Transportation

Simply Ditching Your Car Saves Money

- Adam Clare

Graph showing average monthly car ownership costs $1370 CAD

Cars are a burden that suck money out of your wallet and dump pollutants onto the streets (yes, even electric cars cause harm). So why dod people use them? Frugal people already know that owning a car equates to a mobile money pit and have looked for more fiscally prudent solutions. If you live a city then you have a multitude of options to get around, those stuck in the suburbs or rural areas are more limited. Still, you can look into car sharing programs and can even reduce the amount you use your car to save money.

The TTC charges $156 for an adult monthly pass. Bike Share Toronto charges $105 plus HST for an annual pass that includes unlimited 30-minute rides. Then there are car-sharing services like Communauto, which offers free monthly membership plans and charges from $13 per hour for a car rental.

If you’re thinking about going car-free, it’s a good idea to tally up exactly how much you spent on owing a car in the past year (including maintenance and repair costs) to see how much you could potentially save and reinvest elsewhere to pay off debts, contribute to an RRSP or reach other financial goals.

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Tram Driver Championship Goes Global

- Adam Clare

Trams, known in Toronto as streetcars, are a delightful and efficient way to get people around a city. If you’ve ever been a regular rider on a tram network then you know that some drivers are better than others. To celebrate the best tram drivers in the world is the newly global Tram Driver Championship; perviously the competition was only open to European teams. Vienna hosted the competition and introduced the new tram curling competition.

The video above is the official highlight video capturing the highlights and reveals the first ever World Champions.

The Simplest Way to Improve Cities: Remove Cars

- Adam Clare

For the last 100 years streets have been destroyed by the automobile and corporations that profit from excessive use of cars. This has caused harm to the wellbeing of people both in and outside the cars as well as countless environmental issues. It does not have to be this way, and cities from Paris to Seoul have shown us that we can modify our cities to reclaim them from the scourge of the automobile industry. Over at Fast Company they have a nice list of five things cities can do to improve life for everyone in the.

Reversing car-centric design is not a utopian dream. Cities around the world are already doing it. Paris is removing 70,000 parking spaces to make room for bikes and trees. Barcelona is expanding its network of “superblocks” that prioritize pedestrians and eliminate through-traffic. Oslo removed cars entirely from its city center and saw foot traffic, and local business, surge. Cities in the Global South are pioneering new forms of green micormobility, such as Jakarta where the government has set a target of electrifying 2.1 million motor cyles by the end of 2025

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We Can Use Container Ships to Sequester CO2

- Adam Clare

wind enhanced ship

Years of researchers looking into carbon sequestration have concluded two things:
1. It’s far better to reduce emissions than rely on sequestration to avoid climate catastrophe
2. Ocean-based sequestration is more efficient than direct air capture.

A team of researchers have found a way to get container ships to help with sequestration of carbon into the ocean by using an accelerated natural process. It’s well known that modern fossil-fuel powered shipping is very bad for the planet so the researchers wondered what if we could leverage the movement of ships on the water to spread limestone over greater distances? They modelled it out and this approach of using ships as a way to spread the carbon sequestration method is quite efficient and better than a stationary setup.

Calcium carbonate dissolution is the dominant negative feedback in the ocean for neutralizing the acidity from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. Mimicking this natural process, the accelerated weathering of limestone (AWL) can store carbon as bicarbonate in the ocean for tens of thousands of years. Here, we evaluate the potential of AWL on ships as a carbon sequestration approach. We show a successful prediction of laboratory measurements using a model that includes the most recent calcite dissolution kinetics in seawater. When simulated along a Pacific shipping lane in the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean–Darwin ocean–general circulation model, surface alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon increase by <1.4% after 10 years of continuous operation, leaving a small pH and partial pressure of carbon dioxide impact to the ocean while reducing 50% carbon dioxide emission in maritime transportation.

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Cargo Bicycles Are More Efficient Than Cargo Vans

- Adam Clare

Person riding a cargo bike while on delivery

Delivery vehicles are a significant cause of delays in city as they stop and block other transportation modes at a frequent basis. I’m sure everyone can relate to being frustrated while a truck or van blocks a bike lane (or car lane) while they unload. Urban planners and logistics professionals need to think more about using cargo bikes to help with the flow of traffic while also reducing gross emissions. Cargo bikes are actually more efficient than vans when it comes to urban deliveries. This is particularly worth noting when thinking of opening up streets to people as some argue that deliveries are a key reason we need to close streets to people (and only allow vehicles to be on the road).

When delivering goods in central Brussels the electric Bullitt cargo bikes covered 30% shorter routes, and travelled at 16 km/h versus 11 km/h for vans constrained by congestion, according to the study. The cargo bikes were over 2 times faster than vans using 48 min. versus 99 min. on a typical 8.5 km bike route in Brussels urban centre.

Over a month and a half, the cargo bikes delivered 10.1 packages per hour on average, while vans were able to deliver 4.9 packages per hour to the same destinations. Bikes bypass traffic jams, take shortcuts through streets closed to through traffic and ride to within 30 metres of delivery points on average, minimising walking time. Meanwhile, previous studies have shown that vans can spend up to 25 min per stop searching for parking.

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