All cars are evil

My hubby started a new job on March 5. His office is in the next city and the bus connections leave something to be desired. So we bought a car. Insuring it turned out to be a big hassle and very expensive but we got it sorted. Now we got the car … and don’t drive it. Noticed that the weather has been terribly awesome recently? That’s why. My hubby is not allowed to drive on his own yet so I would have to go with him and then go to my workplace, back in the city we live in. For me, it’s much easier though to cycle to work, 20 min on a trail that avoids traffic lights and cars. I love it. Taking the car does not get me to the office any faster even though I only have to turn twice! There’s like 2 dozen traffic lights on the way and an avalanche of cars at rush hour. My husband figured that walking 15 min, taking the Express Bus and walking for another 15 minutes is, without a car, the fastest way for him to get to work. And in good weather it’s no big deal. I am terribly disappointed again anyway. I thought with the weather people would leave their cars and cycle instead. Forget about it! Not here. People have it hammered into their brain that they can’t go places without a car. A bicycle is not considered a mode of transportation but merely a sports article that needs to be driven (not ridden) to the park and then one can circle around the park for a bit. What a waste of energy. Where I come from we use bikes to run errands, commute to work and visit friends in our town or city. I love my bike even though it’s a crappy one. I wished I was not such a lonely cyclist. I miss home.

So we did drive the car last weekend to get out of town. We drove from Kitchener to Guelph Lake Conservation Area. I am disappointed again. Sure, putting a fence around a piece of countryside and calling it conservation area will prevent it from having houses built on top of it. Great! Suburbia really does not need more spreading. But, building a road right through it and having lots of camping spots along it does not necessarily protect the land or wildlife. In fact, this land is heavily used (and probably polluted to a certain degree) every summer. Call it a campground then, which also justifies the entrance fees. I am not a fan of having to pay for a picnic spot or a walk in the park. I said to my husband, let’s go and visit conservation areas outside the season. At least our daughter can roam around freely without us having to watch for vehicles and protect her from being run over. Don’t get me wrong though, we rather give money to Parks Canada (although now that they approved that Brewster theme park nonsense I like them less) or other nature conservation efforts and organisation than any other cause. And, after all we might have to pay the fee just so we can swim in a lake in summer, since most of the lakes around here seem to be part of a conservation area. Sigh.

I come back to the evilness of cars ... and litter ... and lack of community spirit.        

Nature's Gym or how to stay fit

The David Suzuki Foundation published an article the other day about joining nature's gym to hit your fitness goal's this year. Not a bad idea. Better still is to live a lifestyle that keeps you fit. I know that from experience and I happen to have proven it recently too.

On Sunday I ran the Re-Fridgee-Eighter, the first race of the year in the Waterloo Running Series. I chose the 8 km over the 8 miles. I took running up again since coming to KW but I still at the most run twice a week for half an hour. Luckily, I have a toddler and no car (and no sitting-around in the office job either (yet)) which seems to keep me on my toes very well. I finished 39. overall, as 5. woman, and 2. out of 19 in my age catergory, in just under 38 minutes (my chip time was even less but gun time counts) Re-fridgee-Eigther results. I was surprised myself. After all we had -5 C and gusts of over 20 km/h which thankfully only blew into our faces on the last mile. I never run that fast on my own but once I am in the group I can't help, got to go. By the time I crossed the finish line I was pretty much out of breath but two minutes later I was back to normal. I did not even get sore muscles! My "secret": I walk and/ or cycle every day many kilometres and I take the stairs whenever possible and stay active in whatever way possible. On a regular day you won't see me sitting around much.

The one thing that did annoy me though was the fact that the location of the run is not served by buses on Sundays! Start and finish were at a huge sports complex with at least 6 ice rinks, several indoor hockey, baseball, volleyball and other courts; and on all the courts and rinks competitions were taking place at the same time. All these people had to come by car! The closest bus stop was 4 km away which I know so well because we had run that way and km-markers showed the distance. So I walked to the bus stop afterwards but in the morning because there weren't buses to get me there early enough I had to ask a friend to drive me. Oh yes, it did piss me off a ton. I am not mad at Grand River Transit though, I am mad at all those people driving!                 

