Stephen Rees's blog

Brian Lewis in the Province keeps up the pressure – and seems optimistic – that Hydro will “continue to protect its historical rights to run passenger-rail service on a section of railway line it sold to CP years ago.” This is based a press release issued by Langley Township Mayor Rick Green quoting a letter from Hydro.

Brian says that Canadian Pacific Ltd., is “the railway-based corporation that many have loved to hate throughout its century-plus history.” But CP is a corporation just like all the rest. That does not make it evil. It is required by its shareholders to make money for them – nothing more and nothing less. No matter what the corporate mission statement may say, or what the PR flacks would like you to believe, once a company becomes a limited liability public concern, its obligations to the shareholders override any other concern.  The great mistake was to treat corporations as though they were “persons” which, of course, they are not. When people (as individuals) behave like corporations they are diagnosed with mental illness. But it is people who control corporations and often the owners are us. Through our savings, pensions funds, mutual funds and so on we own the shares of these corporations. Every so often some group or other – or sometimes just an individual – uses their rights as shareholders to make a fuss at an AGM. Often to very little effect. But in general shareholders are largely passive and content to collect their dividends – and are pleased when the share price rises.

CP does indeed make a fortune out of allowing West Coast Express to use its tracks. But the provincially appointed negotiators made that deal on our behalf. BC Hydro was prescient when it put the provision to keep the right to run passenger services on the tracks from “232nd Street, near Trinity Western University, through the downtown cores of the township and Langley City, then west to Cloverdale.” Especially since they kept those rights for free. CP would not have been built at all if not for the generous support of the Government of Canada in both cash and land grants. But as we have seen with the Arbutus corridor that buys us nothing in terms of transit service.

according to the grapevine, CP is lobbying the Gordon Campbell government to block Hydro’s intention of exercising its legal option of renewing the agreement that will protect public use of the line for another 21 years.

Who do you think Campbell will listen to? His corporate buddies – big business in general is the biggest supporter of the BC Liberals – and Gordo still seems to be in thrall to the notion that somehow largesse to corporations “trickles down” to the rest of us – all evidence to the contrary. Or a few pesky Mayors with a bee in their bonnet about the InterUrban.

CP needs the line to get coal and containers to and from Deltaport – which is the key to the Gateway. Actually the rail movement of freight to and from the port is by far the most important way stuff gets to and from the port – the truckers are a bit of a side show. CP has just signed a new agreement with Teck to carry 17.5 million to 19.5 million tonnes of coal from south east BC to the port in a year long contract, down from 25 million tonnes a year at its  peak.

The BC Liberals are convinced that widening the highway – and promising to extend the SkyTrain to Langley by 2030 – is enough. Use of the interurban right of way is relegated to endless studies – there has never been any significant gesture towards recognizing that light rail will be necessary to the future the valley. Indeed light rail has been perpetually held in abeyance in BC – in Victoria as well as in Vancouver and their environs. Light rail is what other places do.

On the other hand allowing BC Hydro to renew its right costs very little and just keeps the option open. It does not commit the province to actually do anything. CP have managed to live with this arrangement for 25 years and may well be persuaded that they have little to worry about. I suspect much will depend on what is intended for BC Hydro in the future – and who might be the successor to these rights.

When you think about it is ridiculous that a phrase like that is a headline.  TOD is designed to reduce car use by making possible for people to get around by other means – walking and, of course, transit. But unfortunately it takes governmental systems some time to catch up to ideas like this. Especially when they are surrounded by lobbyists who continually push for more of the same and resist change.

I learned of the research that now shows that TOD in the US has reduced auto trips from the ITE Journal – and of course that esteemed organ is not available to ordinary humans. But fortunately the research was funded by the US government so the full report on which the ITE article was based is available on line as a pdf. “Effects of TOD on Housing,Parking, and Travel” TCRP Report 128 by G B Arrington and Robert Cevero shows that TOD produces about 50% of the car trips produced by conventional development.

