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How urban sprawl goes against the green

DEBORAH JONES

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 2:43 PM EST 02/04/07

B.C.'s dream of slashing emissions rests with where newcomers choose to live ...Read the full article

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  1. Mr Fijne from Calgary, Canada writes: Second day of attacks against British Columbia? Hey Globe, do you have an open hidden agenda too?
  2. Name Witheld from Vancouver, Canada writes: Vancouver's inefficiencies are not helped by the city's harebrained traffic policies. Commuter traffic is forced to 'stop-and-go' through city streets (Main, Fraser, Cambie) because the city refuses to employ measures to reduce congestion. Obstacles such as un-coordinated traffic lights, unrestricted left turns, on-street parking and that stupid, stupid Main Street 'bus bulge' project conspire to block the smooth, predictable flow of traffic, as surely as cholesterol blocks the flow of blood to the heart. The result is that traffic repeatedly stops and starts, consuming much more fuel compared to operating a vehicle at constant speeds. The city's assumption is that by making driving in the city inconvenient and expensive, more people will be 'pushed' onto transit. But transit (a regional responsibility) is repellant, poorly designed and poorly operated (there have been reports of bus drivers showing up to work DRUNK) and generally un-reliable and inconvenient for anyone not travelling from the near suburbs into the downtown core. Transport in Vancouver could be so much more efficient if politicians came down from their ivory towers, and chauferred limos and solved problems instead of causing them with their misguided, self-important 'policies' and pet projects. My vehicle of choice for travel in Vancouver? A bicycle.
  3. Steven C from Vancouver, Canada writes: "Currently, with built-in government subsidies for fossil fuels and no major political parties willing to impose a carbon tax, he said, it's unlikely that transportation habits in B.C. will soon change."

    Can G&M someone elaborate the "built-in subsidies" for fossil fuel? As far as I know, there aren't any. Furthermore, gasoline tax in the GVRD has been increased several times already in the past few years.
  4. Jo Blow from Toronto, Canada writes: Because the cost of fossil fuels (and all other products) to not reflect their cost to society, there are "built in subsidies". Basically, the user is benefiting from the use of the product at a discount, while society is paying for the full cost (i.e. the bad air, the health issues associated with pollution, the landfill costs for garbage).

    Products need to be priced to reflect their true cost to society. The market will not take care of this on its own. Changes need to be made to the tax system. This need not be a "tax grab". It could be tax neutral. The goal is to change behaviour, not raise money. It would be a more just system. If someone wants to drive a big SUV and pollute our air, that person should pay for all the ills he or she is inflicting on us. Until such changes take place, the economic system will be inefficient and consumption patters will not change.
  5. Keith Petreman from Ottawa, Canada writes: The best thing Vancouver has going for it is geography. The mountanous outskirts make traditional urban sprawl difficult or impossible. With this in consideration, you'd think Vancouver would have better public transit. I read somewhere that the last major public transit upgrade in Vancouver was with the '86 expo over 20 years ago. If Vancouver tries to embrace sprawl, the problem will only get worse.
  6. W G from Calgary, Canada writes: Steven C,

    Roads are an example of a built-in subsidy for fossil fuel use. I believe this is what the author is talking about.
  7. Leedo Toelg from Vancouver, Canada writes: This article, while ostensibly attacking my own suburban lifestyle, said what needs to be heard. Due to the low price of energy, there is simply no incentive to alter our lifestyles. All the protests, Goracles, articles, scientists, finger-wagging eco-fascists and Rick Mercer commercials won't make the slightest difference in people's consumption habits. Energy must be taxed - heavily. Some of the tax money raised should be put towards efficiency incentives (like hybrid vehicles, home insulation, etc.). The "invisible hand" will quickly realign our energy guzzling habits. The answer is so simple, yet the article states the ugly truth - no political party will touch it. It seems that democracy is a significant hindrance to solving this problem.
  8. C. Welch from Canada writes: This article is typical of the many stories about Vancouver urban sprawl: its lack of differentiation makes it look like people who live in downtown Vancouver are the same people who live in the suburbs, except the latter have made selfish and wasteful choices. This is nonsense, of course. The huge majority of people in the City of Vancouver are childless, whereas the suburbs contain a large percentage of families. And the families have not chosen the suburbs because it's "cheaper". It's more than that. For poor, working class and middle class families, it's a mathematical impossibility to live downtown, particularly if you have two or more older kids. The city's attitude to families ranges from indifferent to contemptuous. It makes virtually no effort to develop family housing. And, in fact, "family housing" is rarely part of the conversation. In Vancouver, "affordable housing" almost always means housing for one or two persons.

    On the other hand, none of this stops Vancouverites from piously criticizing suburban commuters. The hypocrisy of this is absolutely sickening. I really wish Vancouver would recognize its own responsibility for suburban sprawl. I left Vancouver many years ago. I would have loved to stay, but the suburbs were the only place to go with my family. And Vancouver planning was part of the reason.

