Transportation

eBikes are Killing the Oil Industry

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

This Earth Day it’s good to reflect on one’s own love for the planet Earth. If you want to express your love and appreciation for this ball of rock and air that orbits then Sun then you should ride a bike everyday. If an ordinary bike isn’t your style then you may want to consider an ebike. The future of our built environment will be about two wheels instead of four, and this can’t happen too enough. Thankfully the rise of ebikes is bringing us that future by getting people to ditch their lethal four wheel machines for better two wheeled solutions. Indeed, the oil industry may come to end sooner than projected because ebikes are lowering demand for gasoline!

If taken up, electric micromobility can cut urban emissions. A study of e-scooter riders in the United Kingdom found these trips produced up to 45 percent less carbon dioxide than alternatives.

US researchers estimate that if e-bike trips expanded to 11 percent of all vehicle trips, transport emissions would fall by about 7 percent.

As petrol prices increase and battery prices fall, the cheaper running costs of electric vehicles and even cheaper running costs of electric mopeds, bikes, and scooters will keep eating away at the demand for oil.

Global oil demand is now projected to peak in 2028 at 105.7 million barrels per day—and then begin to fall, according to the International Energy Agency.

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Johns Hopkins: Narrow Lanes Save Lives

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

Johns Hopkins has reached a conclusion: to protect lives we need to narrow lives. Cars kill. Cars (and the people driving them) are more likely to cause death when they move fast and wide lanes encourage speeding. A logical step to curb reckless driving by car drivers is to limit the space they have to drive cars, and make the space they drive in more interesting. By narrowing lanes there are many benefits to be had by society at large. It’s good to see an institution like Johns Hopkins has figure out that car focussed design is not a good thing – streets are for people.

  • Narrower lanes did not increase the risk of accidents. When comparing 9- and 11-foot lanes, we found no evidence of increased car crashes. Yet, increasing to 12-foot lanes did increase the risk of crashes, most likely due to drivers increasing their speed and driving more carelessly when they have room to make mistakes.
  • Speed limit plays a key role in travel width safety. In lanes at 20-25 mph speeds, lane width did not affect safety. However, in lanes at 30-35 mph speeds, wider lanes resulted in significantly higher number of crashes than 9-foot lanes.
  • Narrower lanes help address critical environmental issues. They accommodate more users in less space, use less asphalt pavement, with less land consumption and smaller impervious surface areas.
  • Narrowing travel lanes could positively impact the economy. This includes raising property values, boosting business operation along streets and developing new design projects.

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In Winnipeg the Electric Past is the Future

- Adam Clare Leave a comment
Broadway looking east, 1914.
Archives of Manitoba, Wpg/Streets/Broadway 11

The city of Winnipeg was once a leader in sustainable transit then along came the automobile and the city is now known for the worst intersection in Canada (it’s so bad they ban pedestrians from using it). Winnipeg was home to one the largest electric trolley network and the city was built along the transit lines with large bueatgul streets. Today, the city is dominated by cars. The future of transit in the city will return to its former glory days slowly but surely. Winnipeg is looking to electrify their public transit network and they can serve as a model city for other Canadian communities that want to return to friendly transit.

And though it wasn’t a priority, Winnipeg was an early adopter of emissions-free transit. “You didn’t think of the environment or anything like that back then,” Agnew says. Today, of course, things have changed. Winnipeg is just one of many cities planning a cleaner, lower emissions transportation network.

In a twist of fate, local company New Flyer Industries — which manufactured Winnipeg’s first diesel buses under the name Western Flyer in 1967 — secured a contract in 2022 to produce up to 166 battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses for the city over the next four years. With electric bus technology will come a new era of electric transit infrastructure, including charging stations, hydrogen production capacity and a re-configuration of the transit network.

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Active Transportation 10x More Cost Effective Than Passive Transportation

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

Want a better city but are limited by money? You should invest in active transportation first and foremost. Yet another study has shown that providing spaces for pedestrians and cyclists are a way better investment to improve urban wellbeing than leaving space to metal boxes on wheels. This most recent study comes from New Zealand where they are striving to make cities sustainable and healthy. Some cities try to improve the health and wellbeing of people by asking car owners to “share the road” or “not to murder non-drivers” in safety ads. It turns out the better thing to do is provide physical space for people to enjoy life. Let’s hope a people-first approach is adopted everywhere.

That’s not all. “The study demonstrates that the ‘benefit-to-cost’ ratio of the investment made by two city councils together with the New Zealand Transport Agency is around ten to one,” he says. “The study provides hard evidence of the benefits of investing in walking and cycling infrastructure and educational programmes, which comfortably exceed the costs. This is particularly useful at a time when the government is finalising its policy statement on land transport.”

So what will our cities look like five years from now? Great question. But it seems planners and various officials would do well to consider the benefits of cycleways and walkways – including from a financial standpoint.

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Mobile Pollution Boxes Need to Pay to Enter Manhattan

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

small car

Cars take up a lot of space in urban centres and deprive non-car owners of previous real estate and a clean environment. Yet, for years we have let car drivers occupy our cities with their large metal boxes which impeded the freedom and mobility of others. Back in 2003 London put in place the first congestion charge for their downtown and since then many cities around the world have followed. However, in car brain North America the idea never took off. Until now. New York City will be implementing a congestion charge for Manhattan starting this spring.

Experts see the measure as a first step in the right direction. They believe the toll will help fund the city’s ailing subways and buses, and make the streets of Manhattan a friendlier place. It is also seen as an opportunity to put an end to the car culture in a city — perhaps the only one in the United States — that is perfectly accessible by public transportation, with the exception of isolated peripheral areas. Indeed, for this reason, some have said that the measure is not ambitious enough, arguing that it should apply to the five counties of New York.

“You have to start somewhere, and this is a great start,” says Howard Yarus, of the District 7 transportation committee. The group he represents proposed a plan in 2019 to eliminate free street parking, an unthinkable change for the urban landscape. “Until now, if I took my car, which pollutes the environment, to go downtown I didn’t pay anything, not even when parking. But if I went by public transportation, it cost me $2.90 [for a subway or bus ticket]. As a public policy, that seems terrible to me.”

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