citizens of HRM who take the bus to Bayers Lake "Industrial" Park are forced to walk along the edge of the road or in mud because there are no sidewalks.
Love the way we live?
Published 6 March 1999 (Halifax Herald) 11 March 1999 (Daily News)
Over the next decade, if various corporate promises come true, many communities in Nova Scotia will gain access to the proposed provincial natural gas network. Homes, offices, and industries will benefit from a relatively cheap and (when compared to other fossil fuels) clean fuel source. Most of the natural gas will be burned to provide space heating or domestic hot water or both.
In communities connected to the natural gas pipeline, there will be considerable construction activity, digging up streets and yards, laying the pipe, and finally restoring the surface to its original condition. Within towns and cities, the pipes will be buried underground, in part for aesthetic reasons, but primarily for safety. Fortunately, the technology is mature enough to ensure that accidents, such as explosions due to pipeline faults, should be kept to a minimum.
Natural gas, like all other fossil fuels, is a non-renewable, finite resource. Once extracted and combusted, all that remains are its by-products, principally carbon dioxide and water. Exactly how long a natural gas field can be exploited depends upon a number of factors, including the size of the field and the rate of extraction. In the case of Nova Scotia’s offshore natural gas fields, the expected life is about 25 years.
Of course, once these natural gas fields are exhausted, Nova Scotians depending upon natural gas will no longer benefit from ‘cheap’ natural gas. The options available to those customers relying on our offshore natural gas will include:
With this in mind, before Nova Scotia embarks upon a major construction campaign to distribute natural gas, alternate methods of space heating and generating domestic hot water should be considered.
When it comes to space heating and domestic hot water, Nova Scotians (and most Canadians for that matter) do things backwards: the energy for space heating and domestic hot water is typically obtained from sources such as oil, natural gas, and electricity. Many of these sources of energy are better suited to applications other than simple combustion; for example, oil and natural gas for transportation, and natural gas for industrial processes. Similarly, electricity is better used in applications such as lighting and running motors.
If valuable, non-renewable natural resources such as oil and natural gas should not be used for space heating and domestic hot water, then how should Nova Scotians be kept warm during the winter months? Interestingly enough, an example of one such heat source is sitting on the edge of Halifax Harbour.
Tuft’s Cove is a conventional thermal power station. Whenever a fuel is burned in this type of power station, it boils water in a boiler, producing steam that turns a turbine, which causes a generator to spin, thereby producing electricity. Of the fuel that is burned, about 35 per cent is converted into electricity; the remaining 65 per cent or so, in the form of hot water, cannot turn the turbine. In Nova Scotia, this hot water is considered a ‘waste’ product and discarded into large bodies of water, such as the Bedford Basin (Tuft's Cove) or the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (Point Aconi).
Many Scandinavian countries, with fewer natural resources than those available in Canada, are forced to use the ‘waste’ hot water from their power stations to heat their cities and towns. These power stations are referred to as ‘cogeneration plants’ or CHP (combined heat and power) stations because they generate both heating water and electricity. Homes, offices, and other buildings are connected to cogeneration plants through a series of well-insulated pipes, usually buried underground, with the cogenerated hot water circulating through these pipes. Buildings are heated using heat exchangers that extract heat from the hot water and customers are charged by the amount of heat they extract. The process of heating a community through cogeneration is known as ‘district heating’. When compared with conventional power stations, cogeneration plants are extremely efficient. Efficiency increases from 35 per cent (electricity only) to over 80 per cent (30 per cent electricity and 50 per cent or more district heating).
District heating is far from new; some of the earliest district heating plants were built in Denmark at the beginning of this century. Today, over 40 per cent of all Danish homes are heated by district heating. District heating systems in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries range in size from very small (villages of a few thousand inhabitants) to large sections of metropolitan centres such as Stockholm and Copenhagen. In fact, nearly 70 per cent of the buildings in Copenhagen are heating by district heating!
The Danish use of district heating can be traced to Denmark’s lack of indigenous fuel sources, other than biomass (such as wood and straw). Since coal and oil had to be imported, the Danes were forced to use fuel as wisely as possible. Interestingly enough, even though Denmark is now benefiting from North Sea gas, the Danes have decided to use the gas in cogeneration plants.
