slow down heading north

North End citizens fight city for more traffic calming measures

North End residents have no problem with the rest of the city traipsing through their neighbourhood to visit the waterfront.

They just want them to be polite about it.

That’s the gist of an expected nine-day Ontario Municipal Board Hearing that began Monday at the McMaster University’s Downtown Centre. The hearing will examine whether the municipality’s Setting Sail planning document, which will lower speed limits on many North End streets, does enough to keep the area’s roads safe enough.

The North End Neighbours, who have appealed the matter being heard before OMB chair Harold Goldkind, says it doesn’t. The group, through their lawyer Herman Turkstra, want speed limit reductions from 50 kilometres an hour to 30 km/h on Burlington Street East, Wellington Street, Ferguson Avenue, John Street and James Street, a redesignation of Bay Street North from collector to local road status and other traffic measures to safeguard the neighbourhood’s 1,200 children.

The neighbourhood is bounded by Wellington Street on the east, the CNR tracks on the south, and Burlington Bay on the west and north sides.

“When you hear councillors say they don’t want people from Ancaster who come down to get a suntan to get a parking ticket, the real issue is does the city really intend to ensure the traffic calming work in the North End and will it be safe for kids to cross the street or not,” Turkstra said.

“The view of the North End Neighbourhood Association is that the present plan does not do anything to address the core issue of child and family safety,” he said.

Turkstra plans to present evidence that what the North End wants is a trade off of 32 seconds, the difference it may take a waterfront bound visitor from travelling down a major collector at 30 km/h rather than the current 50 km/h.

“What the North End is saying is: ‘If you want to come from Ancaster and drive through the neighbourhood, that’s fine. Use James Street and drive slowly. That’s all. Come. We welcome you. We would prefer if you came on foot or by bike or by bus, but if you are going to come by car the speed limit is 30 (km/h), be careful.

“It’s like coming into someone’s house and saying, ‘Do you want me to take my shoes off?’ When you’re a guest in somebody’s house, you’re kind to them,” he said.

But Brian Duxbury, representing the city, told Goldkind that there is a narrow set of issues that are in conflict between the two parties.

Duxbury said a number of traffic calming measures have been approved by city council as part of a traffic management plan included in the Setting Sail policy plan.

“It’s the city’s position that the plan contains a robust and aggressive bundle of traffic calming measures for the North End Neighbours,” Duxbury said. “The city’s position is that no further revisions are needed to Setting Sail.”

The hearing is set to continue Tuesday.

mini-mid pen proposed

CATCH News – November 7, 2010

Flamborough expressway backed by city but opposed by residents

The provincial government is recommending a 35-kilometre highway across Flamborough and the Niagara Escarpment to connect the 403 to the 407. Opposition from residents to this partial mid pen highway was clearly evident at a meeting Wednesday night at the Rockton fairgrounds. City staff and business organizations attended to urge the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) to extend the expressway down the peninsula all the way to Fort Erie and the US border to serve the aerotropolis.

The meeting was called by Citizens Opposed to Paving the Escarpment and Ward 14 councillor Rob Pasuta and was attended by over 75 people. It was addressed by MTO officials and consultants who are working on the Niagara to GTA corridor environmental assessment study. MTO consultant Patrick Puccini outlined a hierarchy of steps starting with optimization of the existing transportation system, followed by rail and transit expansion and widening of existing roads, and finally by construction of a new highway in the Fort Erie-Welland area and study of one across Flamborough.

However, city staff, led by Neil Everson and Alan Kirkpatrick of the economic development department, urged the MTO to make the priority the construction of a full 130 km mid-peninsula highway from Fort Erie to the 407 in Burlington. Everson noted the city’s desire to increase greenfield development, and to connect the aerotropolis (Airport Employment Growth District) with surrounding markets via the mid-pen as well as expansion of highway 6 to six lanes.

Flamborough residents didn’t agree with either government. They contended that the MTO and city are not considering the value of agricultural lands in the planning process and suggested that the planning projections are failing to anticipate rising oil prices.

Pete Zuzek, a member of Citizens Opposed to Paving the Escarpment (COPE) argued that MTO projections for population growth are overly optimistic and based on consultant’s opinions rather than independent peer-reviewed research. He maintained that air quality, remaining agricultural lands, and protection of the Niagara Escarpment ecology are under-valued in MTO’s planning.

In a report presented at COW on October 12, city staff recommended that a mid-peninsula highway be made a priority rather than the “last possible alternative” it was made in the MTO study. At its last meeting before the elections, council voted 15-2 – with Bob Bratina and Brian McHattie opposed – to endorse the staff recommendations.

Bratina moved an amendment to re-insert earlier staff concerns about the cross-Flamborough road. Pasuta seconded the motion but subsequently withdrew his support and voted for the staff package, but on Wednesday evening he said he now opposes the new highway through Flamborough.

Everson and Kirkpatrick foresee an increasing “north-south shift” in goods movement between Hamilton to manufacturing centres in southern US states, such as Georgia and Alabama, rather than traditional markets in Ohio and Michigan. John Best, a representative of the transport industry, and Daniel Rodrigues, a member of the transportation committee at the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce echoed the city’s submission to the MTO.

Both stated that anything less than a full mid-peninsula highway would inhibit goods movement, although Best conceded that the west Hamilton highway segment would likely not be used by truckers, who are unlikely to use the 407 toll highway. Rather, Best and Rodrigues want the highway focused on the Niagara border crossing as well as the GTA.

