Albert Koehl: The Joys and Sorrows of Cycling

This article has been republished with the permission of Albert Koehl


Cycling safety is in the news again in Toronto. Too bad it’s not to celebrate the simple, joyful act of cycling. For many cyclists the death of bike courier Darcy Allan Sheppard under the wheels of a car driven by the former attorney general of Ontario felt personal and frightening, if only because of the dangers we all face on our streets. If the City of Toronto actually paid attention to cycling safety — instead of being 400 kilometres short of its goal to install 500 kilometres of bike lanes by this year — the news stories might mostly have been about a violent altercation between two citizens. Instead, it became a flashpoint about cycling safety with Sheppard a proxy for concerns about road dangers and the inexcusable failure to give cyclists a fair share of the public roadway.

The popular stretch of Bloor Street where Sheppard was killed is a particularly sensitive point for cyclists. Two years ago, cycling advocates challenged the city’s adamant refusal to study the environmental impacts of a street redevelopment plan — which included the precise area where Sheppard was killed — that did not include a bike lane. Provincial planning laws actually direct cities to provide for the safety of cyclists.

Three years ago, city council approved a motion to do a “feasibility study” of a bikeway along Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue that would create a continuous 24-kilometre east-west route across the city. (A “bikeway” can include a combination of a painted lane, a separated lane with barriers, or just painted arrows.) A Freedom of Information request was required to pry the completed report from city hall. The 1,000 pages of the study showed not only that a bikeway was feasible along most of this route but that there would be only minor impacts on motor traffic. Instead of acting on this finding, the city has decided to rigourously assess the environmental impacts of the bikeway. This will cause several more years of delay without ensuring implementation.

Twenty years ago, a city report identified Bloor-Danforth as an ideal cycling route that could serve as a “spine” for Toronto’s cycling network. Since then, bike traffic on this corridor has increased, but the city has refused to hand over the recommended sliver of the road for cycling trafic. Despite the city’s inaction, politicians nonetheless missed no opportunity in the intervening years to celebrate the benefits of cycling: “bike days” became “bike months,” many speeches were given, and countless pancakes eaten, but city streets have not become “bike-friendly.”

It is perhaps understandable that a complex, technologically advanced society beset by major problems of traffic congestion, budget shortfalls, air pollution and climate change will routinely ignore or dismiss the bicycle as a part of the solution. Indeed, among the slate of would-be Toronto mayors in this year’s race are those who argue that we need to do even less for cyclists. Presumably they believe that a city with a scant 2 per cent of roads equipped with bike lanes is moving too quickly — and that 50 years of living with the negative impacts of the car proves that the answer must be more of the same.

It’s not just politicians who sometimes miss the point. Certain downtown merchants still suggest that they couldn’t possibly do without the small number of parking spots in front of their stores — even if a bike lane would bring far more patrons their way. Two recent studies for Bloor Street by the Clean Air Partnership found that pedestrians and cyclists spend far more at local businesses than people arriving in cars — and that there would be little impact from reducing on-street parking because of the plentiful spaces in nearby off-street lots. And the city’s own studies show that cyclists, on average, are from households with higher incomes than those of car owners.

Some committed motorists also stand in the way — although surveys show that many would be happy to cycle if they felt safer. A motorist recently stopped beside me at an intersection, rolled down his window and yelled (in response to my flag calling for bike lanes): “Do you want to pay for those lanes?” “Actually,” I began, “cyclists . . .” but the driver sped off without allowing me to answer his inquiry. I would have directed him to a recent study by the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute, which found that the average motorist underpays for city roads while the average cyclist and pedestrian significantly overpays. (Local roads, unlike highways, are mostly funded by general taxes instead of by vehicle fees or gas taxes.) Indeed, as a homeowner, I know that my property taxes aren’t any less than those of my neighbours who rely on cars to get around.

