Stephen Rees’s blog

The New York Times coverage is good and shows that it was the suburban Democrats who killed it - or rather let it die without a vote.

Ultimately, the battle lines over the plan remained almost unchanged during the yearlong debate over the project, despite multiple rounds of public hearings, reams of studies and an aggressive lobbying campaign by Mr. Bloomberg and his allies. Indeed, many opponents said they resented the pressure and threats that they said emanated from Mr. Bloomberg’s side, including hints that the mayor would back primary candidates to run against politicians who opposed congestion pricing.

So it was not about the money, or the congestion, or the undoubtedly positive experience in other cities that mattered in the end. Just good old politics.

The reaction over at Streetsblog is extensive. But their headline is the size of the transit deficit - $17 Billion - which still needs to be fixed. And Cap’n Transit has a good bit too and cites my guru (Douglas Adams)

Another story from the Guardian I cannot resist

Drivers of high-powered sports cars and 4×4s will be hit by a new £25 charge every time they enter central London under plans to reduce congestion and cut pollution across the capital.

London mayor Ken Livingstone said today that around 30,000 of the worst-polluting vehicles would face a threefold price rise from October, while the most environmentally-friendly cars would be able enter the congestion charging zone free of charge.

“The CO2 charge will encourage people to switch to cleaner vehicles or public transport and ensure that those who choose to carry on driving the most polluting vehicles help pay for the environmental damage they cause,” Livingstone said.

“This is the polluter pays principle. At the same time, the 100% discount for the lowest CO2 emitting vehicles will give drivers an incentive to use the least polluting cars available.”

What a brilliant idea. No one needs a Hummer in a city. There is no good reason why so many pick up trucks are being used as personal transport: it is just so the major US manufacturers can get around the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Standards. And if one more rich, smug driver tells me they are safer in one of these things I shall scream. They do not stop any better than any other vehicle - and that is how collisions are reduced. But the sheer size and poor sightlines of these huge things - especially in school zones at 8am and 3pm almost guarantee that somebody’s child will get hit - and their chances of survival are much lower when struck and run over by a larger vehicle. And how often have we heard the excuse “I didn’t know he was there” when someone has been dragged for miles underneath one of these ridiculous monsters.

I think Ken has really stretched the notion of a “congestion charge” - but of course these large vehicles do take up more road space. Maybe a sliding scale would be fairer. But it certainly shows what you can do to send the right messages in the market place when you start charging for road space.

Most readers of this blog will know that the Livable Region Coalition came about because of concerns about the impact of highway expansion on this region. Specifically the proposal to both twin the Port Mann Bridge and expand the freeway from the Vancouver boundary out to Langley. There is currently an Environmental Assessment under way, which should try to address these issues. And because it is required to be an open process you can read all the documents. The proponent is the province, and the comments of others on the proponent’s assessment can also be read there.

Over the Christmas holiday, Environment Canada sent in its comments. The EA Office waited a month before putting them on its web page. This may well explain the extraordinary rush to get out the allegedly “new improved” transit plan. For the document from Environment Canada (and also one from Health Canada) is quite extraordinary. While written in the careful language of bureaucrats, it is a damning indictment of how the province has fudged, falsified and failed to produce an assessment that anyone can trust.

Of course, in BC, former Minister for Deregulation (Kevin Falcon) made sure some years ago that EA processes would be so useless that they would not be able to delay, let alone stop, a favourite government project. Even so, the LRC and others have been pointing out the obvious failings of the work done by the Ministry of Transportation to justify the project, in the hopes that something might change. And now we have an endorsement from the Federal Government.

I strongly recommend that you download both documents and read them carefully. I would not want anyone to think that by selectively quoting them here I am trying to distort the message. I leave that sort of thing up to the Gateway Program, who have been aware of these failings - I think long before the feds put them on paper - but have chosen spin instead of an effective response.

Let’s start with Health Canada - emphasis has been added

the assessment generally focuses less on the effects of the PMH1 project, and more on the anticipated improvements in air quality over the baseline case (2003), which would be due to improvements in the efficiency of fuel use by the vehicle fleet and reduced sulphur in the fuel and associated vehicle technology changes. These improvements are independent of the proposed project and will take place regardless of approval. While they may be a useful additional consideration, and while some information comparing build vs. no build is included in the application, the misdirected focus of this assessment is inappropriate and may be misleading to the general reader.

Gordon Campbell is on record as saying that the Gateway program will improve air quality. This is because he says that it will reduce congestion. But that would only be true if the total amount of traffic in the region in future years was the same in the “with project” and “do nothing” case. Of course, no one would or has seriously suggested that we do nothing at all - but that was the “base case” used in all the province’s modelling.