Best claimed the QEW through Niagara was “overbuilt.” MTO representatives and consultants however noted that the ease of widening the QEW, plus the smaller growth projections in the region, minimized the need for a new corridor in this region.

Everson noted his disappointment at the failure of previous city planners to reserve land next to the Lincoln Alexander Parkway for industrial development. Along with the AEGD, they expect the mid-peninsula and Flamborough highways to offer new opportunities for development – significantly expanding the footprint of the corridor.

When asked why the city doesn’t develop brownfields downtown, Everson claimed too few lands are available due to the unwillingness of brownfield owners to sell them, and he projected there will be a rapid decline of available greenfield sites in the AEGD and other business parks.

Residents vocally opposed any reduction in farmland, either through widening or new road building, noting that over 40,000 acres of farmland have been lost in Flamborough. Pasuta, who supported the AEGD, spoke in favour of protecting farmland.

Judi Partridge, the councillor-elect from Waterdown, was in attendance, and intends to host future community meetings in her ward to review the MTO study.

No end in sight to Toronto’s commuter pain: survey Drivers’ anger at long travel times worse than in New York, Los Angeles, says IBM

Adrian Morrow

Globe and Mail Update Published on Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010 1:01PM EDT Last updated on Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010 1:42PM EDT

It's more aggravating to commute in Toronto than in New York, Los Angeles or Berlin – and it's only gotten worse over the past few years, according to a new survey.

IBM released the Commuter Pain Index, a study of more than 20 cities across the globe Wednesday. The report surveyed more than 8,000 commuters on a range of issues including commuting time, whether driving was hurting their health and if commuting caused them to be less productive.

While the top ranks were mostly filled by cities in the developing world (Beijing fared worst) and Toronto ranked 12th worst overall, 64 per cent of Torontonians surveyed said traffic had gotten worse in the past three years. Only commuters in Johannesburg were more likely to say things weren't improving.

Overall, 57 per cent of respondents around the world said traffic was affecting their health.

“It comes back to the trend towards more people living in urban centres,” said Pat Horgan, an IBM vice-president. “Urbanization happens faster than their infrastructure can catch up.”

The consequences are stark, Mr. Horgan said: poorer health, lost productivity and economic stagnation.

There's no easy fix. IBM advocates a wide range of solutions including better public transit, more information for commuters and flexible work hours to reduce bottlenecks on the roads at rush hours.

“We can't just afford to build more lanes of traffic,” Mr. Horgan said.

The cities doing the best job of managing traffic are the ones already implementing such multi-faceted strategies, Mr. Horgan said. Singapore, for instance, has been synchronizing traffic lights while Melbourne has rapidly expanded its light rail transit system.

Perhaps most tellingly, Mr. Horgan points out, commuters in cities with longer travel times than Toronto seem to be feeling less pain than Torontonians. The reason?

“In those cities, people can see that things are getting better,” he said.

Ranking of the emotional and economic toll of commuting in each city on a scale of one to 100, with 100 being the most onerous:

• Beijing: 99
• Mexico City: 99
• Johannesburg: 97
• Moscow: 84
• New Delhi: 81
• Sao Paolo: 75
• Milan: 52
• Buenos Aires: 50
• Madrid: 48
• London: 36
• Paris: 36
• Toronto: 32
• Amsterdam: 25
• Los Angeles: 25
• Berlin: 24
• Montreal: 23
• New York: 19
• Houston: 17
• Melbourne: 17
• Stockholm: 15

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/no-end-in-sight-to-torontos-commuter-pain-survey/article1624502/

TED talk on reversing suburbia

http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_suburbia.html

Well worth the 20 minutes. It can't happen soon enough...

cars top industry in air pollution

Air quality improving in Hamilton Cars biggest polluters TheSpec.com - Local - Air quality improving in Hamilton Cars biggest polluters

Emma Reilly
The Hamilton Spectator

(Jun 16, 2010) Breathe deeply. Hamilton's air is cleaner than you think.
Over the past 10 years, the city's air quality has improved dramatically, according to a report from Clean Air Hamilton presented to council members yesterday. In fact, it's been steadily getting better since monitoring began in the 1970s.
"There's no question we're better than we've ever been," said Brian McCarry, a McMaster University chemistry professor and chairperson of Clean Air Hamilton.
"Back in the 1960s -- 40, 50 years ago -- the air was much, much worse."
Major pollutants, like nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide, have all gone down 35 to 50 per cent in the past decade. Last year, the weather and recessionary business slowdowns also contributed to the overall decline in air pollution.
Though most people in Hamilton think the city's air pollution comes from industry, McCarry said, the majority of the problem is caused by cars and trucks.
Since cars have become much cleaner over the past few decades -- and residents are making increased efforts to get out of their cars more often -- decreased vehicle emissions are one of the main reasons Hamilton's air has gotten better.
"Industrial emissions are also going down, but they tend to go in jumps and starts," McCarry explained.
The air quality improvements are so significant that even the air quality around the Red Hill Valley Parkway -- initially expected to get much worse once the highway opened -- has improved from pre-construction levels.
"Frankly, this is a bit of a shocker," said Denis Corr, a consultant who prepared the city's Red Hill report.
The only two days the Red Hill Valley Parkway exceeded the province's air quality standards over a six-month stretch were during a region-wide smog alert on Aug. 17 last year, and during the fire at the Archmill House woodworking factory in Ancaster last Aug. 25.
ereilly@thespec.com
905-526-2452

We keep building infrastructure we can’t afford to fix

CATCH News – June 3, 2010

Massive underspending on infrastructure confirmed

A new study has confirmed that the city needs to spend at least $120 million more each and every year to fix roads and other infrastructure. The report has some politicians pushing for more federal and provincial government grants, but at least one councillor is suggesting it’s time to stop building things we can’t afford to repair.

