Cars, Cars, Cars In Calgary
Posted on Thursday, May 26 at 09:50 by abacus
Ah, public transit. Here's that magic word that we don't hear often in Calgary. Our mayor, Dave Bronconnier, does support public transit and has poured a considerable amount of money into expanding the light-rail system, but it's not enough.
Calgary needs more bus routes (including express bus services) that also run around the clock. In most areas, you're stuck after 6pm or 7pm if you have not gotten on a bus by then.
More also needs to be done to make the city (all of the city, that is!) walkable and pedestrian-friendly. Note to the City: go after drivers who do not respect the right-of-way of pedestrians. A lot of drivers think that pedestrians are second or third class citizens. Such drivers should be punished severely, because they're not fit to be behind the wheel.
We also need more transit cops. In recent months, more and more Calgarians have come out and spoken up about the concerns they have for their personal safety on C-Train platforms as well as inside trains.
Any gas taxes or other gas or car-related charges, taxes, rates, etc. must be reinvested into public transit, and fast.
Calgary is growing at lightning speed, and our public transit system must not be allowed to lag behind by decades.
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I literally could drive from my home to work and back without intersecting a bus route.
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"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it." Winston Churchill
I am quite happy with the LRT expansions in both cities though!
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Every time you complain about the moderators, god kills a kitten.
Calgary's SMART Factor is a whopping 186 tonnes per second. That means for every "second" that all vehicles in Calgary "less" each day for a year in driveways and parking lots OR while sitting in traffic, Calgary would save 186 tonnes of GHG. That would be equivalent to 186 Calagary citizens achieving Canada's One Tonne Challenge per second. Calgary citizens would also save over 79,000 litres of fuel per year for every second.
In comparison the SMART Factor for Mississauga is 117 tonnes per second and Montreal is 93 and Ottawa is 43.
The reason Calgary is the highest is not only due to the large number of registered vehicles but also the high ratio of those vehicles having large 8 cyclander engines. The SMART Factor takes into account the engine size mix registered in every city.
Therefore, your obseravation is an important one and the City of Calgary and all citizens should be very concerned that they are the biggest CO2 producing city in Canada from transportation.
SMART (Student Math Action Research Team) OPIRG McMaster University hopes to update the SMART Factor for all Canadian cities in August using updated 2003 Canadian veicle registration statistics from Natural Resources Canada. It is SMART's expectation that Calgary will likely hold onto it's #1 position.
Why are seconds important? Multiply the above by many seonds or minutes saved every day by every vehicle in North America. SMART is presently working on a joint research paper with the Utah traffic lab at the University of Utah for the Trasportation research Board to study report on the opportunity to lower North America's GHG emissions by upgrading more traffic signal control systems to dramatically save minutes a day and the millions of litres of fuel and tonnes of GHG. Saving people time and saving people money and saving the environment as the same time is a win win win situation........so stay tuned for the results of our paper....it might surprise you even more.
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Canadabob