Other arguments are equally weak: “Cyclists don’t ride in the dead of winter so why devote space to them” (an argument perhaps most convincingly made by golfers); “cyclists don’t obey the rules of the road so why give them bike lanes” (an argument that would equally justify closing Highway 401, where most drivers break the speed limit); and “roads are meant for traffic” (except when motorists want to park their bulky machines in the public thoroughfare). The oddest argument is that bikes will cause congestion, as if the 401, DVP and QEW are congested because of bikes. Our streets are congested because we have too few bikes, not too many.

The real question is why we devote most of the room on our public roads to the least efficient vehicle (the car) and the least room to the most efficient vehicle (the bicycle). Cyclists don’t want to be quoted in news stories about the death or injury of fellow cyclists; we want to be celebrating the transformation of roads into places that are safe for cycling. It’s up to city politicians to give us those opportunities for celebration.


This article was first published in the Toronto Star on May 26 and is posted here with the kind permission of Albert Koehl.
Albert Koehl is an environmental lawyer and founding member of the annual www.bellsonbloor.caBells on BloorEND parade (High Park, Saturday, May 29). He represented the Safe Cycling Coalition in a 2008 action against the city.
All images used were found via google, I failed to find non-professional images of groups cycling together. Please wear a bike helmet!

Rex Weyler: Cars, Corporations, and Society

This article has been republished for Living without a Fridge and Beyond with the permission of Rex Weyler

The Toyota hybrid automobile with a stuck accelerator and no brakes is a sad icon of our age.

Our modern industrial society remains stuck on growth and does not know how to stop. Like the runaway Toyota, we are headed for a crash. The automobile, however, is more than a metaphor. The car is one of the prime forces of destruction on our planet, among the most harmful social design decisions in history.

As a means of moving people around, the car is inefficient, deadly, and toxic. Most North American cities offer few transportation options, making citizens dependent on automobiles. Today, certain developing nations with traditionally sound public transportation, are subsidizing automobile industries. Will these nations make the same tragic mistakes that western nations made?

In 1991, English poet and playwright Heathcote Williams published Autogeddon, a long invective poem about the automobile’s trail of death and devastation, which Williams called “a humdrum holocaust … the third world war nobody bothered to declare.” How did private, expensive, dangerous, dirty automobiles come to dominate North American transportation?

"I'll look at everything around me, and I will vow to bear in mind: all of this was just someone's idea it could just as well have been mine." Ani Difranco

Killing the public option

In 1922, some 1,200 thriving urban railways operated in North America, accounting for ninety percent of urban travel. No one complained or demanded more cars and roads. However, General Motors president Alfred P. Sloan saw a “great opportunity” to replace public transportation with private cars. To achieve this, he established a “task force” to “motorize” North America. Sloan coerced railroads to abandon urban transport and used his influence to discouraged banks from making loans to urban rail projects. Sloan’s secret cabal used advertising and lobbying where it worked, and where it didn’t, they used bribes and intimidation. In Detroit and Minneapolis GM’s “task force” employed mobsters to intimidate politicians. In Florida they gave away complimentary Cadillacs to city councilors.

1936, General Motors, Firestone Tires, and Standard Oil (Exxon-Mobil), formed a holding company, National City Lines, which bought urban transport systems and systematically destroyed them. They bought the Pacific Electric system that carried 110 million passengers in 56 communities. They increased fairs, cancelled routes, reduced schedules, cut salaries, allowed trains to decay, ripped up over 1800 kilometers of track, and closed the entire network. By 1956, over 100 rail systems in 45 cities had been purchased and closed. Meanwhile, GM ran ads claiming that electric trains were “old fashion,” and that private cars represented “the wave of the future.”

In 1946, public railway supporter Commander Edwin Quinby wrote a report to city governments, describing, a “deliberately planned campaign to swindle you out of your electric railway system.” GM used their media influence to accuse Quinby and his supporters of being a “lunatic fringe of radicals and crackpots.”