The city’s first provincially-required Tangible Capital Assets Report was presented to yesterday’s audit and administration committee. It records under-spending in Hamilton of $120.3 million last year on items such as roads, bridges, underground pipes, and water and sewer pipes and facilities.

“Based on the estimated replacement cost of $15.8 billion, an annual sustainable spending level to ensure that our assets are replaced and redeveloped in a timely manner would be approximately $333 million,” says the staff report accompanying the study. “Capital spending on asset replacement and redevelopments in 2009 amounted to $213.1 million, which resulted in a gap of $120 million.”

Similar shortfalls have gone on for years, and raising this amount from property taxes would require about a 25 percent increase in current rates or more. Last year’s deficit was actually lower than normal because the city received substantial stimulus funding from senior levels of government.

The biggest deficit ($91 million) in 2009 was in road spending, with water and wastewater facilities short $24.9 million and a deficit of $24.8 million for “underground and other networks”. The purchase of more than the average number of new buses last year meant that category had spending $15.6 million above the annual target.

Chad Collins and Terry Whitehead encouraged city staff to seek more funding from senior levels of government, with Collins proposing that road monies be the only requests made for any future infrastructure dollars. Council put road projects at the top of a long list submitted for stimulus funding, but the items actually supported were mainly for water projects and recreational facilities.

“When the programs come out at the provincial and federal level, does it make sense for us not to put anything else on the list, except for roads projects,” Collins suggested. “Maybe it’s a lesson learned for us, in light of what happened last time. I understand that we were trying to capture as much money as possible, but at the end of the day, making that list larger than maybe it should have been has probably cost us something as it relates to the infrastructure deficit related to roads and other projects like sidewalks and sort of water issues.”

Bob Bratina responded with a quite different approach.

“This looks to me like somebody’s got four clunker cars they can’t afford to fix, so he goes out and buys another car,” the ward two councillor observed. “And the comment that I hear at the table today is well the province didn’t give us enough money to fix these roads. I’m not very good at this accounting stuff, but this seems fairly simple to me. We keep building infrastructure we can’t afford to fix.”

City finance chief Rob Rossini responded that the report showed “how much stuff we actually own” and suggested that reduction is one of the objectives of the province in requiring the reports.

“Part of the rationale for the province doing this is for municipalities to look at their assets as to which ones do we still need, which ones can we surplus and rationalize on a going forward basis,” Rossini noted. “So I think that’s part of the underlying thing that the province wants us to do.”

Bratina pointed to the recent decision of well-known investor Warren Buffet who “just bought a railway” because he’s calculating its value will climb over the long haul.

“He said that the US highway system infrastructure is so broken down they can’t possibly fix it all to the level of sustaining the need for transportation. So he picked railroads. We’re not alone in this.”

Collins countered with a brief history of federal and provincial government cuts to transfers to municipalities over the last 15 years.

“While it’s all well and good that the books look a little better at the other levels of government, it’s come at the expense of municipalities, and all municipalities over the last decade have lobbied both levels of government for additional infrastructure funds to try and get back some of those historic traditional transfer payments that we were accustomed to utilizing over several decades,” he stated, urging staff to make more lobbying for increased payments a top priority.

Whitehead closed out the discussion by recounting Prime Minister Harper’s speech last weekend to the meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities where the federal leader warned the focus of his government is on deficit reduction, not more stimulus funding. He said the city should expect to continue to get federal gas tax monies, but not additional funds.

That grant totals nearly $32 million a year – two-thirds of which was allocated to roads with the remainder helping pay for city hall renovations.

Councillors were told in January that the city is adding an average of 50-70 kilometre lanes of roadway each year and that annual maintenance costs for each kilometre lane are roughly $10,000. That report estimated that the infrastructure spending deficit is about $150 million a year.

CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at www.hamiltoncatch.org. You can receive all CATCH free updates by sending an email to info@HamiltonCATCH.org.

The Unintended Consequences of Cul-de-sacs

Though suburban cul-de-sacs have long been attractive as quiet, safe places for families, their disadvantages are becoming clear. One of the biggest problems is interference with motor- and foot-traffic flow. Research by Lawrence Frank, Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Transportation at the University of British Columbia, looks at neighborhoods in King County, Washington: Residents in areas with the most interconnected streets travel 26% fewer vehicle miles than those in areas with many cul-de-sacs. Recent studies by Frank and others show that as a neighborhood’s overall walkability increases, so does the amount of walking and biking—while, per capita, air pollution and body mass index decrease.

Last year, the Virginia legislature took action against the municipal costs of cul-de-sacs and passed a law limiting them in future developments; the new policy was highlighted in the New York Times Magazine’s “Ninth Annual Year in Ideas.” Along with such moves to more-accessible street systems will come an economy that rewards businesses’ proximity to customers and employees. —A.W.

About the Maps

These images compare a one-kilometer walk in the Seattle suburb of Woodinville with one in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. The former is limited by a disconnected street network and few destinations within walking distance, while the latter offers easy access to parks and shops.

Click here for a larger image of the graphic.

http://hbr.org/2010/05/back-to-the-city/sb1

Tolls, taxes, fees for transit? John Tory aims to lessen the stigma

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/tolls-taxes-fees-for-transit-john-tory-aims-to-lessen-the-stigma/article1549090/

John Tory, like the policy battle he’s about to join, has evolved since 2003.