Many countries, such as Germany, have recognized that the benefits of cogeneration are more than economic. For example, buildings connected to a district heating system do not require a heating fuel such as oil; using less fossil fuels to produce electricity and heating water can result in lower carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) emissions. Cogeneration also reduces thermal pollution from power stations, since the ‘waste’ water heats homes and businesses, not lakes, rivers, or parts of the ocean. Furthermore, air quality and public health benefit as the combustion of fuel is restricted to local cogeneration plants rather than to individual buildings.
In Nova Scotia, a provincial district heating policy could be a cornerstone of both economic and environmental sustainability. Since district heating systems are typically built to service a single town or village, it would be necessary to set up a number of locally operated cogeneration plants throughout the province (according to research done in 1993, some 38 per cent of Nova Scotians live in villages, towns, and cities with populations that could be readily serviced by local district heating schemes). Locally owned and operated cogeneration plants could offer employment to the inhabitants of the community it serves.
Industrial opportunities exist for steel making, boiler construction, and fabrication of district heating pipe; further employment could be provided by the construction and installation of district heating systems. Once built, contracts must be awarded to groups or individuals to supply the fuel for the plant and people must be employed to run the system. Depending upon the number of district heating systems, anywhere from 1000 to 5000 people could be directly employed on an annual basis.
Another of the many benefits of district heating is the fact cogeneration plants are not restricted to a single type of fuel and the type of fuel can evolve over time. For example, a town could run a district heating system based upon natural gas; should the price of natural gas exceed that of another fuel, such as wood waste (a biomass), the natural gas could be replaced by the wood waste. In some instances it might be necessary to retrofit the boilers in the cogeneration plant, but the infrastructure associated with the district heating system would remain unchanged.
By utilizing wood as the fuel source, local woodlot owners could apply silviculture techniques to improve their woodlots while supplying their local cogeneration plant with fuel. An additional benefit of using wood is that it closes the carbon-cycle: the carbon dioxide produced by burning wood would be absorbed by young trees as part of their growth cycle. Purchasing wood from local woodlots means that money once spent on imported oil would stay in the province, thereby improving the local economy.
The fuel source for district heating systems in Nova Scotia need not be restricted to wood; with the proper technology, coal could also be used. The coal could be shipped by rail from mines in Cape Breton to local district heating systems. In those areas, such as the Annapolis Valley, where the tracks have been removed, relaying the tracks would employ more people.
Any excess electricity produced by an individual community could be sold, on a contract basis, to other communities in the province, through the provincial power grid. The grid, originally constructed for the benefit of all Nova Scotians, is now owned by Nova Scotia Power. Wheeling rights would have to be established with Nova Scotia Power to allow district heating companies to transmit electricity across the grid. If Nova Scotia Power proved reluctant to allow access to the grid, the provincial government should be called upon to enact legislation to open the grid to local district heating companies.
As little as five years ago, Nova Scotia Power was claiming that district heating would never work because of a lack of customers. How times have changed. This past year saw Nova Scotia Power, in conjunction with Trigen (a U.S.-based company specializing in district heating systems), install an underground steam line from the main Dalhousie University campus to the DalTech (former TUNS) campus. The Dalhousie-DalTech steam line is to join an existing pipeline which connects a number of the larger buildings on the Halifax peninsula. At present these buildings ‘share’ their boilers; eventually, the pipeline is to be extended to Tuft’s Cove, where some ‘waste’ steam will heat the interconnected buildings in Halifax and some in Dartmouth -- an example of cogeneration and district heating -- albeit in a very limited ‘district’. (It is worth noting that there is sufficient ‘waste’ heat from Tuft’s Cove to meet the heating requirements of all the residential buildings in Halifax.)
If, for the sake of argument, Nova Scotia’s offshore natural gas were to last for more than 25 years, special interest groups might argue that Nova Scotians should continue with their profligate ways, using energy inefficiently and for the wrong applications. Nova Scotia is at a crossroads: we can adopt natural gas as the fuel of choice for heating many of our larger communities, or we can chose cogeneration. The benefits associated with cogeneration far outweight those associated with natural gas:
So if we’re going to dig up the streets of our towns and cities, let’s do it right and do it once. By choosing natural gas we will be left with a vast web of unusable underground pipes when the natural gas inevitably runs out. However, by choosing cogeneration and district heating, the district heating system will always be there, regardless of the fuel.
Published: 15 August 1999 (Sunday Herald)
Nova Scotia’s highways are divided into numbered sections. Each section has a beginning and end point associated with a well-known road or interchange. For example, section 40 of Highway 101 runs between exit 3 (Mount Uniacke Interchange) and exit 4 (St. Croix Interchange). Section 40 is a single-lane stretch of highway, 21.03 kilometres long, with several passing lanes.