All indented quotes from here on are from the Environment Canada document with emphasis added

We believe that decision makers will require additional information to assess the full extent of potential air quality impacts associated with the project. Our key advice and concerns are as follows:

• There is a significant level of uncertainty associated with traffic forecasting. The report does not adequately explain assumptions or the sensitivity of the model’s output to these assumptions. The traffic model potentially underestimates growth in traffic and resulting emissions and air quality effects due to induced traffic resulting from the Gateway program.

• The report predicts exceedances of several relevant ambient air quality standards. Predicted ambient pollutant levels are higher in the 2021 “with Port Mann / Highway 1 (PMH1)” scenario compared to the 2021 “without PMH1” scenario. We therefore advise that the project as described is predicted to contribute to some deterioration of air quality and an increase in GHG emissions in the study area over the baseline.

Don’t forget that this is the same government that is trying to portray itself as “green”. It is also the government that was proud of its achievement of using the EA process in Whatcom County, Washington to stop a power station at Sumas - because of its impact on air quality in the Fraser Valley. We do not have accurate information on the deterioration that will be caused by PM2H1 but I would not be at all surprised if the impact was not equal to or greater than SE2.

The Proponent states that none of the functionally different methods analyzed are able to meet all of the objectives of the project. However, the Proponent has not analyzed the potential for a combination of functionally different methods to meet the needs identified. A combination of alternative measures of approximately equal budget to PMH1 will allow a meaningful comparison.

Further, the relative environmental impacts of the various options available to meet the needs of the project have not been estimated. Although the Proponent is not obligated to select the option of carrying out the project with the least environmental impacts, it would be useful to review agencies if the relative environmental impacts of the various options were described.

The LRC has been saying that options are available now that would relieve some of the congestion on the Port Mann. One, a bus service, was actually planned for implementation by Translink. But that does not matter to the province, for in all their work they assumed that if the Gateway did not go ahead, nothing else would happen. Which, given the time period we are talking about is unrealistic - even if we kept on re-electing the BC Liberals until 2021.

Note also that EC recognizes that they cannot stop the project - no matter how badly the assessment has been biased or how poor the proposed mitigation measures will be.

Reductions in vehicle emissions and predicted improvements in localized ambient air quality impacts from 2003 to 2021 are expected to occur completely independent of the project. The project as proposed would reverse a portion of the improvements in air quality that will eventually be achieved through these investments. We suggest that additional mitigation and / or offsets are required to avoid such backsliding.

we advise that the project as described is predicted to contribute to some deterioration of air quality and an increase in GHG emissions in the study area over the baseline scenario. We recommend additional mitigation of emissions or impacts are necessary for pollutants including diesel PM; PM_2.5; road dust; NOx; and GHGs.

Although the language is careful, what has got up EC’s nose is that they have been working hard at producing new regulations nationally to get cleaner vehicles and fuels, and that the benefits of those are what produces the expected improvement the province has tried to claim for its much bigger highway. There is not much point coming up with cleaner cars if there are so many more trips - which, of course, will also be longer - that the overall air quality gets worse. “Backsliding” is not a word that a bureaucrat uses casually.

A review of the sizeable scientific literature suggests that new highway capacity generally encourages more vehicle kilometres travelled, influences land-use planning, enables car-dependent lifestyles and decisions, and induces traffic for vehicle trips that would otherwise not occur. These factors can contribute a significant volume of traffic beyond business-as-usual growth projections.

For example, Noland (1999) found that “Increased capacity clearly increases vehicle miles of travel beyond any short run congestion relief that may be obtained… While other factors, such as population growth, also drive increases in VMT, capacity additions account for about one quarter of this growth.”3

The 2005 technical report Planning and Traffic prepared by Delcan for the Gateway Program cites several studies and reports. For example, Boarnet (2002) found that induced travel is a true phenomenon, and that increases in highway capacity can facilitate changes in urban development that are associated with longer trips and thus more vehicle-miles travelled.4

It appears as though the modeling of future traffic in the “with PMH1″ scenario did not incorporate the effects of induced or generated traffic. For example, on p. 9-5 it states that future regional air emissions are based on the GVRD emissions inventory forecast for the Lower Fraser Valley, which incorporated projected changes in population, land use, and industrial activity along with changes in emission rates or controls. The report then states that the traffic emission estimates were replaced with more recent estimates based on the effect of the Gateway projects. We note that the 2000 GVRD emission inventory forecast did not incorporate Gateway projects. The location of population growth, transportation demand, and land use planning assumptions that GVRD used may be significantly altered by the PMH1 project.