    As for transit, the debate always seems to be either-or. In my view, we need improved road systems (esp. the Port Mann) because our bush-league road system is already obsolete for existing traffic, let alone traffic 10 years from now. Also, much of the traffic is regional and commercial in nature, so I don't see how public transit will ever address that demand. Nevertheless, public transit is also necessary, particularly for families which can't afford to keep 2 vehicles running at the same time.

    So, we need both. It's going to be painful, but I don't see much choice.
  9. Peter Lucas from langley, Canada writes: When fuel taxes were initiated, the governments at the time promised that these funds would be used for roads and bridges and so on. Originally, the funds were segregated, but now just flow into 'general revenues'. Only a tiny fraction of fuel taxes are used for roads. Drivers subsidize other government activities.

    Governments can't replace the market for efficient allocation of resources, yet posters here somehow trust the government to set the 'correct' price of fuel.

    Governments say if we build more roads, people will drive more and the new roads will be congested. That makes about as much sense as saying if we build more hospitals, people will get sick more.
  10. Jeff Wishart from Victoria, Canada writes: There are both built-in and supplemental subsidies of the fossil fuel industry. Roads and a lack of link between smog-forming pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions and automobile usage is an example of the former. But the governments of Canada give some 5 billion dollars a year in direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry (source: L. McQuaig It's the Crude, Dude). So Steven C., you can see that you are wrong about there being no subsidization of the fossil fuel industry in this country.
  11. Tom Pasquit from Canada writes: Keith Petreman, Vancouver has huge urban sprawl it's just funnelled out the Fraser Valley. The air quality has diminished greatly ouver the past few years, as farmland has been swallowed up. The blue tinge to the air is very evident. Surrey, Langley, aldergrove, and soon Abbotsford will morph into one.
  12. Tom Pasquit from Canada writes: Peter Lucas,
    People will drive more if there are more roads, and no people won't get more sick if there are more hospitals, but if access is easier hospitals will be used more..........
  13. Leedo Toelg from Vancouver, Canada writes: Re: Peter Lucas "Governments can't replace the market for efficient allocation of resources, yet posters here somehow trust the government to set the 'correct' price of fuel."

    Peter, the market will price energy at a level that buyers will pay and sellers will provide - fair enough. What the market takes no account of is the indirect costs of burning the energy - pollution and climate change. If cars can dump their exhaust into the atmosphere at no cost, then no pollution cost will be built into the price. But the pollution is still there, and it has a negative effect on us all. It is up to government to attribute costs to account for the pollution. There is no "correct" price - this charge will be somewhat arbitrary - but still necessary.

    Jeff Wishart: if Linda McQuaig says the fossil fuel industry is subsidized at $5 billion per year, well then it has to be... total B.S.
  14. J F from Canada writes: Actually Peter Lucas you're incorrect. It's a well documented fact that anytime you build more roads it increases the number of vehicle trips generated. And anytime you increase road capacity or make improvements to increase the flow of traffic it creates more opportunities for additional land use development. It's called induced traffic demand. Load's of references to this...google it.

    And...why build more roads to handle peak behaviour for 4 or 6 hours of the day when traffic volumes are fine for the rest of the day? Let's not forget that most of our roads are empty from 9pm till 6am. What a waste of money, all that infrastructure sitting dormant. I don't feel like paying for that, I'd rather my money go to more hospitals.
  15. doctor business from vancouver, Canada writes: What we have is a colossal failure of the imagination. All of our media is geared to selling cars and manipulating people into thinking they are useful - which they are not. Cars are sold as status symbols, as sex icons, as identity symbols. But, underlying it all is the myth of utility. People know - at a certain level - that auto marketing panders to irrational desires. People understand that SUVs are often sold with a false image of utility. What they don't recognise is that ALL CARS are sold under the same false pretenses. But the system is so thick that it might as well be true. We use 40% of our land area in cities (look at a picture from space and count the grey asphalt - sometimes it is more than 40) for cars. Alternatives are impractical not because they can't be useful but because there are trillions of dollars of infrastructure that is made for one thing and little else. We can't even see how absurd it is. We are so conditioned to this that we think it is normal for our life to be endangered as we cross the street. What we really need is our billion dollar hollywood machine to start manufacturing desires that have some basis in sustainable reality. Read Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach. Much better, read The Age of the Bicycle by Miriam Webster. These stories imagine a world that is not build around cars. Yes, it is possible. Cars are a very new phenomenon but they are totally dominant. Last, I'd like to point out how much more efficient and fun bicycle trailers are at moving cargo around the city. Because it is more fun, it could be socially 'cool' but it will not be as long as status and adult priveledge is defined by riding a dangerous metal box around that weights ten times it's maximum load. The question of government is this: are we in a democracy? Right now, not really. We need to step up to the plate and make it happen, governments are good at selling the idea that they are in control but as you can tell by the deep climate crisis... it's illusion.
  16. W M from Canada writes: Bingo! It's about guts and more and more it appears that we are a gutless people who elect gutless politicians.
  17. Vic Hotte from Kettleby, Canada writes: Slash population growth, and the greenhouse gas emissions will follow. Are politicians so bereft of new ideas that they keep pursuing old ideas from the 19th and 20th centuries? Vancouver is crowded as it is because there has been too much forced population growth. Would politicians plan for 250,000 deer in Stanley Park? No, the deer would consume too much of the park. How is it different to plan for too many people?
  18. Gallows Of Shame. from True North., writes: it is unsustainable for any species to sprawl unchecked.
  19. J P from Vancouver, Canada writes: Driving my car to work...30 minutes there, 45 minutes home. Using transit is 1- 1.5 hr each way and three changes. Our roads are busy all the time not just 9-6. Build accessible transit and I will use it. I did for four years when it was just one bus to work. Better access to transit and incentives and it will work.
  20. Duncan Munro from Langley BC, Canada writes: We should be designing efficient housing for families, IE town houses that have their own yard, but take up so much less land and require less energy to heat. It is madness to design modern single family dwellings, packed in a few feet apart from one another and with tiny yards as well. We should ban the building of detached single family dwellings in the valley, and force developers to offer saner, greener, less expensive and higher density designs.
  21. Joshua Hergesheimer from Vancouver, Canada writes: Many people consider Vancouver to be "too crowded," with "too many people." First off, this is probably not true, compared to world standards (even been to India, China, or many cities in Western Europe?). I might concede that there are too many people IF it is also agreed that many of those people want things that are increasingly implausible in an urban environment - a 5 bedroom house, two cars, a big yard, and easy access to big box stores. This liefstyle is simply not compatible (or feasible) with reality in a city with millions of people.