Palm Oil is a costly fossil fuel replacement

Did you know that Indonesia is the third largest emitter of carbon emissions due to logging of the rainforests and draining peatlands? That's crazy, not to say very said actually. And apparently they did it to make money of palm oil that's supposed to power cars. Very interesting article: EPA Rejects Palm Oil: Good News for Indonesian Rainforests

The lesson learnt: We have to stop driving so much, reduce our dependency on the car instead of just trying to replace fossil fuels/ petroleum with something that causes even more damage to the planet or compromises food production. Go ride your bike!    

Grand River Transit will improve

Grand River Transit is regularly in the news here in the region and recently I read this opinion piece
Higher Bus fares are entirely fair about the fare hike that will be spread out over the next couple of years. I also found a related article Transit's long ride to value  that compares the transit system in K-W & Cambridge with 8 other transit systems in Ontario. 

First of all I learned that GRT was only established in 2000 and has since seen growing numbers of riders. The introduction of a mandatory term-long transit ticket for students surely plays a role in this as does the fact the the connections have improved by coordinating the services provided in three cities instead of letting them each do their own thing. And service is bound to get better, yeah: more express buses, more routes, and a light rail train. The latter one apparently is planned for K-W only at this point which upsets some Cambridge residents but I hope once the train is running and becomes a success (I can't imagine it doesn't) the connection to Cambridge will be made. After all it would simplify the commute between K-W and Cambridge a lot compared to hopping on a bus half way there.     

The main issue in these articles is the fare and how little it covers of the cost of running the transit system. GRT recovers only 38% of the cost! Politicians want to make it 50% in 4 years. For me that's the value that matters more than the average fare because once you use the average fare you need to take in consideration the ratio of student riders to other riders for each transit system. The term pass here is cheaper than the monthly adult pass which seems wrong. I don't care how many students ride the bus; I actually find it shocking how many students have a car - how do they afford that on top of living costs and tuition? If they can afford that car they can afford to pay more for the bus too, even if they don't use it. They most likely don't pay taxes so might as well do something for the transit.
   
As always taxpayers shoulder the rest of the bill which I don't think is wrong either. I can't help it that the federal government spends my taxes on oil sands subsidies. People who drive gas guzzlers might as well suck up to support an environmentally friendly way of travelling! Granted that GRT is deemed not as good yet as other systems in Ontario it still makes sense to raise the fare. After all, we want the Light Rail Train. "We" that's people like friend's of us who want to buy a house close to Uptown Waterloo so that once the train is there they live in walking distance and can get rid of their car. "We" that's members of the hiking group I'm out and about with almost every weekend. I'm not the only one without a car there and asking for a ride is not unusual.  We do need rides since the bus does not take us everywhere yet. Frankly, when we met at the Grand river yesterday I cycled in the snow because there was no decent connection to travel from the West to the East of the city. And  I'm glad to see that people here in K-W think better of public transit than in Edmonton.     

Banff Mountain Film Festival

To me the films of the Banff Mtn FF are the only ones really worth watching. Forget about Hollywood, Bollywood and all the rest of it. At Banff they show awesome stuff that's real and amazing and thought-provoking. Of course we love the action films, people skiing, mountain biking, canoeing, climbing etc. the most beautiful, the least accessible, the wildes places on Earth. But there is other films that we love for example the journey of Tim Cope who walked from Mongolia to Hungary with three horses and a dog to follow in the footsteps of Ghengis Khan. It took him 3.5 years! Or the documentation of a photographer who followed the Colorado river from its source through the Grand Canyon to its end which since 1998 is not the ocean any longer. So much water is redirected from the river and pumped hundreds and hundreds of miles even uphill into the desert for irrigation and to Las Vegas and Phoenix that the river actually does not reach the Gulf of California any more.

Every year watching the screenings makes me wonder why I live in a city, far from the ocean and the mountains. I am not a city person and nature is disappearing around at an alarming rate and still I have to consider getting into the outdoors as a treat because I am stuck in a city. I'd much rather wake up in the morning looking out the window and be in awe over the natural beauty that's still there. Dare I to mention that my husband is getting to the point where he wants to move across the big point. Sure, for different reasons than me but does not matter in the end. At least we'd have a train network to take us out of the city or into the city since we might not have to live in one to start with, without a car. 


By the way, the show finished at 11 PM and it would have been a 20 minutes wait for the bus to ride it 10 minuted home. It turns once and goes straight down (in fact mostly downhill) the road. Considering outside temperatures (below -10 C) I said to my husband I'd be faster home running. It took me 15 minutes. Since he is not fit enough to run he walked and was home in 30 minutes. The bus passed him as he walked up to our front door. Meanwhile lots and lots of cars were slowly moving out the parking lots as hundreds and hundreds of people tried to get home. I know it's a vicious circle but it will need people first to take the bus before the buses run more often, not the other way around.