In the mayoral race that year, he “rose up in great indignation” at David Miller’s suggestion that Toronto’s roads be tolled.

Now, seven years later, Mr. Tory intends to use his platform as chairman of the Toronto City Summit Alliance to ratchet down the public indignation that often greets five ideas for funding public transit: road tolls; a Greater Toronto sales tax; a parking tax; a gas-tax hike and a property-tax increase.

“The notion that it’s none of the above is not on,” Mr. Tory said. “This is a test of leadership because otherwise to say you’re going to build all this transit without saying how you’re going to pay for it is, to me, a meaningless promise.”

The Toronto City Summit Alliance, which Mr. Tory took over after the death of founder David Pecaut, has quietly formed a working group of about 25 top minds to pore over five options for funding transit, along with other issues of transportation and infrastructure in Greater Toronto. Members have been drawn from the Toronto Board of Trade, regional transportation agency Metrolinx, and the prominent planning firms Urban Strategies, Inc., and IBI Group, among other organizations.

The official goal will be to recommend ways to raise the approximately $2-billion a year Metrolinx has said it needs to crisscross the GTA and Hamilton with new rapid-transit projects over the next 25 years.

More important, the TCSA, the city-building organization that helped conjure Luminato from thin air, intends to make it possible for candidates to utter the words tolls and taxes without being crucified.

“What’s going on right now is a bit of denial in the populace at large,” said Joe Berridge, a partner at Urban Strategies, Inc. and member of the TCSA subcommittee. “They feel we should just build this transit and get on with it. But we’re looking at a very big build and governments that are not flush with the cash. In some way or another we’re going to have to tax ourselves in the region – whether that tax is in the form of a gas tax, sales tax or various kinds of road pricing.”

Beating congestion has so far dominated the race to replace David Miller. His light-rail plan, Transit City, has been temporarily derailed by the province, which postponed $4-billion in transit funding in its budget in March.

Although the delay made the transit-funding question more urgent, all but two major candidates have rejected road tolls as a means of raising new revenue. Women’s Post publisher Sarah Thomson has pitched a rush-hour toll on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway to pay for more subways, while George Smitherman has said he’s open to discussing tolls.

“Any mayoral candidate who says you can have your cake and eat it too on transit is just not telling the truth,” Mr. Berridge said.

The TCSA group, which has met twice, intends to hold public roundtables this summer, Mr. Tory said. He said it was too early to say whether members would have firm recommendations in time for the Oct. 25 election. The TCSA’s next formal summit is not until February, 2011 – less than a year before provincial politicians face the electorate. Most of the funding options would need Queen’s Park’s approval.

The Toronto Board of Trade, meanwhile, intends to unveil separately its recommendations for funding transit in plenty of time for municipal voting day. “We may take it down to a short list [of funding options],” said Carol Wilding, president of the board. “We’ll ask the candidates to do the same thing, recognizing they may not want to go there. But we’ll be pushing.”

auto show stimulates violence? only in NYC?

http://thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/748284

---

4 shot, 33 arrested in Times Square melee TheSpec.com - BreakingNews - 4 shot, 33 arrested in Times Square melee

NYPD blames auto show crowd

Colleen Long
NEW YORK — Hundreds of young men spilled into midtown Manhattan near Times Square early Monday, brawling and shooting guns after the New York International Auto Show in an annual night of mayhem the mayor called “wilding.”

Four people were shot and 33 were arrested, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct on the streets not far from the Jacob A. Javits Center, where the auto show is held.

Three men and a woman were arrested later Monday on gang assault charges related to one of the shootings, police said. It wasn’t clear whether anyone who fired shots was among those arrested. Another 21 were issued summons for disorderly conduct or were given juvenile reports and released.

Additional officers were on patrol over the night because similar problems have happened during past auto shows, dating at least to 2003, chief spokesman Paul J. Browne said. Last year, there were 27 arrests on the same night. In earlier years arrest numbers ran in the low 20s, Browne said. A teenager was stabbed in a similar ruckus in 2006, and in 2007, another teen was slashed in the arm.

Browne described those arrested Monday as “young men looking for trouble” after the auto show.

Most of the people arrested were men in their 20s from boroughs other than Manhattan. At least two were known gang members, Browne said; the four people arrested on gang assault charges — three men ages 17 to 23 and a teenage girl — were not believed to have fired any shots, police said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg described the night’s events as “wilding,” using a word created by the media during the notorious 1989 rape of the woman known as the Central Park jogger. Five men were charged with gang-raping her, but their convictions were thrown out in 2002.

“We loaded the area up with police, but they can’t be everywhere,” he said. “We’re not going to tolerate it. ... This is just a bunch of people who shouldn’t be on the streets if they behave this way, and we’re not going to stand for it.”

Really good article on why people take transit

The fundamental attribution error in transportation choice

Original link: http://psystenance.com/2010/03/15/the-fundamental-attribution-error-in-transportation-choice/

Posted by Michael D on March 15, 2010

In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error refers to the tendency for people to over-attribute the behaviour of others to personality or disposition and to neglect substantial contributions of environmental or situational factors. (Actually it isn’t quite fundamental, as collectivist cultures exhibit less of this bias.) People are generally more aware of the situational influence on their own behaviour.

