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Open a new highway – on the sea
Rockford Weitz, Scott Borgerson and John Curtis Perry, PUB
Traffic is getting worse; trucks can be a hazard. Let’s ship cargo by sea.
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… If US roads can be disrupted by a traffic accident, imagine the fallout of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or bridge collapse. This is especially relevant as tens of millions of Americans prepare to make long drives for the holidays.
America must reduce interstate congestion, especially by trucks whose freight can become dangerous in traffic accidents. Let’s try an alternative: Coastal shipping.
Coastal shipping has the potential to strengthen the resilience of America’s transportation system – an important national security objective. It can also provide substantial environmental benefits by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union, which moves 40 percent of its internal freight by sea, provides an example of how much America stands to gain.
The US Maritime Administration estimates that a typical barge can handle 456 containers whereas the same amount of cargo requires 228 double-stacked rail cars or 456 tractor-trailers. Studies have shown that coastal shipping could be three times more efficient at transporting cargo than long-haul trucking is.
(13 December 2007)
Putting the brakes on drive-thrus
Times Colonist (Victoria, BC, Canada)
Drive-thru windows’ popularity might be their undoing. It’s not a huge problem when one or two cars are lined up to order or waiting for their burger and fries. But when lines stretch onto the street, as is becoming increasingly common, the drive-thru creates a traffic hazard.
And the long line of cars idling while people wait for their coffee fixes spew fumes and greenhouse gases into the air. University of Alberta students monitored a popular Tim Hortons outlet in Edmonton last year for 54 hours and counted 3,756 vehicles idling for an average of more than five minutes each. That’s a lot of carbon emissions and pollution in a small area.
Some municipalities have decided to tackle the problem with laws.
(12 December 2007)
Sell Your Car, Stay Sane
Murray Dobbin, The Tyee
What can be done about the craziness experienced daily on the streets of Canada’s major cities? The car, whose greatest selling point is supposed to be convenience, is actually becoming less and less convenient as gridlock frays our nerves and lengthens our commute times.
However, going without a private automobile in most of Canada’s major cities can seem a daunting proposition. If all cities improved their public transit systems to Toronto’s standard (even this is slipping), they might be able to achieve its low level of car ownership. That is not going to happen any time soon, though, with the bone-headed policies pursued by the Harper government (about which more later).
One way individuals can help things along is to join a car-sharing network. Car sharing is an organized system that allows individuals to give up their privately owned cars by providing them with access to vehicles in their neighbourhood. From the user’s perspective, it is a remarkably simple process, with instructions as simple as: “You book a car, you go to the car, you drive around, you bring it back.”
Combined with walking, biking, public transit and the occasional car rental, car sharing gives many city dwellers a feasible option to private car ownership.
(12 December 2007)
How Big is your Bicycle?
Phil Hart, The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
I think electric bicycles have a great future.
Take a typical push-bike and modify it with an electric motor and a small battery pack and you have a vehicle which could get millions of people through their daily commute for an order of magnitude (or two) less than they currently need.
Suddenly you have a vehicle that’s pretty frugal in the use of resources required to manufacture it, doesn’t require any particular level of fitness and is ready to plug into the electricity grid. I can also imagine manufacturer’s addding little ‘bubble’ cages around them soon, to provide weather protection so that the list of reasons not to ‘cycle to work’ reduces even further.
However, thinking about this future raises some other concerns. While total freight traffic must decline, it’s likely that big trucks will still be common because of their efficiency per unit transported. Buses are also going to be a big part of our public transport future. But these trucks and buses will be sharing the roadspace with an increasing number of small and ultra-small vehicles. We could see a bi-modal size distribution of vehicles develop on our roads, which has hefty implications for road safety and infrastructure planning.
Another result of this is that line between ‘cars’ and ‘bikes’ will become increasingly fuzzy.
(4 December 2007)
Many nice photos at original.