Read the news - still no good ones

I happened to have a look into the paper today. I have not read much the news since I returned to Edmonton because they are upsetting and I was proven right again today. The Fisheries Resource Conservation Council suggests that "70,000 grey seals should be killed over a one- or two-year period to test the hypothesis that the animals are preventing recovery of groundfish in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence." What???
In the 1990s the cod stocks collapsed due to overfishing by human beings, not by seal, but now they want the seals to be killed because the cod does not recover!!?? Apparently fishermen have been complaining that the "hungry seals have hindered the recovery of cod stocks". I bet they are hungry and I can't blame them because it is not their fault. They are victims too. It's again one of these cases where our species has messed around far too much with nature and now puts the blame for not being able to quickly enough continue their exploitation on a different animal species. I can't belief somebody dared to make such a stupid suggestion. 

The other upsetting point obviously is the search for a new Premier of Alberta. Elections are held on Saturday. Does not matter who it's going to be all candidates want to expand the oil sands and do more business with Asia because there is a growing opposition in the US to a planned pipeline. One candidate cautioned that there are not enough refineries and therefore the oil sands growth should only be moderate until the maximum value can be achieved. Along with that comes a demand for Alberta's very own immigration law to get more workers in to help with the expansion of the oil sands. A man called Ted Morton said that economical growth must come without polluting air, land and water. He's not going to win. No change for the better in sight then. Alberta, one fine day you will have to suck up your mistakes. 

There was a recent study done on commuting times in Canada. Edmontonians have the shortest commute to work from all Canadians. That came as a surprise and the city of Edmonton is all proud of it. My explanation for this "win" is that Edmonton - sprawl, sprawl, sprawl - devotes a lot of space to streets, roads, bigger roads and back alleys. Don't walk, don't cycle, just drive. Traffic lights are timed to keep motorized vehicles going even if that means that pedestrians might have to wait up to 3 minutes to get a green light. That's not only frustrating it adds up to a lot of time once you need to cross at more than one light. Having rented a car recently I must say I was astonished how many errands I could run in a single day. It would take me at least a week by any other means. 
         
 
         

Suburbia live

Last week I visited a friend in Cochrane near Calgary. She lives in a new development on the outskirts of the town with a gorgeous view to the Rockies. Apart from the view there was not much to this development. Far away from anything you depend on your car. My friend admitted that if she was to walk shopping she'd have to carry her groceries uphill for 40 minutes. You better be a fitness-fanatic to do so. The houses were large but close to each other because gardens were practically non-existent. Since all houses are on dead-end streets there's no through traffic and therefore no sidewalks. It seems safe to walk on the street but how am I going to teach my child not to do it? For being a large house it had only 3 smallish bedrooms. Even the wardrobe between the living area and the garage was bigger than the bedrooms. Unless you host dozens of people regularly I don't see why you would want extremely spacious living roomS. 

It was my first trip from Edmonton to Calgary and luckily I did not have to go right into Calgary as Cochrane is located Northwest of it. I drove Stony Trail though, a new road around the outskirts of Calgary that helps you avoid going through the city. At the moment the road is surrounded by barren, of nature cleared land but soon there will be neighbourhoods everywhere as beginnings can already be seen. It's not looking beautiful. I said to my husband, in Alberta the population must be expected to double very soon or who is going to live in all those houses? I would not want to. Despite the fact that Calgary has an apparently pretty good LRT (Light Railway Transit) system these new neighbourhoods will not be connected right away. There's a Park & Ride (in driving terms) nearby but even those massive (ugly and space-consuming if built as a single level) parking lots can only take so many cars. In Edmonton Park & Rides opened last year in the two locations where new stations were opened and residents still complain that unless you are there at 7 AM you can't get a spot until 3 PM when the first commuters go home again. So Albertans will keep driving for many years to come - don't complain about gas prices!

The new federal government just looks stupid to ask oil companies why petroleum prices are high. It's a free market, you can do it as long as somebody pays the price. Besides, the oil industry is highly supported and subsidised by exactly this Conservative government - so shut the f*** up!     
         