Thus, the fundamental attribution error in transportation choice: You choose driving over transit because transit serves your needs poorly, but Joe Straphanger takes transit because he’s the kind of person who takes transit. This is the sort of trap we find ourselves in when considering how to fund transportation, be it transit, cycling, walking, or driving.

Let’s say you live in a suburban subdivision. You can afford to drive, and it’s the only way you can quickly and easily get to your suburban office and to the store, and pick up your child from daycare. How do you interpret the decision of other people to take transit? Is it something about the quality of transit where they are? More likely you are going to attribute it to something about those people themselves — they’re poor, or they’re students, or they’re some kind of environmentalists. It’s difficult for people to realize the effect of the situation, e.g. one with frequent transit service to many destinations along a straight street that is easy to walk to. (I’d also point out that students, the poor, and even environmentalists do drive as well.)

Why do Europeans walk more, cycle more, and take transit more? Surely it is something about their culture? But this is an excessively dispositional attribution. I won’t deny that culture plays some role in transit use, especially in the decisions that lead to the creation of transportation infrastructure. But that infrastructure itself and the services provided on it are a strong influence on the transportation choices people make. The European infrastructure situation facilitates those other modes of travel much more so than does typical North American transportation infrastructure.

Where our infrastructure gets closer to the European model, so does the transportation mode choice, and conversely, where Europe is more like the North American model, Europeans turn out to drive more. If culture were really the driving force, you wouldn’t expect to see much fluctuation in transportation choice. But just as North America suburbanized and fell in love with the private automobile, so did Europe, albeit to a lesser extent. Only recently has Europe started again building new tram lines and clawing back space from the car. Copenhagen, now viewed as an urban cycling mecca, wasn’t always one. The rise of the car drastically lowered cycling there in the 1960s. Copenhagen owes its recent fame to restrictions on parking and to its dedicated cycling infrastructure, which have led to a cycling renaissance.

Consider how North American visitors travel in Europe. How do they get around London? The Underground. How do they get between London and Paris? The train. How do they get around Amsterdam or Copenhagen? Quite possibly they rent a bike. When in Rome, they do as the Romans do: they walk, take the subway or tram, or maybe ride a Vespa. What do European tourists do in North America? Generally they rent a car, because that’s the only realistic way to travel in most places. There are exceptions, of course: tourists to New York City or Washington, D.C. take the subway because that’s the most convenient way to travel in those cities.

We’re not so different from tourists in how we choose to get around. We may have our own preferences, but the biggest influence on our choice of transportation mode is what modes are available to us and how useful they are. Above all this is determined not by culture and personality but by the kind of infrastructure and transportation service provided.

Addendum: Jarrett Walker has some great commentary on this post at Human Transit. More context was given in the Streetsblog write-up.

traffic and pedestrian fatality rates in Canada

January 27, 2010

How pedestrians, cyclists and drivers can get along a little better

By CBC News
CBC News

Drivers, pedestrians and cyclists can all take some simple precautions to reduce the risk that they will be involved in an accident. While road fatalities have steadily declined in Canada since the early 1970s, the number of pedestrian deaths has remained at close to 400 for the past decade.

It's war out there as an ever-increasing number of drivers, pedestrians and cyclists compete for space on the world's roads.

Motor vehicle-related fatalities have been a fact of life since Irish scientist Mary Ward fell under the wheels of her cousin's steam-powered automobile in August 1869. She fell out of the vehicle as it hit a sharp curve - long before cars came with seat belts, air bags or even doors and drivers were distracted by GPS devices, cellphones or hot coffee spilling in their laps.

Thirty years later, Henry Bliss stepped off a trolley in New York City, turned to help the woman he was accompanying and was hit by a taxi. He died later in hospital, becoming the first pedestrian to be killed by a motor vehicle.

The World Health Organization estimates that more than a million people die each year on the roads. In Canada, 2,889 people were killed in traffic accidents in 2006. More than 1,500 were drivers of cars or trucks, approximately 635 were passengers in cars or trucks, 375 were pedestrians and 87 were cyclists.

While the number of Canadians killed on the roads has been falling steadily since the early 1970s, the percentage of fatal accidents involving pedestrians killed has remained around 13 per cent. According to Transport Canada:

• 419 pedestrians were killed in 1999.
• 335 pedestrians were killed in 2001.
• 374 pedestrians were killed in 2006.

In the city of Toronto, eight pedestrians were killed in the first 26 days of 2010 compared to 31 for all of 2009. Six others died during the same period of January in the suburbs surrounding the city.

Pedestrian fatalities
Vancouver (2007)	13
Edmonton (2007)	13
Toronto (2007)	23
Montreal (2007)	24
New York City (2006)	157
Los Angeles (2006)	99
Chicago (2006)	48

Most pedestrian and cyclist deaths occur in urban areas, often during rush hour or at night. Most victims - more than 60 per cent - are male.

Gil Penalosa, transportation activist and the executive director of the agency 8-80 Cities [http://8-80cities.org/index.html], has been vocal in trying to make cities safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

Penalosa has advised organizations around the world on how to reduce the rate of accidents in urban areas. Among his recommendations are:

• Create speed bumps and more signs to increase driver awareness.
• Install more lights on city sidewalks.
• Ban right turns on red lights.
• Reduce speed limits.
• Give pedestrians a five-second head start over cars on green lights.

