Ban new-roads, parking lots: Environment Hamilton

[SteelTown]

Ban new-roads, parking lots: Environment Hamilton
Says toll roads, new taxes and in-fill development needed to battle climate change

March 25, 2009
Eric McGuinness
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/536622

To combat climate change, Environment Hamilton is calling on the city to freeze its urban boundary, build no more roads or parking lots and commit millions of dollars to light rail transit.

Those are three of 10 immediate steps the non-profit group says “are the minimum necessary” to head off global catastrophe.

Even though the organization recently gave the city poor marks for implementing 10 “baby steps” suggested two years ago, members are pushing for more.

The new list of 10 actions includes lobbying the province to let the city toll parkways, tax parking spaces and tax vehicles.

Don McLean, re-elected to the board at the annual meeting where the list was approved Tuesday night, was asked if he thought councillors were willing to take such measures.

He said: “Politicians, I think, think the public is much more foolish than the public is. Most people realize car dependency is a bad thing that is ruining the future for their kids and grandkids.

“I think tolls would be acceptable if the revenue helps pay for transit and bringing in light rail. They talk about transit as a subsidy program. Roads are a subsidy program.

“There is a lot of enthusiasm for light rail. If this community can make a commitment to a  new stadium, it can commit to light rail and expedite provincial dollars coming here.”

For further information, visit www.environmenthamilton.org.


Climate change action plan

1. Permanently protect Hamilton’s foodlands by freezing the urban boundary and locating 100 per cent of growth within this boundary.

2. Commit to no net increase in surface parking lots and total road space (kilometre lanes) for motor vehicles.

3. Commit now to paying the municipal portion of a light rail system for Hamilton.

4. Use traffic calming to achieve 30 km/h speed limits in residential areas where there is a demand.

5. Mail 10 free bus tickets to each household for use on HSR or DARTS.

6. Establish 100 new community garden plots each year for the next five years on underused city lands, and support them with equipment, materials and staffing.

7. Begin purchasing EcoLogo-certified green electricity to achieve the goal of powering all city facilities (owned and leased) with renewable energy by 2020.

8. Adopt a municipal buy-local purchasing policy, establishing targets and requiring an annual staff report on implementation.

9. Conduct energy audits of all city-owned housing and develop a capital program to implement the recommendations.

10. Lobby the provincial government for legislative authority to allow the city to toll roads, tax parking, impose vehicle taxes and require green building standards.

[Millstone]

Why does light rail always have to be tied in with some climate change mumbo jumbo.

[emge]

even if you consider climate change unimportant in your books, if it boosts the rest of the case for light rail, why be negative about it?

[ryan_mcgreal]

Originally Posted by Millstone

Why does light rail always have to be tied in with some climate change mumbo jumbo.

Likewise, why do some people persistently ignore, downplay, or distort the overwhelming empirical evidence of climate change just because it threatens a particular worldview?

[adam]

Light rail is infrastructure, one of the best ways to help an economy in a recession/depression. But I'd much rather have light rail on the major arteries than 5 lanes of 1 way traffic.. I wonder what cancer rates would be like if there were 1/2 as many cars on the road?

[coalminecanary]

oh adam, that's enough of your mumbo jumbo!

[Millstone]

Originally Posted by ryan_mcgreal

Likewise, why do some people persistently ignore, downplay, or distort the overwhelming empirical evidence of climate change just because it threatens a particular worldview?

Man-made climate change has been proven? That's like saying Al Gore doesn't burn embarassing amounts of jet fuel en route to his next book signing.

lol, hippies

[crhayes]

Technically nothing is ever proven in science . You just collect evidence and form theories that support the evidence; theories are always subject to change.

[hamiltonguy]

I hate Al Gore, and think he distorts the facts to suit his quest to make money.

But I accept climate change...mostly...there are still some questions in my mind as to what percentage is the earth's cycle and how much is due to greenhouse gases. But in the end, it doesn't matter. We're screwed no matter what.