Quinby’s report caught the attention of U.S. federal prosecutors, who indicted General Motors in Chicago for “criminal conspiracy to monopolize ground transportation,” and destroy public transit. They won their case, and the court convicted GM of criminal conspiracy. GM paid a $5,000 fine. Otherwise, nothing changed. Over the next 25 years, U.S. prosecutors attempted to limit GM’s influence on public transportation, but in the end, GM had more money, lawyers, and influence. They succeeded in sabotaging public transportation throughout North America.



Going global

We often hear globalization promoters claim that the “free market” system allows “free choice.” But the destruction of public transportation in North America was not a public choice. It was a corporate scheme for monopoly, power, and profit, preying on human ego and gullibility.

In the 1970s, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher joined the chorus and proclaimed “nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of the great car economy.” Under Thatcher, British engineers built the M25 motorway around London, designed for 30 years of vehicle growth, but traffic jams clogged London within six months.

Today, 17 companies – Toyota, GM, Honda, Volkswagen, Chrysler, BMW, Mazda and others – produce about 60 million vehicles each year. Meanwhile, some fifty emerging global automobile companies – Harbin Hafei, Mahindra, Anhui Jianghuai, Great Wall, China National, and others – make about 10 million vehicles each year. These emerging companies intend to grow to rival the big automobile makers.

About 1 billion motor vehicles now exist on Earth, a fleet growing at about 3% per year. At this rate, within 25 years, Earth will support 2 billion vehicles, and within fifty years, by 2060, 4 billion vehicles.



Car destruction

Over a million people die each year in traffic accidents. Throughout history, over 50 million people have died, comparable to the death toll of World War II. Over 2 billion people – drivers, passengers, and bystanders – have been injured in vehicle accidents. Most of these deaths and injuries could have been avoided with public transport. Accidents happen with trains and buses, but at a fraction of the automobile rate. Good public transportation in place of automobiles would have saved about 42 million of the 50 million traffic deaths due to cars.

However, these unnecessary deaths and injuries account for only a fraction of the destruction caused by cars and trucks. In an automobile culture, cars consume about 40 percent of the urban landscape for roads, highways, parking lots, gas-stations, body shops, and so forth. This represents a massive public asset, land, paved over to serve an inefficient, dangerous transport system.

Worldwide, motor vehicles emit about one billion metric tons of CO2 each year, 15 percent of global carbon emissions. Meanwhile, modest “efficiency” gains – hybrids and mileage improvements – are swamped by the shear growth of the car culture.

The social costs of car culture include the destruction of neighborhoods, unsightly urban landscapes, fear, stress, and “road-rage.” One of the greatest social costs is lost time and squandered human productivity. Commuters on streetcars and trains can be productive with work, reading, relaxing, eating breakfast in the dining car, or talking to colleagues and friends.

(In "Soil not Oil" by Vandana Shiva, Shiva claims that in India "cars eat men" by taking their land for roads and taking space away from traditional modes of travel - my addition)


Hybrid fallacy

The ecological and social destruction caused by cars goes far beyond carbon emissions and ensnarled cities. The harvesting and mining of resources – rubber, iron, rare-earth metals for hybrid batteries, copper, plastics and so forth – plus the energy-intensive manufacturing process – comprise a massive “embodied” energy and resource demand. Some 20-40% of energy an automobile uses in its lifetime is “embodied energy” consumed before it is purchased. None of this is solved by building hybrid cars. The car culture is a resource pig.

Currently less than 2% of new vehicles are hybrids. If these few vehicles improved fuel efficiency by 25%, that would translate into one-half of one-percent for the entire global fleet of vehicles, which meanwhile is growing six-times faster, at 3%. Historically, mechanical efficiencies do not translate into less consumption, but more. Why? Because when we gain efficiencies, consumer items become cheaper, so people consume more. Apple Computer founder Steve Wozniak, for example, owns four Priuses, perhaps thinking that he’s solving global warming. New hybrid owners will drive more and feel comfortable living farther from their work. It is counter-intuitive, but efficiencies increase consumption. In economics, this is well known as the “rebound effect.”

