Transportation – Things Are Good

Amazon Bridge Saves Thousands of Lives

Aerial picture of a primate bridge being installed over a highway,

When humans build into areas where animals thrive there is inevitably an increase in harm done to the local population, but this harm can be managed and reduced in multiple ways depending on where the development is. In the Amazon they are installing bridges for monkeys and other animals to safely cross over the road instead of trying to run across the roadway. These bridges aren’t a new idea, they are plentiful in Costa Rica for example, so it’s easy to demonstrate how effective they are. That being said, local wildlife have their presences for style of bridge and locations so it’s vitally important to figure out the best bridge design and location. In Brazil they have now created a standard design that proves to be very effective in the country. With the standard approach it should be easier and cheaper to put up more bridges.

The bridges are part of a program involving Projeto Reconecta and the municipal government, along with local organizations and business owners who are eager to conserve the unique biodiversity of their town and promote ecotourism, but were alarmed by the growing number of wildlife-vehicle collisions.

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After years of working along Brazilian highways, the biologist had always sought a solution that was simple, low-cost and durable. The current bridge features a multilayer design that accommodates primates with different modes of locomotion — from species that rely on their prehensile tails to move through the canopy to brachiating species such as spider monkeys, which swing using their arms, both of which are common in the Amazon, as well as species that simply walk across the network of crossed ropes. It is worth noting that other small terrestrial mammals, including opossums, sloths and mouse opossums, have also been recorded using the bridges.

Public Ownership of Public Transit Matters

Picture of the St. Pancras train station platform with trains waiting for passengers.

Right wing politicians love to sell public assets to the private sector to alleviate costs on the public, but in the long term that thinking is incorrect: in many sectors the costs still fall back on the public. The British railway system is one such example that public selling of their publicly built and run transit system resulted in an abject failure. It was so bad that people literally died as a result.

Many large public infrastructure projects take capital, time, and have ongoing costs directly due to the physical operation (think rails, engines, etc). This meant that the only place to save money as a private operator was in reducing labour costs, so layoffs occurred and with that came a crisis in a knowledge.

A decade-wide gap in skills was the consequence. With the growth in passenger demand came a huge growth in the number of infrastructure projects being carried out, and this skills bottleneck, combined with an industry structure that exacerbated costs by maximizing the number of organizational interfaces, meant work was being delivered too slowly and at too high a price. Cost escalations became unbearable for government in 2017 and resulted not only in the curtailment of the national electrification programme, but also in the abandonment of other enhancements across the country, particularly in and around the north of England. Meanwhile, there was a glut of new train orders, many for new electric trains for which there were no longer overhead wires planned to power them.
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The rail industry needs democratization, so that decisions about the railways we use are made closer to us. That means moving power, including over spending, away from Westminster. Democratic accountability at local and regional levels is key to unlocking the cycle of proposed and cancelled investment, and in pushing operators to do better. That means devolution of decision and funding powers to both the regions and cities, but also delivering sufficient industry funding autonomy so that it can respond quickly to these demands and rise above electoral cycles and fiscal anxiety.

Real Time Street Level Vehicle Exhaust Emission Monitoring

small car

A team of researchers have used the NYC traffic congestion charge as a place to test out some of their hypothesis. Spoiler: the city got better and air quality improved. The research team were able to figure out how to monitor pollutants on individual streets instead of neighbourhood or city-wide levels. They used cameras and phone data to track traffic (removing personally identifiable information). Their method has increased monitoring accuracy and showed that previous pollutant monitoring solutions could vary widely by up to almost 50%

It also helps with better modelling by figuring out which transit options will reduce pollutants the most.

For one, they modeled what would happen to emissions if a certain percentage of travel demand shifted from private vehicles to buses. In another scenario, they looked at what would happen if morning and evening rush hour times were spread out a bit longer, leaving fewer vehicles on the road at once. They also modeled the effects of replacing fine-grained emissions inputs with citywide averages — finding that the rougher emissions estimates could vary widely, from ?49 percent to 25 percent of the more fine-tuned results. That underscores how seemingly small simplifications can introduce large errors into emission estimates.
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To study that, the researchers looked at what happened to vehicle traffic at intervals of two, four, six, and eight weeks after the program began. Overall, congestion pricing lowered traffic volume by about 10 percent — but there was a corresponding drop in emissions of 16-22 percent.

Canadians Don’t Want Cars

Driving a car is an annoying experience because all one does is sniff the tailpipe coming form the car in front while not moving because there’s too many people stuck in cars. The irony that a car is supposed to be freedom is palpable. Everyone knows that cars are not a good thing, and it’s clear that younger people know that better than the boomers as young Canadians are bemoaning anything to do with cars. Car ownership and the desire to even own a car have decreased dramatically in the last decade, hopefully backwards-looking conservative politicians will start to realize that we need our country to support all sorts of non-car transportation options.

We’re experiencing a generational shift, and attitudes towards car ownership are reflected in that shift. According to the poll, half of Canadians are responding to escalating costs by doing things like driving less (32%), shopping their insurance providers more often (21%) and, more alarmingly, delaying maintenance (18%).
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Something else to keep an eye on: the pandemic work-from-home shift saw many Canadians ditch their second cars. Families weren’t committing to two vehicles because they wanted to, they were doing it because they had to. The return to work orders across the country are facing pushback, with many pointing the finger at politicians desperate to protect their corporate real estate sectors and premiers like Ontario’s just wanting people to buy their lattes again instead of making them in their kitchen.

Simply Ditching Your Car Saves Money

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.