Tools for change

I found this Canadian website (you can tell by the maple leave) that focuses on Tools for Change. I looked particularly at the Topic Resources and there at the first column called Environment. http://www.toolsofchange.com/en/topic-resources/
Seems like there's a lot of initiative out there to reduce waste, improve public transit, remove mercury from old cars, stop the use of pesticides on public land, electric vehicles ...   I have not found an initiative happening especially in Edmonton but I got a story to share. 


Edmonton actually tried to reduce the use of chemicals on parkland. They figured that to apply alternative ways to deal with weeds and insect pests they would have to spend double the current amount on park land maintenance. It has not been said if the city will go ahead with this. Obviously, this money has to come from tax payers but there are always lots of other issues that require this money and Canadians are paranoid about taxes too. Maybe municipal park land one day is handled like provincial and national parks - with user fees. You use it, you pay. You don't use it, you don't pay. Funny enough people complain about the user fees here too. There's a fee for entrance, for camping, for making a fire, for parking ... well, the money to run the parks does not rain from the sky. It's either taxes or user fees. In Germany we have a tax based system more so than user fees. People get used to taxes, the complaints don't last long. I bet almost nobody remembers the time when GST was 16% (now it's 19% - yes, they did that in one raise and it did not kill anybody!)           


Cars - recently I read an article about Manitoba's car insurer. It's a monopoly and the plan is to force people to recycle their old car with legislation. The article pointed out the impact on poorer people who depend on old cheap cars to keep or get a job. It also pointed out that lots of cars build before 1995 were more fuel efficient than new ones and therefore should not be replaced. Last but not least the retired cars need to be recycled and new ones are needed as replacement which puts unnecessary strain on resources, material. The Canadian government, though not forcing it, also advertises their retire your ride campaign where you can trade your pre-1996 car in for money or transit passes. Deadline is March 31, 2011. European countries have done similar things. I believe Germany requires car manufacturers to take their old vehicles back for recycling. Generally, there's nothing wrong with these retire-your-rides initiatives but it would be better if their were more selective - get the polluters off the road independent from the age of the car. 

I hate urban sprawl, once and forever

Walking around our new neighbourhood today we thought once more about the wasteful way Edmonton has been built over many years. Edmonton has the second largest urban sprawl in North America which is obviously due to large residential lots, one-storey houses (bungalows), wide streets and roads as well as back alleys, and of course malls with lots of big box stores and huge parking lots. 

Back alleys seem a convenient thing for the city to pick up garbage and residents to park their vehicles instead of using the already spacious street in front of their houses but they sometimes more resemble a landfill, depending on the neighbourhood. I'd love to see Edmonton shrink in a computer simulation that cuts out all those back alleys - must make a huge difference. In my opinion it's a lot of public land that's being used poorly and that keeps neighbours separate. With everyone going out the back door where the car's parked the front streets tend to look deserted and if you were lost you'd have trouble asking for directions ... maybe that's why everybody has a GPS here.  

In the newer suburbs city planners learned from the past - there are no more back alleys. Instead there are often walkways now, especially when the neighbourhood borders one of the many ravines in town. But the streets are not logical any more. There are crescents, dead-ends, curves and bends, a far cry from the simply grid system that once started off the city. I guess they try to prevent through-traffic but in the end they get people lost, driving around searching, wasting gas in the meantime.  

Urban sprawl is fine when it's for the sake of parks. I, and hopefully nobody else, would ever complain about the river valley being park land instead of residential lots because the river valley is for Edmontonians the biggest recreational space. We just moved away from it but come summer I know I will miss it. Get the bikes out, honey!           

I know we chose to live close to a mall for the convenience of shopping with baby by foot. From our new home I have to walk further but we can't see the mall which is very nice. The layout of malls always bothers me, not much space for pedestrians but instead car drivers can stop right outside the shop they are aiming for. Worst of all, there might even be a drive-through to the shop. When I first came to Edmonton I noticed drive-thrus that until then I had no idea they existed, a drive-through for  ATMs and pharmacies for example. Excuse my language but for me that's for lazy fat-asses. Your car is not your home, get out of it once in a while.

A Bylaw in Edmonton requires parking space for any facility. Right next to the apartment buildings in Terrace Heights where we used to live is a little park. The South East Edmonton Community League Association would like to build a Skateboard park there. Great idea. But the fact that they have to put a parking lot in where there is terrible road access already kind of screws up the layout. When they had an Open House on the proposed park we let the city know it's a stupid idea. There's lots of parking space already due to shops, more shops and a mall across the road. For the proposal SECLA was not required to have a bus stop, a bike lane or a pedestrian walkway included in the project. Since the skating area will be incorporated in a park with new trees and benches the architect put a walkway in but that's about it. A fine example showing how stiff some of Edmonton's regulations are, harming progress more than helping it.   
 