ITE regularly publishes trip generation rates for all kinds of land use – and updates them as research becomes available. It is these figures that are used to determine how much transportation infrastructure is going to be required by new development. Or to be more precise, how many parking spaces and how much new road space. This is the key interface between planning transportation and land use in North America. And since the end of WW2 it has been mostly about making more space available for cars. “ITE trip generation rates overestimate automobile trips for TOD housing by approximately 50 per cent”. What that means is that when developers who want to do TOD go to municipalities for their permits, too much parking and roadspace is required – which raises the cost to developers and hence residents. One of the most significant short term effects of TOD – affordability – is lost. In a region like ours, where despite recent price drops affordability is still a major hurdle for many households. (Incidentally another article in the same edition criticizes the ITE trip generation rates: “These rates are limited as they are based almost solely on isolated suburban development with little or no pedestrian, bicycle or transit accessibility for ease of data collection.”)

But the second round effect is even more important. Because there is the additional capacity, other users can fill the new space provided. And, of course, it is not just the developers that we have to be concerned about. “Transit ridership is positively correlated to the extensiveness of the transit system, amount of traffic congestion and higher parking costs. Transit service headways of 10 minutes are ideal to support a transit lifestyle”. In this region “frequent transit service” is 15 minutes – so we are well short of the ideal even if  the current plans can be implemented. Since that is in itself uncertain, it can be anticipated that where there is TOD in this region but inadequate transit (Port Moody for instance) it will underperform. Indeed there is a sneaking suspicion that is the intent of the provincial government, which likes to pose as “green” but very obviously is not at all.

The transit funding is going to be a huge problem – but the highway funding was found easily even though the P3 fell through. That tells you all you need to know about priorities. It also means that the benefits the United States will see from conducting this research and implementing its findings through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  (and the next surface transportation bill) will not be realised in BC – or probably most of Canada. Because we have a federal government that is not engaged in the same kind of process. There is no research based program – and it is not tied to federal funding. Transit projects are tied to the whims of Ministers and short term political advantage, and given the way that votes are distributed in Canada still favour major roads over other transportation projects.

The idiocy of the Gateway was to put freight transport ahead of everything else (trucks account for 8% of the traffic at the most – which happens to be the Port Mann Bridge) even when it looks as though international freight traffic is going to continue to decline for a while and may never recover its former pattern as the world’s economy adapts to new realities. But the effect is that TOD is simply not going to happen in  most of the new build areas of this region, because we have already built, or are in the process of building, much new major road infrastructure, but the future of transit is still very uncertain. And of there is one things that investors hate it is uncertainty.

Smart growth requires smart calculations; impact fees, parking ratios, and road improvements need to account for the likely trip-reduction effects of TOD. Research study results indicate that residential TOD parking ratios can be tightened and fees lowered to reflect the actual transportation performance of TODs. Given that TODs have historically been over-parked, the incorporation of research results into revised parking ratios is an important step toward national recognition of the expected community benefits of TOD.

And there is also this important insight

TOD type is less important than specific location within the region and the quality of connecting transit service

What has happened here in recent years is that transport investment has managed to overcome the intentions of the LRSP while seemingly being coherent with it. You can find lines on maps in the LRSP and point to them and say “there is the SFPR, there is the Golden Ears Bridge” and so on – and people do and have here. But the intention of the LRSP was not to encourage automobile use or build in auto dependency.  But for the majority of the region that is what has been and is being done. And great opportunity to change direction has, it seems, been lost.

On the Vancouver Sun website there is a report from the Edmonton Journal.

A 500-km/h high speed train that could travel between Calgary and Edmonton in an hour would attract nearly six million riders by 2021, says a report commissioned by the Alberta government and released Monday.

The report makes no recommendations on the feasibility of the project or whether government money should go into it, but suggests the possibility of a private-public partnership, also known as a P3.

Alberta Transportation Minister Luke Ouellette released the February 2008 report in advance of Monday’s federal-provincial Conservative caucus meeting in Calgary.

Well actually the report says a great deal more than that – and it looks at a variety of possible speeds from the UK style 125mph High Speed Train, US style Acela,  French TGV and the German MAGLEV. The good thing is that the full report is available at www.transportation.alberta.ca/3940.htm – from where you can download the hefty pdf files. They make interesting reading.

