Why is flying the most sustainable?

The triple bottom line analysis consider the economic (the raw cost of travel), the environmental (my carbon footprint) and equity (the social cost).

The Economic Cost

I decided to redeem some travel rewards so the flight cost me $161.88 (for taxes, security and admin fees). The least expensive ticket one can book according to Expedia this morning was $499. When I looked earlier in the week both Air Canada and Porter had seat sales on; flights were $338. Given that I booked the flight earlier in the week I’ll use the $338 value in my analysis.

Via rail is Ontario’s only rail carrier. You can take the GO train within the Greater Toronto Area but it does go beyond the GTA borders. When I looked at booking it was $155, but when searching today it was $202.50. (And knowing me I would have bought my ticket at the station today!)

If I was going to drive I’d have to spend $117.68. According to fueleconomy.gov my car requires premium gasoline and goes 11.5km/L on the highway. The round trip distance is 888km and for simplicity I’ll say that the drive is all highway kilometres (10km total is not on the highway). Thus it will require 78L of fuel (round up to 80L and ignore any congestion encountered on the way). Gas was $1.47.1 at my corner gas station according to Toronto’s Gas Prices this morning.

Summary: Flight: $161.88, Train $155, Drive $117.68

The Environmental Cost

The carbon footprint cost. How much damage am I doing by going to Ottawa? According to Carbon Finance one could sell a tonne of carbon on the European market for €12.32 or $16.64CAD today.

When I booked my flight Air Canada stated me that the total carbon footprint for my portion of the flight round trip was 0.21tonnes of CO2 emissions for a value of $3.49.

According to CarbonFund.org each km of long distance rail travel emits 0.49lbs/mile or 0.12kg/km. The Toronto Travel Guide says it’s 446km, which totals 107kg (.107tonnes) of CO2 emissions round trip or $1.78.

The footprint of my car is 174g/km according to NextGreenCar but that is based on a combined urban and highway driving. For simplicity I’ll use this value, so for my 888km my calculated footprint would be 154kg (.154tonnes) of CO2 emissions, bringing the total cost to $2.56.

Summary: Flight $3.49, Train $1.78 or Driving $2.56.

The Equity Cost

It comes down to what I value my time at. I remember when I wrote my thesis (in 2007) that the average value for an hour of work was $20. I could have valued at what my current salary pays me at, or I could have been a little more conservative and used my ski coaching salary. Both of these were greater than $20 so I think I’ll stick with that (Note: I do value my time more than $20/hr! )

Ignoring the time it takes to get to each mode of travel here is what the cost breakdown is for travelling to Ottawa.

My flight is 1hr gate to gate, probably 40mins in the air. Roundtrip, $40.

The train varies between a 4 hr&24min trip and 4hr&48min trip, for an average of 4hrs&36mins. Cost of my time to take the train roundtrip is $184.

For the drive lets assume I drive the speed limit, the 444km trip would take just under 4.5hours. Round trip the total cost would be $190.

Summary: Flight $40, Train $184 or Drive $190.

From the table you can see that the cost of flying is by far the cheaper option. Even if I only valued my time at $10 it is still significantly cheaper to fly, driving is $30 more than flying and taking the train is more than $60 more. However, if I’d had to pay for the full price ticket (at $338) it would make flying the least viable option; I guess that reminds us all to collect and redeem those travel miles!

(Note: This was a quick, basic way to calculate my triple bottom line total cost of travel. I do not claim that it is the most accurate method to calculate the cost of traveling. This exercise was merely meant to demonstrate the ability to account not just for economic costs but also the environmental and equity (social) cost).

Are the highways safer?

I have to say that as I mature I’m finding the roads to be more frightening. Compared to the average person I do drive a lot, and lots of it is on multi-lane highways and more semi-urban/rural 2-lane highways. I just don’t feel as safe on the roads anymore.

According to the statistics accidents causing death were down by 29% from 2007 to 2008 and the total number of overall crashes decreases by 21%, but still amounted to 16,274. And compared to the 10-year average for traffic incidents, the 2008 value was 24% below the average. It would appear that the roads are getting safer.

