climate change

Mayor Miller got the chance to spin around on a "Copenhagen wheel" while at the global climate change negotiations. The Mayor is reported as saying he'd like to make biking and walking a priority for Toronto. What that means: bike lanes, snow clearing for cyclists, and priority green lights for bikes:

Most of the other mayors are nearly unrecognizable, hidden as they are behind scarves and hats and tightly wrapped coats. But he even wears his Toronto Football Club scarf loosely. “I feel at home in this weather,” he said.

And so do the bikers of Copenhagen. Because the local government clears the bike paths of snow before or at the same time that they clear the roads. Just like they get a green light in crossings before the cars do.

“In Copenhagen, biking and walking has priority, and I would like to take that back to Toronto,” David Miller said. Another thing he wants to take home is the windmills.

[A big welcome to Hamish, a long time cycling advocate and our new guest blogger.]

One big and valid criticism of Toronto bike lanes is that we have a patchwork, and not a network. This is especially true in the western end of the older city, where a set of situations have kept cycling less safe and robust than it needs to be.

These conditions are: an irregular grid; streetcar tracks on the main streets; a set of restrictions from the Weston rail corridor that slices through the entire area on the diagonal; and political will.

What has resulted is a very large swath of older Toronto that remains extra dangerous, with resulting tragedies and harm to many cyclists, even though it's all inherently bikeable and lots of people still do.

This gap in safety problem has been 'fessed up to in the Bike Plan, though the City has known that there's heavier east-west bike travel demand from the west end for nearly 15 years. Finally, we're getting some trace of movement in slight improvements to this travel - the recent extension to the Harbord St. lane has been great, as was the small 1km of bike lane over the Dundas St. W. bridge.

But issues remain, including the "What next?" after crossing over the railtracks at Dundas/College.

Did you know that we should take into account the embodied energy when we compare the consequences of our energy use and transportation? WattzOn provides tools for us to track our energy consumption and compare it to a recommended 2000 Watt lifestyle (as a sustainable lifestyle). Eightlines on Twitter alerts us to the embodied energy of bicycles and e-bikes, which are both much lower than a typical energy efficient car such as the Toyota Prius. (The embodied energy is the energy it takes to create the object, which is then divided over the lifetime of the object.)

It comes as no surprise that a steel frame bicycle has a very low embodied energy at about 7.9 Watts (these numbers are necessarily ball-park). The bike only makes up a tiny fraction of the "2000 Watt lifestyle".

I'm trying to reduce my greenhouse gases while traveling. This experiment began last year as I researched alternatives to flying to visit family out West. It ends with my discovery that taking the train is actually nice and that I'll try to take it over flying. It didn't hurt that airline prices went through the roof as the price of oil reached angelic proportions. The real question is if my resolve will hold with oil prices crashing.

Last Christmas I took the Greyhound bus across the country to visit my family in Alberta. I researched and compared prices between the train, bus and carpooling -- all contribute considerably less carbon dioxide than air travel. Trains and buses are fairly close in terms of the greenhouse gases they emit during similar trip lengths. They differ greatly, however, in terms of comfort and romantic history. There is absolutely nothing romantic about the Greyhound. It's right down there with Coffee Time and Dollarama. It's the working class travel solution. My bus trip was a dreary 50 hours of windy roads of blowing snow, sick and coughing neighbours, and stops at Tim Hortons and Burger King parking lots every few hours. Other than the very low price, there is very little that's redeeming about bus travel.