A disclaimer of my own – I was recruited by Dr Alex Metcalf in 1988 from the UK to come to Canada. So we have some history – and I want to be very careful to be objective in my comments. He is one of the lead authors of the report: one his earlier projects was the demand forecast which supported the construction of the bridge to Prince Edward Island.

Secondly, I wonder why this report has taken so long to emerge: February 2008 to July 2009 is a very long time indeed to consider a consultant’s report.

The study is refers to itself as “Investment Grade”  (“meets the requirement of Investment Grade Analysis as proposed by the High-Speed Rail Association”) – in other words it was intended to examine whether or not a private sector investor would put money into the project. What this means is that it is concerned with familiar issues of mode choice – and would enough people be willing to pay enough for a faster trip between the two cities. The answer is yes, and the faster the train runs the more would be willing to use it.

There is a lot in the language of the report which contrasts quite strongly with all the other things I am reading at the moment. The report is very optimistic about the economy of Alberta – after all that province has lots of oil and the rest of world is going to be increasingly short of it so there will continue to be economic growth for the foreseeable future – subject to the cyclical nature of a resource based economy. The words “peak oil” or “climate change” do not appear in it – so far as I can determine. Nor is there any sense that our perception of the world changed dramatically between then and now. So it is bit like reading BC government studies of the need for new highway and port expansion. Much of the stuff I read these days talks about the end of “business as usual” and the need for a steady state, no growth economy – or even the inevitability of dealing with the need to reduce our per capita energy consumption. Quite a lot of macro-economics seems to be turning away from GDP as a way of measuring how we are doing,and recognising that exponential growth is unsustainable.

I am not going to challenge the demand forecast – I am just going to suggest that there are other reasons why the Governments of Alberta and Canada should consider the case for building a new electric high speed rail line between Edmonton and Calgary. The idea of utilising the existing tracks or just upgrading them is not a good long term proposition. The private sector railway companies in Canada have little or no interest in running passenger trains and do not normally afford them priority. Freight railways have a rather different configuration to high speed lines – and the best separate them out. Since that means a new right of way, an electric railway is not that much more expensive, but gives a great deal of flexibility for the future as well as significant operational and environmental advantages for the present. Electricity can be made from a variety of sources: Calgary’s LRT runs on wind power.  Both France and Japan determined early on that a dedicated track was a prerequisite for high speed rail and both countries  now lead the world in the field.

One thing the current report seems to accept is that the line would not be integrated into the airports. This is a profound mistake. While a lot of business travel is city centre to city centre, the report recognises the need for suburban stations: that is, after all where most people live. But there is also a significant synergy to be had from integration with national and international travel which at present is by air. Of course air travel has seen significant declines – for economic reasons – and it long term future is highly uncertain, since it is currently completely dependent on oil as its energy source.

It is a bit depressing that the only way we seem to be allowed to think about these projects is if they are commercially feasible – not desirable from an environmental or quality of life perspective. One argument that Alberta should consider is the extent to which a new service would reduce the need of highway expansion in the future – and also the much better safety record per passenger kilometre of rail over road. The reduction in the demand for health services alone – even if the lower death toll is not thought good enough reason of itself – should appeal even to conservatives.

On the whole I am not persuaded that there is a good case for MAGLEV. It seems to me to be one of those “best is the enemy of the good” cases. I would be reluctant to recommend a technology that is not widely in use. French style TGV, on the other hand, has shown itself to be very successful and is being steadily expanded in the countries where it has been adopted. The British have tried Italian tilting trains on existing sinuous track (Pendolinos on the West Coast Mainline) but the success of the first French style TGV line from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel has now got them thinking of new dedicated french style high speed lines.

I think railways should be a priority for our governments – if only because we know that relying on air and highways has brought us a whole lot of unintended consequences. Hopefully, now that this report has finally seen the light of day, the discussion can start in earnest.

Oh, as an afterthought, perhaps check out the newest Japanese shinkansen too.

Shinkansen

Finally the Border services Agency has backed down! The Vancouver Sun is now reporting that the second train will start running in August though they also say they cannot confirm the schedule. The idea is to have a train times to be convenient for Canadians – that is leaving here in the morning and the returning here in the evening. The present train arrives here late in the morning and then leaves for Seattle in the afternoon, though there are bus services at other times of day.