[ryan_mcgreal]

Originally Posted by Millstone

Man-made climate change has been proven?

I didn't say it was proven, I said it is supported by overwhelming empirical evidence (in peer reviewed studies, to boot).

As crhayes points out, scientific theories aren't "proven", in the sense that showing you a million white sheep doesn't prove that all sheep are white. A theory is scientific if it makes testable predictions and is hence falsifiable; that is, if there is a logical possibility of proving it false. Therefore you could disprove my claim that all sheep are white by producing a black sheep.

(This, incidentally, is why creationism and "intelligent design" are not scientific theories. Since they make no testable predictions, they cannot be falsified.)

The evidence for anthropocentric climate change is very wide and deep, coming from a multitude of studies in a variety of disciplines, from geology to meteorology to biology to oceanography. The case against it is sporadic, mostly non-rigorous, and originates mainly from funders and researchers with conflicts of interest, i.e. who benefit materially from delaying policy efforts to address climate change.

Since the theory is a complex model of prediction in a complex, dynamic system with emergent characteristics, it is technically impossible to make an exact prediction of what will happen. Instead, climate modeling seeks to take into account as many variables as possible so models can sketch out statistical probabilities.

Changes to the climate system are not linear but chaotic, lurching suddenly and disruptively from one dynamic to another. This has already happened and has been observed and measured in detail.

If anything, climate models to date have tended to under-estimate both the speed and disruptiveness of actual changes to the climate system. Scientists are regularly discovering new feedback mechanisms - many of them positive feedback loops that actually accelerate warming, like the melting of the Siberian permafrost - and adjusting their models to take these into consideration.

Of course, none of this will make any difference to you. If you have refused until now to undertake an honest review of the scientific literature on climate change, nothing I write on some forum is going to change your mind.

Originally Posted by Millstone

lol, hippies

Because nothing says "hippie" like tens of thousands of people with PhDs in science, tenured professorships in research institutions and publication in peer reviewed scientific journals. lol.

[waterloowarrior]

Climate change action plan

1. Permanently protect Hamilton’s foodlands by freezing the urban boundary and locating 100 per cent of growth within this boundary. Doable, but would increase housing prices and could drive development elsewhere (leapfrog). Will run into problems with legal requirements to have land available for development. Likely not feasible, but the province may be flexible.

2. Commit to no net increase in surface parking lots and total road space (kilometre lanes) for motor vehicles. I understand the idea, but if the population is growing than new roads will need to be built and new parking for new residents and businesses. Maybe I am over-analysing this - makes sense for the core though, or at least for municipal parking lots.

3. Commit now to paying the municipal portion of a light rail system for Hamilton. Good idea.. put the ball in their court

4. Use traffic calming to achieve 30 km/h speed limits in residential areas where there is a demand. Good idea, many other places are considering this

5. Mail 10 free bus tickets to each household for use on HSR or DARTS. Could be a way to get people to try out the bus... but also could be quite expensive with limited increase in ridership

...
10. Lobby the provincial government for legislative authority to allow the city to toll roads, tax parking, impose vehicle taxes and require green building standards. The more funding powers cities have the better

[omro]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

5. Mail 10 free bus tickets to each household for use on HSR or DARTS. Could be a way to get people to try out the bus... but also could be quite expensive with limited increase in ridership

Expensive, to mail out the tickets or to honour them?

If people don't use the tickets, then it's just the cost of mailing them, right?

Could always hire a few teens/students and drop them through doors by hand, might be cheaper than mailing them.

Time limit the tickets.

[omro]

Originally Posted by bigguy1231

It doesn't matter what we do here in Canada or in the rest of the Western industrialized world for that matter. We only represent 1/5th of the worlds population. The other 4/5ths are in the developing world and they are not about to retard their growth to appease our environmental concerns.

However, if we don't hold ourselves to a high standard, how can we ask anyone else to?