Although never explicitly mentioned by name, section 40 has been the focus of much attention, especially during the recent provincial election:
The principal argument for twinning Highway 101 is that since 1993, some 42 people have died on it in fatal car crashes. Twinning a section of highway to save a human life is a noble sentiment, but given the precarious state of Nova Scotia’s finances and the growing demand for health services, one is forced to ask the question that no politician seems willing to ask: are there alternatives to twinning?
For example, one of the main causes of death and destruction on Highway 101 is careless driving. Rather than twinning section 40 (or any other section of Highway 101 for that matter), the province could spend a fraction of that amount to police the highway and use existing laws to punish offenders.
Another major reason our highways are becoming more unsafe is the fact that Nova Scotia has an aging population, many of whom are retiring to King’s and Hant’s counties. People living in these counties must drive on Highway 101 if they have business or appointments in Halifax.
Given the woefully inadequate state of public transportation in Nova Scotia, many people are forced to drive, regardless of their age or state of health. If the Nova Scotia Department of "Transportation" was truly interested in transportation, it would consider all modes of transportation, not simply the automobile. As it stands now, the new Conservative government is committed to a 10 year plan of spending more of our limited tax dollars on a single unsustainable mode of transportation, notably the private automobile.
There are at least two reasons why our dependence the private automobile is unsustainable. First, as strange as it may seem, oil is a finite resource. Within a few years, the price of oil will rise steadily as world demand increases and fewer new discoveries are made. The inevitable corresponding rise in the price of gasoline will force an increasing number of people to abandon the private automobile. Paving roads as a means of staying in office is an incredibly shortsighted waste of taxpayers’ money.
Second, the automobile’s impact on human health is not limited to road fatalities. A growing number of studies point to the damaging effects on humans, both young and old, of airborne pollutants from the private automobile. If that were not enough, greenhouse gas emissions from the growing number of automobiles on our highways appear to be contributing to changes in the planet’s climate.
Spending tax dollars on transportation that adversely affects human health and contributes to the destruction of the planet is unjustifiable. But what could a new and enlightened Minister of Transportation do?
In addition to better policing of our highways, there are any number of projects that could improve the availability of transportation to all Nova Scotians, regardless of age or health. For example, for about $30 million, the price of twinning section 40 of Highway 101, long-haul buses could be purchased to connect the major centres around the province.
For the $112 million required to twin part of Highway 101 into the Valley, the province could institute a hierarchical transportation system consisting of local, regional, and inter-regional buses.
If transportation to the Valley is of paramount importance to the Conservative government, the new Minister of Transportation should remind his colleagues that the entire rail line from Halifax to Kentville could be re-laid and rolling stock purchased, all for less than $112 million.
Published: 9 August 1999 (Chronicle-Herald)
In his opinion piece of 17 August 1999, David Elliot states that he "deeply resents" my claim that "one of the main causes of death and destruction on Highway 101 is careless driving."
According to the Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Public Works, fully half of the province's motor vehicle accidents (7,380 of 14,665) and almost all involving fatalities (76 of 89) in 1997 were caused by human factors such as driver inattention, driving while impared, fatigue, driving too fast for road conditions, and exceeding the speed limit. Clearly my use of the term "careless driving" was too generous -- "driver error" may have been the better choice of words.
Yet even the carnage associated with Highway 101, so graphically described by Mr. Elliot, doesn't stop the madness on our highways. In the 17 August edition of the Globe and Mail, Geoff Wilson, a communications officer for the Nova Scotia government, is quoted as saying that drivers take crazy risks passing on the two-lane Highway 101 between Halifax and the Annapolis Valley.
Mr. Elliot also asks me to put a figure on the "lives, blood, and tears" that Nova Scotians have had to endure because of road tragedies.
The individual and societal costs of all road accidents in Nova Scotia in 1997 was a staggering $275 million -- over a quarter of a billion dollars (this number is based upon Transport Canada data and accident studies from Ontario). The cost of road accidents is almost twice the fuel taxes collected by the Nova Scotia government in 1997 (over $150 million).
Although pouring money into twinning may reduce some types of accidents, highway accidents will continue to add to our health care costs. Accidents resulting in personal injury and fatalities caused by driver error will still occur as will those caused by unforseen events such as freak weather conditions or animals straying onto the roadway.