Programs in place making our roads safer

Several programs were implemented this year in an attempt to make the roads safer. To name a few

• Truck Speed Limiting Devices
• Stricter Drinking and Driving Laws
• Increased and Focused Enforcement
• License Suspension when speeding 50km/hr over limit

What more can be done

Is it ever enough? As a perfectionist I think that there is always more that can be done to make the roads safer. For instance

• Closing the highway: during heavy rainstorms or other extreme weather incidents the highways should be shut down, stop the cars on the side of the highways and don’t permit others to get on the roads.
• Variable Speed Limits: Have speed limits that vary throughout the day, the highway could move at 120km/hr in the late night but be maximized to 80km/hr during daylight, peak hours
• Variable Lanes: Force SUV’s and trucks into one lane and allow smaller, fuel efficient vehicles to have access to their own lanes. Not only is this safer it is an incentive to trade in a gas-guzzling machine for a more environmentally friendly machine.

A friend of mine passed me an article at work, The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks: Efficiency and Optimality Control. It is a little technical and ‘mathy’ but I was surprised at how easy it was to follow.

The abstract really captures the essence of the article:

Uncoordinated individuals in human society pursuing their personally optimal strategies do not always achieve the social optimum, the most beneficial state to the society as a whole. Instead, strategies form Nash equilibria which are often socially suboptimal. Society, therefore, has to pay a price of anarchy for the lack of coordination among its members. Here we assess this price of anarchy by analyzing the travel times in road networks of several major cities. Our simulation shows that uncoordinated drivers possibly waste a considerable amount of their travel time. Counter-intuitively, simply blocking certain streets can partially improve the traffic conditions. We analyze various complex networks and discuss the possibility of similar paradoxes in physics.

Blocking Streets Improves Traffic Conditions

Imagine in Toronto we blocked several of the east-west streets in the central business district and forced traffic to pick a major north-south route and stick with it? Imagine all cities with more efficient major arteriole roads. The theory from the authors is that overall travel times would improve. Inevitably some individuals would suffer a delay from this new transportation grid, but the overall effect would be a decrease in traffic times.

Traffic would be forced to stick with a route. It would minimize the number of right and left turns, which cause traffic to slow. Traffic patterns would be improved. Fewer people would be on the residential streets, making them safer. And you would arrive to your final destination faster.

But given the nature of Toronto, and some other similar cities, there would need to be some access to east-west streets to access the neighbourhoods. It would be about finding a balance; it must still be attractive to live in the city with safe streets and efficient road networks.

It would be interesting to see this in action. I would like to see them try this on Avenue Road, Yonge Street or Mount Pleasant Boulevard in Toronto; three major north-south routes that always seem jammed because there are not many dedicated left- and right-turn lanes. Perhaps with improved travel times, surface route public transit would also become more attractive allowing more people to choose to leave their car at home.

I was absolutely shocked by the traffic of the Toronto bedroom community. It wasn’t the predictable congestion of downtown Toronto, it was chaotic and random and looked like it would drive any commuter to insanity. With it’s 6 lane roads with dedicated double left turn lanes and right turn lanes at intersections, why wasn’t the traffic moving?

I was also surprisingly amazed at the number of people that used the Mississauga transit system – it is after all archaic, completely surface routes with no dedicated transit or carpool lanes, i.e. it moves at whatever speed the traffic is moving.

Why is the traffic so congested in these outlier cities?

Mississauga, and many of the other bedroom communities, is no longer just a commuter city. They have vibrant industry that result in many people commuting to these bedroom communities. But the reason it doesn’t function well is represented by the picture above, long blocks, empty sidewalks and a million people trying to get around.

This problem will only get worse. According to Smart Commute already more people commute into Mississauga than out of Mississauga every day. Over the next 30 years it is predicted that Mississauga’s population will grow by 22% and the number of people working here will grow by 31%. Overall that means even longer commute times, denser congestion resulting in increased pollution and stress levels. And this is only data for Mississauga other jurisdictions will face similar growth.

It will be a combination of city planners, traffic engineers and visionaries to improve this situation. Otherwise Southern Ontario will be plagued with the traffic congestion and pollution from all the single commuter cars.