The "developing" world is developing faster than the "developed" world did (seeing as they don't have to reinvent the wheel, just be taught how to make it). While this isn't widespread, some bright people in those countries (or from other countries working there), are actually working to implement green technologies now, during that country's development, rather than having to build "dirty" technologies now, rip them out and reimplement them green later, like the "developed" world has to.

[sofasurfer]

Originally Posted by omro

The "developing" world is developing faster than the "developed" world did (seeing as they don't have to reinvent the wheel, just be taught how to make it). While this isn't widespread, some bright people in those countries (or from other countries working there), are actually working to implement green technologies now, during that country's development, rather than having to build "dirty" technologies now, rip them out and reimplement them green later, like the "developed" world has to.

Yup. In a former job, I worked with folks who did some interesting projects in developing countries across different sectors - and a common theme was how these countries are poised to not only take advantage of innovations to develop more efficient infrastructures, but to use them in innovative ways that appropriate the most from the technology in the face of real-life economic constraints.

So not only do you see more efficient tech being used, but in a smarter way - because poorer countries can see they can get more out of it at micro- and macro-levels. Food for thought?

[highwater]

We are dinosaurs who are about to get leapfrogged.

[adam]

Here's an article that discusses how commuting on a bicycle actually improves quality of life and is safer than driving a car on the highway. Imagine getting to work fully awake and happy from getting fresh air, avoiding road rage, etc. without needing a coffee.
http://www.runmuki.com/commute/commuting2.html

[emge]

Originally Posted by adam

Here's an article that discusses how commuting on a bicycle actually improves quality of life and is safer than driving a car on the highway. Imagine getting to work fully awake and happy from getting fresh air, avoiding road rage, etc. without needing a coffee.
http://www.runmuki.com/commute/commuting2.html

For those who think "Nobody bikes in Hamilton," there's a link off his site to an article called "Nobody Bikes in L.A." also.

"Not only has riding my bike enabled me to glide past all this gridlock (in fact, I'm often not even aware it's happening), but it has made me realize that it's an illusion. The city itself is not gridlocked—merely the narrow asphalt ribbons onto which we squeeze all our single-occupant cars. On the back streets I now take, everything is quiet and serene. The main roads may mimic Times Square on New Year's Eve, but the areas between L.A.'s clogged arteries comprise mile after square mile of low-density, low-stress residential bliss (the same is true, I suspect, of most American cities).

.... Don't get me wrong—Los Angeles is an almost pathologically bike-unfriendly city. It has pathetically few marked bike lanes, and those it has often peter out for no reason and at the worst possible place. Its drivers go ballistic when a cyclist slows them down, even for a few seconds. And of course, it's so sprawling that some commutes would simply be impossible by bike (although I suspect more than we realize would actually be faster on two thin wheels)."


Seems fairly relevant to our city, eh?

Personally I haven't biked for a while because I'm so glad I can walk places in Hamilton, and I had loaned out my bike and just got it back this year. Compared to the nasty bike commutes I've done in other cities though, there's only a few routes to avoid in Hamilton, though the one-ways are pretty unfortunate.... more reason to avoid the "main arteries" though.

[ryan_mcgreal]

Originally Posted by adam

Here's an article that discusses how commuting on a bicycle actually improves quality of life and is safer than driving a car on the highway. Imagine getting to work fully awake and happy from getting fresh air, avoiding road rage, etc. without needing a coffee.

I can personally attest to this (except the part about not needing a coffee...). Every single day I get to work in a better mood than when I left home. I defy any driver to make the same claim with a straight face.

[Jon Dalton]

[Jon Dalton]

What's particularily sad is these arguments are coming from through-commuters, those who drive through the core on our one-ways to hit the 403 to wherever. They are the least of the stakeholders in how we configure our roads.

If we reduce traffic capacity and it bothers people who don't live, work or shop here, what loss is it? They will find ways around it, and that's just fine. Anyone who likes 5 lanes of one-way isn't keen on stopping here anyway.