Worst countries for pedestrian fatalities
Country	Population	Year	Total road traffic fatalities	Pedestrian fatalities (% of all traffic fatalities)
Peru	27,902,760	2007	3,510	78
Mozambique	21,396,916	2007	1,502	68
El Salvador	6,857,328	2007	1,493	63
Ukraine	46,205,382	2007	9,921	56
Ethiopia	83,099,190	2006	2,517	55
Statistics from other major countries
Russian Federation	142,498,532	2007	33,308	36
China	1,336,317,116	2006	89,455	26
UK	60,768,946	2006	3,298	21
Mexico	106,534,880	2007	17,003	21
Germany	82,599,471	2007	4,949	14
Canada	32,876,047	2006	2,889	13
Australia	20,743,179	2007	1,616	13
France	61,647,375	2007	4,620	12
U.S.A.	305,826,246	2006	42,642	11

Source:World Health Organization [http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241563840_eng.pdf]

Angelo DiCicco, general manager of Young Drivers of Canada for the greater Toronto region, says changing the number on a sign won't change anything unless speeding laws are better enforced.

"You have to change the driving culture in our society," DiCicco said. "The best way to do that is through education, making the driver more aware of pedestrians and cyclists."

DiCicco notes that an advanced green for pedestrians and cyclists could be helpful because it would make drivers more aware of - and better able to see - others on the road.

[For the interactive CBC page go to http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/01/27/f-road-safety-pedestrians-drivers.html) ]

drivers complain

[this from 2007, i like the suggestion that drivers complain all the time, bad roads, and then construction...]

Mountain mayhem! TheSpec.com - Local - Mountain mayhem!

Extensive road construction leaves drivers feeling they have nowhere to turn

Carmela Fragomeni
The Hamilton Spectator

(Oct 5, 2007)

Hurry up and wait. That's the mantra for motorists as Hamilton ramps up its road construction on the central Mountain.

Lime Ridge Mall is all but cut off. Major arteries -- Upper Wentworth, Garth, Stone Church, Mohawk and West 5th -- have all been torn up. Even the Wentworth exit from the Linc has been shut down at times.

The delays are driving motorists nuts as they try to find alternate routes -- and end up sitting in long lines. Rush hour is mayhem.

City staff say the construction is needed, and yes, all at once. These are major roads needing major work as soon as it can be done and with the roads budget being slashed next year, it's important to do the repairs now.

They say drivers can't have it both ways -- complain about the condition of the road and then also complain when it's getting fixed.

Some Mountain residents and drivers disagree with the city starting a project like the one by the mall before finishing another.

"I don't know what the urgency was to get it done while we're tearing up everything else," says resident Tony Tirone. "It's frustrating, time consuming and it just seems unnecessary."

cfragomeni@thespec.com

905-526-3392

http://thespec.com/article/259634

vanishing traffic

Roadblocks ahead

• 24 January 1998 by Mick Hamer
• Magazine issue 2118. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
• For similar stories, visit the Cars and Motoring Topic Guide

CLOSING roads cuts traffic, according to a report due out next month. The study, commissioned by London Transport and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, suggests that the computer models used by urban transport planners produce the wrong answers.

The report is also bound to lead to calls for the British government's White Paper on transport, due later this year, to include a radical programme of pedestrianisation and expanded public transport.

Computer models used by transport planners effectively assume that closing one road moves traffic elsewhere, causing congestion. But researchers led by Phil Goodwin of University College London, the government's adviser on transport policy, found that this is not what happens. The team analysed 60 cases worldwide where roads had been closed-or their ability to carry traffic significantly reduced.

Goodwin's draft report shows that on average 20 per cent of the traffic that used a road seems to evaporate after it has been closed. In some cases up to 60 per cent vanishes. The examples studied by Goodwin's team were mostly in urban areas. However, the same arguments may also apply away from major cities.

"There is more scope for traffic restraint," says Steve Atkins of London Transport, who was involved in commissioning the study. He described the results at the Institution of Highways and Transportation in London earlier this week.

The report is the logical extension of the finding that building new roads generates traffic, accepted in 1994 by the government's Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment. "If extra road capacity generates more traffic, then the closure of roads is bound to cause less traffic," says Keith Buchan, a London-based transport consultant who advises the government on traffic forecasts.

Many of the road closures studied by Goodwin's team were forced on the planners. In the summer of 1994, for instance, structural problems forced the City of London to close Tower Bridge temporarily. It is a good example of "traffic evaporation", says Joe Weiss, the City's assistant engineer. "Three years later the traffic had still not returned to its original level."

One of the best documented cases is London's Hammersmith Bridge, which has been closed to all traffic except buses and cyclists since February 1997 after routine tests found that the bridge was not strong enough to cope with its load of 30 000 vehicles a day. London Transport surveyed people using the bridge a few days before it closed, and were able to contact the same individuals in the following weeks. Of the commuters who drove to work across the bridge at the beginning of 1997, 21 per cent no longer drive to work (see Figure). Again, congestion in neighbouring areas has not markedly increased.

But where does the traffic go? The report reveals that the commuting habits of individuals can vary enormously, even when their journeys are not disrupted by road closures. On different days, the same person may drive, use public transport or work from home. This flexibility allows people to cope with road closures.

Experts suggest that the report could have an immediate impact on policy. "It's quite interesting for the proposed pedestrianisation of Parliament Square and Trafalgar Square," says Hugh Collis of the transport consultants Ove Arup. "They should just do it."

-30-

[The report has been around for over a decade, but I get the feeling it would make traffic "planners" nervous here...]