    In London my wife and I lived in a flat that was about 30 square metres. Sure, it was small, but, then again, our life was out in the city. We could walk to a market, baker and butcher in less than 5 minutes, a supermarket in 10, our train station in 3, and our local park in 2. We could take a train into London in 10 minutes, and the whole world was there.

    No one is "forced" into the suburbs. People CHOOSE to live there because they get more space for their money, then complain when they are stuck in traffic to get to work to pay for their ridiculously large house and accompanying suburban sprawl lifestyle (drive to get milk, for example).

    No one - I MEAN NO ONE - should need to drive to get milk. If you do, you live too far away from a shop. A great heuristic device.
  22. Mike Saunders from Houston, United States writes: I have been reading the fascinating posts from the many passionate and informed readers on this well written series. Clealry the issue of GW and the steps needed to address the problems that arise from it are important to many. However, I couldn't help but notice that each article generates about 20 posts, whereas an article about a contretemps between a bus driver and a woman with too much perfume generated... 242 posts!?!?! Hmmmm.
  23. C. Welch from Canada writes: Joshua H seems to prove my point. Thank you. You mention you and your wife lived in a flat in London. That's nice. Where were all your kids? Could you please tell me where a middle class family (median income of $55,000) can afford a 3 bedroom anything in Vancouver? The idea that they therefore "choose" to live in the suburbs is just silly. They can't choose; they're forced to live in the suburbs - esp. if they want a "lifestyle" (more language of choice) comparable to a single yuppie in a two bedroom condo in Vancouver.
  24. Vincent Clement from Windsor, Canada writes: Ah, the good old "drive to get milk" myth. It's a commonly used by some to demonize the suburbs. Most people don't buy milk at the convenience store because it costs less at the grocery store. If people need additional groceries for a meal or two, they will pickup them up on their way home at a nearby grocery store.

    Thing is that at one time, most places that are labelled as urban, city or inner city were suburbs. I also find it amusing that people harp about the lack of density in the suburbs, but many new developments in the Greater Toronto Area have densities that are higher than many established areas (e.g. Forest Hill, Rosedale, much of North York, Etobicoke and Scarborough) in the City of Toronto.
  25. F/A josquin from van, Canada writes: We will not act on our own. We need financial incentive to be environmental stewards.

    Polluting industries are beginning to see the light. They see their competitors making $$$$ on energy-efficient autos, energy-saving light bulbs... Some major companies are already saving millions on revamping their own energy consumption methods etc. Once money is to be made, industry will follow.

    We will not see consuming habits change until we see those dollar savings ourselves. Most of us do not have the luxury of effective action. We sit and worry. We try to drive less. We switch from plastic to paper. We shake our heads hopelessly at the situation.

    My own unscientific survey at work turns up------ "I feel hopeless, terrible situation, I try to do a few things to help, what else can we do?" That is the inevitable response. These are not the words of environmental warriors. We need incentive!We are a creature that needs a dangling carrot, a real one, not just distant fear as the only motivator to responsible action.
  26. Johnny Squeeze from Canada writes: The suburbs are a triumph of democracy and are not going away...

    The better question is why everyone needs to crowd into downtown during the hours of 9 - 5... We're struggling to shoehorn a 21st century population into a 19th century way of doing things.
  27. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from Vancouver, Canada writes: Duncan Munro from Langley BC

    You are such a hypocrite with your comments. It is people like you that are the problem; contributing to the urban sprawl by living in the Fraser Valley. Must say that your comment about banning single detached houses in valley is laughable considering that you live in one. So, it's okay for you to live in the Valley in a single detached home, but not for someone else. What a hypocrite you are!

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