Car promoters love to show oil consumption per capita declining in certain regions. What they don’t tell you is that per-capita petroleum consumption has been declining since 1979 as population has outstripped oil production. Global oil production has been flat since 2005, so per-capita consumption is now declining everywhere, not because of hybrid cars, but because of oil field depletion.

A recent ad for the Honda Insight hybrid proclaims, “Theoretically, it seats 6.75 billion,” implying that they could build a new hybrid car for every person on the planet. This is a deceit: 6.75 billion people, driving hybrids with 40 miles-per-gallon efficiency, driving 10,000 miles a year, would require 40 billion barrels of oil annually, over 5 times the current demand for automobile fuel, and the difference is greater than the entire current world oil production. There is not enough gasoline – or other resources – to build and fuel 6.75 billion hybrids, or even half that many.

Buying a new hybrid car will not reduce global petroleum consumption. It will increase consumption by adding a new vehicle to the road. The growing automobile culture requires infrastructure, highways, service, and parking spaces, all costing more space and more energy.

From the North American experience with cars, we should have learned that we cannot trust corporations to design our cultures. Car companies may find it profitable to repeat the crime of North America, destroy public transportation, deplete the planet of resources, mine every last scrap of rare earth metals, burn the declining oil, and dam rivers for electricity to grow and feed more cars. For the people and the planet, this would be a disaster.

Nations who want to achieve genuine sustainability should follow the example of cities that have designed and built excellent public transportation, cities such as Stockholm, Oslo, Moscow, Helsinki, Barcelona, Munich, Tokyo, Seoul, and Sao Paulo.

The motor vehicle, including the Toyota hybrid with its stuck accelerator and faulty brakes, should fade away into the dustbin history’s bad ideas.

This article was generously shared by Rex Weyler, founding member of Greenpeace, author and journalist. Check out his blog at: http://rexweyler.com/2010/05/20/cars-corporations-and-society/ For this article and other excellent articles.

With the exception of the first photo, the photos used here are by Edward Burtynsky in a project called "Manufactured Landscapes" for more on this photographer, here is his website: http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/

Tooker Gomberg: Plugged in to Nature's Grid

Killaloe – I’m sitting in a cabin in the woods in eastern Ontario, surrounded by 50 million people without electricity. Luckily, we have some juice. Our house is a power plant. We get our wattage from the sun, 93 million miles away. Three solar panels on the roof transform sunlight into power to run a computer, a radio and sometimes a flashlight. Anything left over goes into batteries. Not that we have oodles of watts. If it’s cloudy for a few days running we have to stop typing. And we don’t use much power – no electric dishwashers or plug-in can openers here.

Living off the grid has taught us to survive without a fridge or freezer, the biggest household users of electricity. We have a small cooler and every few days add chunks of ice that we pick up from town. The big challenge is keeping the coffee cream from going sour. Fresh veggies come from the garden, herbs from the forest. Bulk goods are stored in glass jars, away from the prying chops of Chippy, our resident chipmunk.

Living at a slower pace, without TV or VCR, wasn’t hard to get used to. Neither was cooking on a wood stove or tromping to the outhouse in the brisk morning air. On the contrary, the calm and serenity of our motor-free summer is joyous. But I must confess that I’m still not used to surfing the Net on a sluggish dial-up.

Once or twice a week we pedal into town to pick up bulk groceries. The 40-minute ride through the green hills exercises our legs and lungs. After three warm summer months, winter will surely be a shock – we’ll have to feed the stove on a constant basis. On the other hand, the frigid air makes it easier to keep foods cold.