The article is from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15721180.200-roadblocks-ahead.html

Walkscore site

This likely isn't a perfect indicator, but I think that it's a useful tool when assessing a neighbourhood: http://www.walkscore.com/

building past the budget lines

*CATCH News – **January 21, 2010*
*Infrastructure deficit: What was said*

This week the Public Works committee formally received a report http://www.hamilton.ca/CityDepartments/PublicWorks/CapitalPlanning/Asset+Management/SOTI/2009+SOTI+Report.htm> on the state of the city’s infrastructure warning that the spending shortfall for roads, pipes, facilities and other structures exceeds $150 million a year. That led to the following exchange between downtown councillor Bob Bratina and the general manager of public works, Gerry Davis, transcribed by CATCH.

Bratina: Gerry, how much does it cost to maintain a lane kilometre ?

Davis: Summer and winter included, it’s approximately $10,000 per lane kilometre.

Bratina: How many lane kilometres have we added in the last ten years, roughly?

Davis: We’ve added, I would say, probably upwards 500-700 lane kilometres.

Bratina: A year, on average?
Davis: On average about 50 or 70 a year, Rick? So 60.

Bratina: So if we can’t afford to maintain these lane kilometres of road, why do we add them? It begs the other question. It’s a bit rhetorical but we’re providing – do the development charges that we apply to development recover the costs?

Davis: Through the growth component, when a developer – they’ll pay for the hard services, the capital cost, primarily. There may be a local component – roads, water, sewers. And then that road is handed over to the municipality to maintain. And other services are then required by the municipality – and that’s public works, policing, fire. But what happens in areas – we have assessment growth generated by the property taxes. That doesn’t come specifically to the police or fire or public works for waste collection, road maintenance, but there is a growth in revenues. I’m not saying it covers everything but that is, the capital cost is, primarily paid by the developer.

Bratina: Okay, so the evidence is that this so-called growth isn’t working because we’re $145 million a year short. So who should pay for that? And what I’m suggesting is that we’re building cheap houses for people who work in other communities. We hear this constantly shoved down our throat about how many people leave the city every day to go to work somewhere else. Well that’s because somebody who’s got a job in Peel can’t afford, at his wages a house there, so they get a nice taxpayer-subsidized house in Hamilton.
A good example is Maple Leaf , because the average, the 900 or so on the production line, mostly live in Hamilton, because they can’t afford on the wages they get to live there.
So we have to consider as a council, and get the accurate information. It’s fine to say well we’re going to get all these new taxes from all these new houses. There’s your proof that we’re not getting the money back. And if you look at a growing community – like let’s say Alberta – Edmonton and the oil boom – they’re desperately short of houses. And there’s new jobs, there’s new people moving in. They’ve got to build houses. We don’t. We don’t have all these new jobs being created. All we’re doing is subsidizing residences for people who work elsewhere.


CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at www.hamiltoncatch.org . You can receive all CATCH free updates by sending an email to info@HamiltonCATCH.org

electric cars shock to gas tax

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Susan Tusa, Detroit Free Press

Tax cash cow turning a corner? TheSpec.com - Business - Tax cash cow turning a corner?

Electric cars will zap fuel revenue stream

Ross Marowits
The Canadian Press

MONTREAL (Jan 20, 2010)

The eventual popularity of electric cars will force governments to consider alternative revenues as they prepare to wean themselves off fuel taxes, industry observers say.

Canada's three levels of government share about $15 billion in taxes from fuel annually. But some of that revenue could be at risk if consumers turn en masse to plug-in electric or hybrid vehicles.

"What is being talked about is taxes on electricity, taxes on other modes of transportation like highway tolls," said Al Cormier of Electric Mobility Canada.

But the founder of the organization that promotes electric cars says taxation shouldn't be a major issue for at least five years. It will depend on fuel prices and electric car purchases.

The industry has forecast that there will be 500,000 plug-in electric cars in Canada by 2018. That's a small fraction of the 20 million vehicles on the country's roads today.

HEC business school professor Pierre-Olivier Pineau said governments have to rethink their tax intake as society looks to rid itself of its oil consumption habit. He said the most likely option is to implement carbon taxes or increase ones already in place in B.C. and Quebec.

Part of the government's tax solution might also involve charging higher rates to recharge a car than for residential uses.

Existing networks only charge one price for each household.

But "smart grids" that could be available in a decade would permit variances.

"It's becoming a buzzword and people think it will change a lot of things," he said.

Growing interest in electric cars has Canada's provincial and municipal electric utilities conducting pilot projects to get ready.

Hydro-Quebec recently announced a partnership with Mitsubishi to test the performance of 50 plug-in i-MiEV electric cars in the town of Boucherville over the next three years.

The $4.5-million project provides the public utility with another window on the electric car market. It is also testing a Ford Escape hybrid and a hybrid pickup truck, while batteries developed by its TM4 subsidiary are being tested overseas in vehicles being developed by Indian carmaker Tata.

Spokesperson Stacey Masson said the Mitsubishi project is part of the energy giant's overall strategy and will help it evaluate the impact of electric vehicles on its vast network.

B.C. Hydro launched its own trial of the cars in November and is also awaiting delivery of the Nissan Leaf in 2011.

Toronto and Calgary are also looking to test electric cars.

The vehicles are seen as part of the solution to global warming as they emit no greenhouse gases.

http://www.thespec.com/

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Hamilton-Toronto corridor

http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/701840

Rush-hour blues reach Hamilton TheSpec.com - Local - Rush-hour blues reach Hamilton

QEW, 403 are both slowing drivers down

Meredith Macleod
The Hamilton Spectator

(Jan 9, 2010)

As congestion continues to trudge outward from Toronto, Hamilton is now the western front.