For me this is the heart of the matter. Kevin Falcon has been saying that the growth will occur anyway. That the freeway will not change the future land use. We know that is not true. And so does he. For he has said exactly the opposite to the realtors of the Fraser Valley at his breakfast meetings - where he invited them to “get on board” the freeway expansion for it offers opportunities for making lots of money. For Kevin should know, being a former realtor himself, and having had such success with the Sea to Sky Highway project in opening up new development opportunities.

And we also know that induced or generated traffic has always followed the opening of new and expanded freeways. This is not new or surprising information. Indeed I can recall this being one of the reasons cited for the abandonment of London’s proposed “motorway box” back when I was still learning how to run a four step model, and being surprised at how crude and unrealistic it was then. And still is now, as the emme/2 model used to forecast this project simply ignores induced travel and assumes the same land use in both future scenarios. It is not that the proponents did not know about these effects - they have been well understood for many years - they simply chose to ignore them. In fact, in most project assessments for public transport it is usual to find ways to enhance model results - which is one reason why the Millennium Line has not yet achieved the demand usage forecast for it. So it is not surprising that with a freeway expansion designed to blow a hole through the Livable Region Strategic Plan, the province went out of its way to make sure it got the sort of results that would allow it to paint itself green, and deliberately chose a methodology that would minimize the traffic forecasts. After all, while most people like the idea of a quicker trip down the freeway, no one wants more traffic in their neighbourhood. And in the short term this is about getting votes: making money from property development takes a little longer.

Environment Canada agrees that tolling may offer a disincentive for single-occupant automobile users and possibly reducing the future GHG and CAC emissions associated with the project.

We would like a description of the assumptions and traffic modeling inputs for various TDM measures such as tolling and HOV lane allocation, along with the sensitivity of these assumptions on predicted future VkmT and emissions. We are particularly interested in whether the Proponent considered allocating all of the additional lanes from the PMH1 project to a combination of HOV / freight / transit, and what the predicted effects would be on VkmT, CAC and GHG emissions.

EC missed an important point here. The tolls only apply to the bridge. They do not apply where the growth of traffic will be greatest - short trips along the freeway on either side of the bridge, where there will be no tolls, because the government says it will not consider them. And as I have argued elsewhere, there is not enough freight transport across the bridge (8% of vehicles in the am peak hour) to make exclusive lanes worth considering in an expanded scenario. And the province refuses to look at a bus only queue jumper lane one the Surrey approach to PM now!

Environment Canada recognizes that the Proponent has proposed several measures to reduce the environmental impacts of the project, including a mitigation of air impacts during construction; allocating a portion of the new highway capacity to HOVs; a cycling plan along with financial commitments; enabling transit service across the bridge; etc. The Proponent should be commended for demonstrating leadership in this area.

However, despite these proposed measures, the Proponent is predicting an increase in emissions of GHGs and CACs, contributing to some deterioration in air quality over the future baseline. Further, from the information provided in the Application, there is significant uncertainty surrounding the predicted future traffic, emissions, and resulting air quality. If the growth in traffic and related congestion exceeds the modeled forecasts, the resulting emissions and air quality impacts could be much greater.

Environment Canada therefore believes that additional mitigation measures are necessary to ensure that the project will conform to the Canada-wide Standards for PM and Ozone, and will not result in unacceptable increases in GHG and CAC emissions.

Did you notice that? Campbell and Falcon have both been saying that it makes things better when their own studies show a deterioration. Spin is one thing. Telling porkies is another.

More Canadians are relying on their cars as their exclusive means of transportation, owing to an increase in suburban construction far from the downtown cores, according to a Statistics Canada study released Tuesday.The study, which examined the travel habits of Canadians in one given day, found that 74 per cent of Canadian adults said they made all their trips — as either a driver or a passenger — by car in 2005. By comparison, 70 per cent of Canadians reported they travelled everywhere by car in 1998 while 68 per cent said the same in 1992.

A Statistics Canada report said that 74 per cent of Canadians over the age of 18 made all their trips exclusively by car in 2005.

In the study, Statistics Canada analyst Martin Turcotte links the growing car culture to the development of new low-density communities built since 1991. Statistics Canada characterizes low-density communities as those in which two-thirds of the housing units are single, semi-detached and mobile homes.

“There are very clear links between living in a peripheral neighbourhood and depending on the automobile as the primary mode of transportation for day-to-day travel,” he said in the study, which culled data from the 2005 General Social Survey.