The border services agency had been insisting that Amtrak cover the costs of border service agents required to check passengers.

But the agency has agreed to waive those fees, said Chris McCluskey, spokesman for the public safety minister, who oversees the border services agency.

The service would be a test to evaluate if the level of traffic would be high enough to justify the customs services required, the public safety minister said in a release.

So the important thing is now that there will finally be some semblance of a real service we start to use it.

I have lost count of the number of times recently I have had to take avoiding action because of the behaviour of other drivers. Some of it of course is simply because of aggressive driving – the sort of people who overtake on the wrong side, cut in front of the line at the last moment or simply ignore signals. But increasing is it noticeable that the offending driver is holding a cell phone – and often gesticulating with the other hand. People who talk on the phone behave as though the person on the other end of the call can see them. This is bizarre  behaviour even when not driving.

Kash Heed, the new Solicitor General, and former police officer seems ready to do something. There is a consultation process that started yesterday and runs until August 7.

The Office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles (OSMV) recently conducted an extensive review of distracted driving research. The link to the full distracted driving discussion paper can be found below. The following is a summary of some of the research in this paper:

• Evidence shows that driver distraction, of all types, is associated with approximately 25 per cent of crashes and results in a significant cost to society in terms of tragic loss of life, serious injuries and resulting monetary costs. Activities such as talking on a cell phone and manipulating electronic devices require significant amounts of attention being diverted away from driving tasks.
• In both simulated and real driving environments, the use of electronic devices has been shown to result in crashes and near misses. Drivers fail to process approximately 50 per cent of the visual information in their driving environment when they are using electronic communication devices. Evidence also concludes that there is no difference between the level of driver distraction associated with hands-free and hand-held cell phone use.
• Talking to a passenger in the vehicle versus talking to someone through electronic means does not cause the same level of distraction. Reasons for the difference include: the passenger is aware of the driving situation; the passenger can serve as an additional look-out for hazards; the passenger can adjust speech, tone and conversation to the driving environment; and cell phone conversations suppress brain activity necessary for attention to perceptual input.

There is no evidence that listening to the radio or a book on tape degrades driving performance.

If you want to you can download the whole discussion paper or you can respond to the following discussion questions

1. Do you think government should pass additional laws restricting the use of electronic devices while driving, or should emphasis be placed on increased public education and awareness and the enforcement of existing laws governing driver distraction (e.g. “Driving Without Due Care and Attention”)?
2. Which electronic devices should be considered under this framework?
3. Should hands-free devices be treated the same or differently as hand-held devices?
4. What would be the appropriate penalties for drivers disobeying such a law (e.g. failure to wear a seatbelt is a fine of $167)?
5. Should any proposed laws apply to all drivers, or only specific categories of drivers (i.e., new drivers)?
6. Should exemptions be provided to any class of drivers (i.e., emergency responders, professional drivers, etc.)

You can submit your responses to the form on line, mail or fax.

It seems to me that the current arrangement is not doing enough –  as 117 people die each year in B.C., and another 1,400 are hospitalized, from traffic crashes linked to distractions such as the use of cell phones or MP3 players while driving. But distractions are nothing new – and will continue even if new legislation is introduced. I interviewed OPP officers as part of a study I did back when cell phones were rare and the size of a house brick. They had a long list of things people did while driving just before collisions including eating and drinking (of course) smoking – it is the by product that’s the problem – spilling hot coffee in the lap and setting hair or a beard on fire being somewhat more distracting than struggling to open the plastic rap on a gas station sandwich. Applying make up and changing a pair of tights while driving at high speed on the 401 seemed to be pretty frequent in accident reports too.

“Without due car and attention” it seemed to me at the time should have resulted in charges more often, but traffic cops are often reluctant to go to court. Especially when the offender had self incriminated themselves in their reports of what happened  after the officer arrived on the scene. It is that old problem of the officer not actually observing the behaviour.

I also think that ICBC should take a stand on this kind of claim and take contributory negligence into account. Especially when the other driver does not even put the phone down when you are trying to get their insurance details from them!

I hope that you will take the time to let  Kash know your thoughts – and I will stop trying to tell you how you should answer!