There are cost-effective and safe alternatives to twinning our highways -- a kilometre of railway costs about half as much as a kilometre of twinned highway.
Alternatives such as public transportation would allow travellers the choice of modes to reach their destination (car vs. train for example). A provincial public transportation policy would enable those Nova Scotians who are unable or unwilling to drive an automobile but want to live in their rural or coastal communities the opportunity to do so. Indeed, reducing our dependence on the automobile would help individuals (such as Mr. Elliot), our communities, our environment, our health, and the provincial bottom line.
Published September 1999 (Chronicle-Herald)
In Halifax, as in many cities across North America, the first few days after Labour Day highlight the limitations of our municipal road network. The seemingly light traffic volumes of August are swollen by commuters returning from vacation and students returning to school. The road network handles the traffic until the first major change in the weather -- such as the remnants of a tropical storm, bringing traffic to a crawl. Such a storm occurred in Halifax a week or so ago, on September 16th.
The next day a headline appeared in the Daily News, quoting Mayor Fitzgerald as saying "They're going to kill this city!". For one moment it appeared as if the Mayor had finally seen the light and realized that the private automobile is killing this city. Sadly, this wasn’t the case; rather than wanting to reduce the number of vehicles entering the downtown core, the Mayor was proposing just the opposite -- change the road system to support more vehicles. Notably, turn Chebucto and Quinpool roads into one-way streets.
What the Mayor doesn’t understand is that traffic exhibits all the properties of a liquid. It will flow until it meets an obstacle, at which point it will back up, filling the void, eventually overflowing and taking another path. This has been illustrated time and again in Halifax, most recently with the Armview Avenue traffic calming measures. In this case, traffic backs up at the newly installed lights at Jubilee and Connaught, causing some drivers to ‘shortcut’ through previously quiet residential areas and school zones.
This manic support for the private automobile in the downtown core is not restricted to the Mayor. In her column entitled "City idle on traffic woes", Sandra Porteous calls upon the Mayor to fix the congestion problem by building more roads, tunnels, and bridges. Without realizing it, Ms. Porteous highlights the fallacy of road building as a cure for congestion: on one hand she predicts the need for more roads (because there will be more cars in the future), while on the other saying that the recent widening of the Bedford Highway (to fix congestion) was inadequate, requiring still more widening. Road widening is a short-term fix to traffic congestion, since it always generates more traffic, despite the number of tax dollars spent.
If Halifax adopts the auto-centric solutions to our traffic problems called for by the Mayor and people such as Ms. Porteous, it will be the final deathblow to the city centre. More valuable land will have to be sacrificed for parking, there will be no incentive for commuters to stay in the downtown, and more businesses will flee to the outlying ‘business parks’. Halifax’s city centre will enter the spiral of urban decay found in many U.S. cities.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Twenty-five years ago, Portland, Oregon was faced with the problem of poor air quality, urban decay, and a city slowly being sacrificed to the automobile. In 1974, Portland’s Transportation Control Plan recommended that there be a cap placed on the number of parking spaces in the downtown and that a fare-free transit zone be adopted for the central business district. This plan, coupled with a highly popular light-rail commuter system, has saved downtown Portland. Not only does it promote the efficient and productive use of valuable land, it also makes the downtown area pedestrian oriented.
If Mayor Fitzgerald wants to make Halifax a ‘world class city’ then he should consider alternatives to the automobile. Developing a transportation plan such as that used in Portland would be a good first step.
Published 5 October 1999 (Daily News)
Ms. Maxine Whynot, mayor of Windsor is quoted as saying that the proposed twinning of Highway 101 from Mount Uniake to Windsor is generating some business interest in Windsor (Boom time in the Annapolis Valley, 15 December).
Considering that most of the business interest is in the retail sector (the construction of an Atlantic Superstore, the expansion of a Sobey's, and a larger Lawton's pharmacy), it is unclear why twinning Highway 101 from Mount Uniacke to Windsor would be the catalyst for business interest.
The distance from the Mount Uniacke interchange (exit 3) to exit 5A (near the site of the new Atlantic Superstore) is some 26 kilometres, whereas the distance from exit 3 to exit 2 (Sackville) is slightly under 12 kilometres. Other than visting Windsor, it is hard to imagine why anyone would want to drive about twice the distance to purchase their groceries or to fill their prescriptions.
Anyway, isn't safety the reason for twinning?
Published 27 December 1999 (Chronicle-Herald)