“The farther people live from the city centre, the more time they spend behind the wheel.”

read the rest of the story on CBC News

This is why I worry. Toronto and Montreal have larger, denser urban centres than our region, better transit and better commuter rail services. They are also larger in terms of population. We are bigger geographically, but thinner spread: there are pockets of density far apart, and a many to many trip pattern. All eminently predictable - and predicted - all supposedly tackled by our regional plan and growth strategy and largely ignored up until now. For as has been noted here many times, now we are at a crunch point. With a target to reduce CO2 emissions, rising oil prices and ditinctly iffy economic outlook now is the time to change direction.

It is not to late to cancel the Gateway. The province has a transit “plan” - actually a bunch of old plans but never mind that now - which with a bit of tweaking would produce a much better return on investment. So since we have the funds and we should not build the roads, we can get on with what we do need now. And do it quickly. We simply cannot afford the increase in car dependence that freeway expansion brings in its wake.

Also worth a look is the this column in the Globe & Mail on the same report. It is entitled “Transit in Canada. It’s a joke” by John Barber. And also an opinion piece on Tolls by Christopher Hume in the Toronto Star which is about Ontario but could be about here - or anywhere else in North America

Canadian Press

“People are now recognizing that something has to be done,” said Trent University economics professor Harry Kitchen, who wrote the study commissioned by the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario.

“There is a general consensus that charging the users makes the most sense.”

I put that link in - because it is the source of the study that I find newsworthy. What they say of course is common sense. What is surprising is who is paying for this to be said. Of course the construction sector wants to build things - and they think there needs to be “massive transportation investment”. But the study also says it is about reducing congestion and making better use of what is already there. And typically, the Ontario government has locked itself into a stance that says, just like BC, no tolls on existing roads, and the gas tax is good enough. Both lacking in elementary economic sense. Once again opinions based on dogma and not rational examination of the alternatives. The NDP also makes the very good point that before the tolls are applied you need real alternatives for those priced off. I suspect that the use of the word “transportation” by the RCCAO means “roads” with a few more buses as a sop to the PC crowd - or a bit of greenwash GO transit service. A somewhat older press release has Dick Soberman warning of the consequences of not getting the “population density forecasts contained in the province’s Places To Grow policy” . Now I have a lot of time for Dick - mainly because he is a very entertaining speaker, someone who can brighten up the dullest transportation conference (and some I have attended have been very dull indeed).

There is also this quote which is also revelaing

The Environmental Assessment process has become “one of the surest means of ensuring that nothing gets done,” says the report. The provincial government should streamline the process to reduce costs and accelerate decision-making.

Which of course has already been done in BC to the delight of the road builders. Our EA is one of the surest means of ensuring that any project no matter how badly designed and damaging to the environment will proceed with impunity.

That is the way that the Texas Transportation Institute puts the question in its latest report comparing congestion across US cities.

You can read the way they answer the question in this excerpt but I am going to copy the whole of the conclusion

The analysis shows that changes in roadway supply have an effect on the change in delay. Additional roadways reduce the rate of increase in the amount of time it takes travelers to make congested period trips. In general, as the lane-mile “deficit” gets smaller, meaning that urban areas come closer to matching capacity growth and travel growth, the travel time increase is smaller. It appears that the growth in facilities has to be at a rate slightly greater than travel growth in order to maintain constant travel times, if additional roads are the only solution used to address mobility concerns. It is clear that adding roadway at about the same rate as traffic grows will slow the growth of congestion.

It is equally clear, however, that only five of the 85 intensively studied urban areas were able to accomplish that rate. There must be a broader set of solutions applied to the problem, as well as more of each solution than has been implemented in the past, if more areas are to move into the “maintaining conditions or making progress on mobility” category.

Analyses that only examine comparisons such as travel growth vs. delay change or roadway growth vs. delay change are missing the point. The only comparison relevant to the question of road, traffic volume and congestion growth is the relationship between all three factors. Comparisons of only two of these elements will provide misleading answers.

And you thought I was long winded! They are being careful, and they only talk about “slowing the rate of growth” - as though congestion getting worse is inevitable. Moreover it only deals with the transportation aspects of the problem and as we all know (or should do) transportation and land use are two sides of the same coin - and just studying one of them as though it has no effect on the other is pretty bloody silly. BUT it does put the lie to what Kevin Falcon has been saying. No one has managed to cure congestion by building roads. The only thing that a few cities have managed to do by building roads frantically is to keep up with the growth of congestion - so it doesn’t get any better but it gets worse more slowly.

There is also a logical fallacy here. All the TTI has done is look at what has been done in a lot of US cities. It does not actually tell you very much about what can be done, other than point to the failure of road building on its own as a solution. It also does not look at any other indicators of liveability other than traffic congestion - and I would venture to suggest that we need to be more concerned about a lot of other things - like the quality of life or the environment or the effectiveness of other spending programs that could have used the money that otherwise gets wasted on ineffective highway expansions.