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Vancouver’s long commuters face problems of peak oil
Pieta Woolley, Georgia Straight
With little more than a minute between them, floatplane after floatplane glided over Stanley Park and onto the water at Coal Harbour. It was 7:45 a.m. Tuesday morning (September 23), and the crowds exiting the planes were dressed in suits and luggage-free.
These are Vancouver’s supercommuters, defined for this article as people who travel more than a two-hour drive to work. The 2006 census shows that commuting long distances is common, and a trend that has grown since 2001, despite the rapidly rising cost of fuel.
The environmental costs of flying or ferrying to work—as against the vision of the Metro Vancouver Liveable Region Strategic Plan, which promotes compact communities—are obvious. Anthony Perl, the director of Simon Fraser University’s urban studies program, called the growth in supercommuting a “self-correcting problem”, as fuel costs will soon crunch the lifestyles of even the most flush among the suit-and-tie set.
However, he told the Georgia Straight, the notion of flying to work in the Lower Mainland doesn’t have to die with peak oil.
“There’s two places where I think dirigibles would make good transportation,” Perl said, noting he’s touted the use of zeppelins in his newest book, Transport Revolutions (Earthscan, 2007), which he coauthored with Toronto urban consultant Richard Gilbert.
“One is transporting food in the remote North. The other is in the triangle between the Gulf Islands, Vancouver, Victoria, and Nanaimo. It may sound futuristic, but there’s no combination of biodiesel and French-fry oil that can fly the light planes around the gulf economically.”
(25 September 2008)
The Jet Set
Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
I’m just back from the excellent ASPO USA conference in Sacramento, where (among many other fascinating conversations) I enjoyed an illuminating discussion with a couple of air transport officials whose names and organizational affiliations shall remain confidential.
They were much more candid than the scheduled speaker Michael Boyd, who regaled us over lunch about the minor modifications that the chronically inefficient airline industry may have to contemplate in the near future. My private interlocutors were more blunt. Over the next decade, the industry will undergo an overwhelming transformation.
Today businesspeople and middle-class vacationers regard air travel as a normal and affordable, if increasingly tedious, option for getting from anywhere to anywhere else in a few hours. But as fuel becomes scarce and costly, airlines will go bankrupt and consolidate; most planes will be grounded and mothballed; routes will be cut. Small cities will lose commercial service altogether. Whole terminals at larger airports will be closed permanently.
Air service will continue to connect large cities, but flights will be fewer and slower (speed reduces fuel efficiency), with every seat filled. And those flights will be much more expensive.
In short, we will be returning to the days of the Jet Set, when only the wealthy flew. People were simply less mobile in the 1950s than they are today. And the future will likewise be characterized by declining mobility. …
(24 September 2008)
High flyers: Civilians fly fighter jets. (video)
Swiss Info
Ever fancied taking a fighter jet for a spin? Wealthy customers can do just that, thanks to a private association based at the military airport in Payerne. The group is offering high-octane trips in Mirages once used by the Swiss air force, and there’s no shortage of demand. But politicians and local people are not so thrilled. (SF1/swissinfo)
(27 September 2008)
New World Order
Hans Noeldner, Elder Journal
Community planners, municipal officials, and business owners tend to get fixated on the notion that “If we build it they will come/behave/do/act…”. Meanwhile, many New Urban/anti-sprawl advocates focus on “If we stop it they won’t come/behave/do…”
Stated another way, they (and we) often subscribe to a mechanistic view of (those other) human beings as mere automatons responding to environment (in this case infrastructure). But as most of us know intuitively, there can be safety in numbers – i.e. when more people choose a particular activity/behavior, not only does it become more acceptable socially, but it can actually make the activity/behavior safer for participants regardless of infrastructure. This recent study demonstrates it applies to bicycling:
http://www.livescience.com/health/080905-bike-accidents.html
Does this mean infrastructure doesn’t matter? Can we afford to forget about bicycle lanes and paths, sidewalks and pedestrian crossings, or the “Elephant in the Drop Off Zone”? Should we stop giving our elected officials and public servants (ahem) extra-real-hard spankings when they forget about “habitat for humanity” and choose instead to make the world as convenient as possible for the resource-gobbling species homo automobilicus?
Absolutely not! What it does mean is that we should encourage our fellow citizens to stop waiting for infrastructure, stop making excuses, and git their dang butts on the saddle. We got a New World Order to make – one we-the-people will CREATE by showing up with two wheels…and two feet.
(This letter was also sent to state and county highway departments as well as a number of Madison-area municipal officials, planners, and environmental leaders.)
(19 September 2008)
The letter was published in Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times, according to Hans.