Morning rush hour drivers cruising into Hamilton, either on the QEW from Niagara or the 403 from Brantford, find their speeds dropping 15 to 20 kilometres an hour upon hitting the city limits.

When commuters hit Burlington, it gets much worse, with speed dropping another 30 km/h.

Traffic on the Toronto-bound QEW slows to 57 km/h on the QEW, from Fairview Street in Burlington to Royal Windsor Drive in Oakville, and then to 52 km/h from Erin Mills Parkway to Hwy. 427 in Mississauga.

The drive home is worse.

Speeds drop to 43 km/h from Royal Windsor to Fairview, before picking up again past Hwy. 20.

Drivers on the 403 heading east from Brant County are moving at an average of 105 km/h in the morning until they hit Wilson Street in Ancaster. As a crush of cars from the Lincoln Alexander Parkway inch onto the highway, mean speed drops to 86 km/h from Wilson Street to the QEW/407 split, hitting as low as 40 km/h at the Linc.

The story during the evening commute is almost exactly the same, only in reverse.

The Travel Time Study by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, a mammoth 1,700-page document that helps guide planning for the province's major highways in the Golden Horseshoe, found that generally, congestion is getting worse, travel times are growing and drivers can count on long commutes more of the time.

That's no surprise to local commuters who say they are leaving earlier to get to work.

"It's slowly gotten longer," said Marshall Craft, who has been driving to Toronto from Hamilton and now Grimsby for 10 years.

It leaves commuters like Craft looking for that sweet spot -- a quasi-scientific formula of latest departure time without running the risk of arriving late.

He heads out the door at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday to Thursday but at 7 a.m. on Mondays and Fridays when he says traffic is lighter.

That generally gets him to work at 8:15 a.m., 45 minutes early. But if he leaves any later, he doesn't have a hope of sitting at his desk at 9 a.m.

In MTO jargon, Craft is building in buffer time -- the extra minutes needed to consistently arrive on time. The ministry's study found that commuter trips in 2008 could be expected to take 13 to 24 per cent longer than the same trip in 2002.

Craft, a graphic designer for a Toronto newspaper, says the biggest change he's noticed is heavier traffic heading west through Oakville and Burlington in the morning.

MTO data bears that out. Gone are the days of watching jammed lanes pouring into Toronto in the morning and out at night from free-flowing lanes in the opposite direction.

Bustling development and job growth all across the Golden Horseshoe means rush hour now cuts both ways.

For instance, a stretch of the Niagara-bound QEW in the morning takes 15-20 minutes to travel. The same stretch heading to Toronto takes 16 to 25.

Goran Nikolic, head of traffic planning for the MTO's central division, says given the huge tracts of housing built around Burlington and Hamilton, local commute times are staying relatively stable.

"We're talking minutes here or there ... There are problems on the QEW during peak hours but that's not new for anybody," he said.

"There has been phenomenal development and it's phenomenal we're still moving."

The MTO study included 4,270 kilometres along 13 major 400-series highways and 92 arterial roads in the GTA.

Nikolic says about 61 per cent of the studied highways didn't see a significant change in travel times and average speeds between 2006 and 2008.

But those that did, including segments of the QEW, Hwy. 404 south, the 410, and 401 eastbound, got markedly worse.

The biggest drop in speed came in the 401 collector lanes between Mississauga Road and Dixie Road, which fell from an average of 95 km/h in 2006 to 50 km/h in 2008 during the morning rush.

The eastbound QEW between Erin Mills Parkway and Hwy. 427 gained speed, from 48 to 52 km/h between 2006 and 2008, but the stretch is still considered the fifth slowest 400-series segment.

Overall, the survey, which used a fleet of GPS-equipped "probe" vehicles covering 141,000 kilometres, found congestion is a problem in the core GTA but is growing in outlying areas as well.

Marilyn Walden of Hamilton has racked up a sizable 407 bill thanks to her long commute to Oakville and Brampton.

The drive to two campuses of Sheridan College where she works as an IT technician is taking longer all the time.

"It's chaos anytime ... if I try to leave here after 3 p.m., I'm stopped on the QEW."

The hike to Brampton where she works two or three days a week takes 3 1/2 to 4 hours daily. And that's with $160 a month in highway tolls. According to Mapquest, it should take her more like 90 minutes two ways using the 407.

"I dread those days... the drive is just brutal."

On the plus side, improvements on the QEW, 401 and other highways boosted average speeds between 2006 and 2008. As well, high-occupancy vehicle lanes cut travel times by as much as 43 per cent in morning rush hours on the eastbound 403.

But Nikolic acknowledges that when capacity in those lanes is reached, the benefit will be cut.

mmacleod@thespec.com

905-526-3408

Commuters

* Total number of workers (over 15) in Hamilton, Burlington, Grimsby census metropolitan area: 324,650

* Number working in own municipality: 180,815

* Number working in CMA: 13,970

* Percentage travelling outside CMA: 30 per cent

* Percentage of Ontarians leaving CMA to work: 20 per cent

* Number in local CMA travelling to work by private vehicle: 274,705

* Number taking public transit: 28,340

* Number walking or biking: 19,010

Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census

Where Hamiltonians are going to work:

Hamilton: 145,480

Burlington: 24,270

Oakville: 7,090

Toronto: 6,925

Mississauga: 6,810

Brantford: 1,925

Milton: 1,860

Cambridge: 1,850

Guelph: 1,105

Haldimand: 1,070

Brampton: 1,055