Walking & cycling versus driving - part 3

My boss at school comes sometimes by bike to work. It’s a 3.5 km ride and she does it purely for the exercise. Another lunch lady was shocked how somebody could possibly cycle so far. Far? I could not help but say ‘that’s the attitude of somebody who never walks or cycles!’ She also said that she’d be a lot less busy if she did not have a car. And she is the one that freaks out having to walk from her doorstep to the car in -30 degree C – because it’s freezing cold. I’m afraid there’s too many people like her in this city, in this province, in this country, in some other countries such as the USA. Persons like her have weird opinions about very simple things in life.   

Obviously, if she hopped on a bike now or walked for 3.5 km she’d be pretty exhausted because her body does not have those muscles. People like her don’t seem to understand that all things are difficult before they get easy. But people like her are also the ones that complain about the bad bus service even though they never take the bus. Oooh, I wished people like her would wake up, give it a try for a month or so and realize it’s not that bad. Not to say it’s better than living in your damn car.          

There’s been a very interesting article on David Suzuki’s website bout Vancouver showing that change is possible – but the more pitch in the better. http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2010/10/making-cities-more-livable-may-save-the-world/

Walking versus driving - part 2

If you get caught jaywalking in Edmonton a Peace Officer will write you a note to either show up in court or voluntarily pay a fine of $250. Yes, $250! You can speed through an intersection 2-3 times or drive 40 km over the speed limit for the same amount of money. Or you can buy 3 monthly bus passes. Outraged, I emailed my city councillor. His staff found out that the fine was approved after “a scan of fines across the country for similar offences was undertaken, with a range of $60 to $300 in various municipalities for jaywalking” and after 4 jaywalkers had been killed in 2007 on Edmonton's streets. Nobody told me how many had been killed on cross walks. Anyway, I found several cities charging $30-80 but none anywhere close to $300. What annoyed me more is that “the fine for motorists failing to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk is approximately $550”. Really?! I could point out at least one driver every day. So why does the city not crack down on drivers? Because it's the police's job?! It would certainly increase the safety of pedestrians and make this place a bit more liveable. But clearly these drivers are hard to stop. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against jaywalking laws or fines as long as they are reasonable. And when it’s statistically proven that 89% of the drivers in Alberta are distracted while driving I don’t think the few brave pedestrians on Edmonton's streets should get the tickets. Finally, just these days the Alberta government has introduced a law against distracted driving - we’ll see if it gets reinforced.    

By the way, pedestrians do not jaywalk because they are suicidal; obviously pedestrians lose out against vehicles. Dave for example tried to catch his bus which only runs every 15 minutes. And of course he made sure there was not a car coming.           

Walking versus driving

I'm still reading that book of Vanessa Farquharson. She interviews Peter Tombrowksi, resident of Calgary, who got rid of his car and walked everywhere ever since. She finds it uncool to wear Gore Tex, running shoes, take a backpack to a party in order to swap clothes & shoes, and haul home somehow everything you buy. He mentioned that one becomes less self-concious, something Vanessa surely still has to learn. Also, Peter says he found freedom in moving slower, talk, look around, reflect, and interact on the way. But the heightened awareness can be depressing, he admits. The strange feeling of walking alone on the side walk, nobody in front or behind but with lots of cars passing, that's depressing, and I know exactly what he's talking about. The argument that changes Vanessa's attitude at last is that our first big accomplishment in life is to learn how to walk. Humans are made to walk, no to push a gas pedal. That's right, we are just now very much looking forward to see Ruby learn how to walk. It's exciting!

I am pretty sure Calgary is not much different to Edmonton. People here think it is impossible to live without a car, unless you are single and student. Or, if you are in that situation you are literally stuck at home. Dave heard lots of comments from his co-workers being like "what do you mean, you have baby but no car - that does not work". It's not true. We prove them wrong every day. Peter Tombrowski made a movie "To Costco and Ikea without a car" and wrote a book "Urban camping". Learn more at http://www.pressplus1.com/cdnfilm-interviews/going-to-ikea-without-a-car.html