"We could pick up the phone, sharpen a pencil or tap a keyboard and let our premier know: not a penny more for fossil fuels and nuclear. the end"

Radio reporters warn people to conserve water because the reservoirs only have a 24-hour supply. We know we’ll be all right so long as we eat breakfast and have the energy to pump water from the communal well. We then haul that water on the back rack of our bicycles to our humble abode. We gave up on hot baths months ago, opting instead for a daily dive in the pond alongside the dragonflies and frogs. Occasionally, we treat ourselves to a luxurious lather in our neighbour’s solar-heated shower.

Much of our energy comes from the food we grow on the farm, and the energy to grow a tomato comes from the sun for free. We may not be on the electricity grid, but surely we’re connected to nature’s grid. The European Union already has a campaign to produce a million-roof solar program, and so does the U.S. One in 10 households in Japan has solar installations. Isn’t it time that the sun is harnessed in Canada, too? While we’re at it, let’s follow Denmark’s and Germany’s lead and invest massively in wind power.

Everyone can wait out the week and then return to cranking up the air-con and turning up the TV, hoping it all goes away. Or we could pick up the phone, sharpen a pencil or tap a keyboard and let our premier know: not a penny more for fossil fuels and nuclear. the end
This article was originally published in Now Magazine, 2000. And we still need that massive investment!

Living Without a Fridge and Healthy Options, Cancer and Pollution, Great Pacific Garbage Patch

One of the things that I love about living without a fridge is that it encourages me in general to seek out healthy, living options - fresh, local, organic vegetables as an example. I'm also aware that many of the chemicals that we are exposed to on a daily basis are harmful to us. Living more simply in all ways can have greater impacts on our overall health - like preventing cancer. We need to avoid harmful chemicals, and stop creating products that keep toxins in our air and water. Please take a moment to read this important press release below, and also remember that bottled water is not filtered water when you get to that section! Bottled water is in plastic which is linked to cancer. Plastics, including all containers are linked to cancer as are many ingredients in cosmetics.

In this post are photos of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - another example of how our world produces toxins.
"In the centers of our oceans (cf, North Pacific Ocean Gyre), one liter of seawater contains about a billion phytoplankton cells, and 6 billion microscopic pieces of plastic." FEWW

Also, consider the amount to which plastics and toxins are directly impacting cancer rates.

Samuel Epstein, MD: American Cancer Society Trivializes Cancer Risks: Blatant Conflicts Of Interest

CHICAGO, IL, May 7, 2010 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- The May 6 report by the President's Cancer Panel is well-documented. It warns of scientific evidence on avoidable causes of cancer from exposure to carcinogens in air, water, consumer products, and the workplace. It also warns of hormonal risks from exposure to Bisphenol-A (BPA) and other toxic plastic contaminants, says Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC).

Concerns on avoidable causes of cancer have been summarized in a January 23, 2009 Cancer Prevention Coalition press release, endorsed by 20 leading scientists and public policy experts, who urged that President Obama's cancer plan should prioritize prevention. These concerns were further detailed in a June 15, 2009 press release. Warnings of the risks of BPA are also detailed in a May 6, 2010 CPC release.

Some of the more startling realities in the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) and the "non-profit" American Cancer Society's (ACS) long-standing failure to prevent a very wide range of cancers are illustrated by their soaring increases from 1975 to 2005.

These include:
Malignant melanoma of the skin in adults has increased by 168 percent due to the use of sunscreens in childhood that fail to block long wave ultraviolet light;

Thyroid cancer has increased by 124 percent due in large part to ionizing radiation;

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has increased 76 percent due mostly to phenoxy herbicides; and phenylenediamine hair dyes;

Testicular cancer has increased by 49 percent due to pesticides; hormonal ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products; and estrogen residues in meat;

Childhood leukemia has increased by 55 percent due to ionizing radiation; domestic pesticides; nitrite preservatives in meats, particularly hot dogs; and parental exposures to occupational carcinogens;

To continue reading this important article, go to this article in Huffington Post.