I recently took a trip with part of my family on a ski vacation on in Quebec (4 of us in a car has to be better from an environmental perspective than 4 of us flying). What amazed me was the difference in the highways between Quebec and Ontario. I’m not sure I could conclude which one I thought was better but here are some of things I noticed: 

• Ontario has many more rest stops with more amenities. What’s more Ontario seems to be revitalizing some of them (and they do warn you along the highway that the following service centre will be closed at the one you are approaching
• Quebec has a much larger median, even allowing a mini-forest to divide them. Unlike Ontario with it’s concrete median’s and traffic running relatively close to each other Quebec mitigates ‘light noise’ at night by providing a greater separation between traffic
• Quebec puts their rest stops in the median. This was probably done from a cost-savings perspective. This allows users on both the east and west side of the highway to access the rest-stop.
• Quebec has no shoulders on their highways through cities. Okay the same said for the Gardner Expressway through Toronto, but aside from that the highways running through the cities have refuge areas both in the core and collector. But in Quebec they minimize the amount of freeway through cities by eliminating shoulders.
• Rideability – which one was better? In the sections in Ontario that had undergone a rehabilitation the rideability through these sections was better than anything in Quebec. But in areas where rehabilitation had not been completed than the highways were about the same.
• Speed – In Quebec the rural highways, not freeways, the speed limit was 90 km/h. In Ontario the maximum is only 80km/h
• In Quebec if they highway spurs development than the highways speed is not reduced; if the development existed prior to highway construction it seemed that they highway speed decreased to 70km/h. In Ontario prior construction or new construction the highway speed always decreases to 50 km/h in a residential zone.
• In Quebec it seemed like people shared the highway. I saw people walking along the shoulder. Drivers would slow down for the people walking or move into the left hand lane; there seemed to be overall cooperation on the roads.

Ontario snowplowing – Does it Work?

Back in December I wrote an article comparing the snow maintenance methods of Quebec and Ontario. I stated then that I thought Quebec was far superior to Ontario for their snow clearing methods and stand by what I wrote. This weekend reminded me why Ontario does not ‘get it.’

Sunday was a beautiful ski day; warm weather (the temperature hovered around 0 deg), blue bird skies and not a drop of precipitation to be seen. This did mean that some of those snow banks were melting, which in turn created some very thick and treacherous ice on the roads. As my friend, Laurissa, and I ventured home we watched a snow-plow go by on the opposite side of the road and actually make the driving conditions worse.

The plow went by and exposed all the ice below the snow surface.

Quebec mandates that all cars are equipped with snow tires, in Ontario we have not even considered such legislation. But when the plow went by it exposed thick ice on the road and placed no sand or salt where it had just cleared. Instead of leaving a snow covered road it left and ice covered road. Laurissa commented that in Manitoba they leave the snow and add sand, which seems like a much more logical, safe, and environmentally safe thing to do.

The drivers made things worse.

As our drive continued we encountered areas that had just been snow plowed, which meant there was thick, shiny, slippery ice in front of us. Leaving a safe distance I watched the reaction of the cars around us. And I’m glad I did. The driver in front of us slammed on the brakes as they approached the ice. Slamming on your brakes is about the worst thing you can do in slippery conditions; the tires lock up, you lose control of the vehicle and typically spins and slides result. The car in front of us almost did a full spin into on coming traffic. I elected to drive on the snowy shoulder and use my transmission to slow me down.

We made it home safely; it just took a lot longer. But it was again a reminder that not only do our snow-plows make the road worse but some of the drivers out there make for very dangerous driving conditions.

Apparently people are listening to music so loud that they cannot hear the approaching traffic. Or they have the headphones that cancel out the background noises, which again make it difficult to hear approaching traffic. Plus with all the new smartphones (blackberry, palm, iPhone, etc) people really are not intune with their surroundings as they talk, text and surf the web.

So what’s the problem?

According to Swinton insurance, as reported here, there has been a significant increase in auto accidents due to ‘podestrians.’ It is not so much the signalized intersections, but the smaller ones.

“The most common scenario involves a ‘podestrian’ stepping into the road without looking properly and failing to hear an oncoming car. This often forces the approaching driver to break suddenly and subsequently get shunted by the car behind.”

Are you a ‘podestrian’?

I’m guilty at times for listening to my iPod, especially when running. I am also guilty of texting while listening to music. But I certainly make a conscience effort near any street to be aware of traffic. In the end I know that an error on my part causing an accident could be far more costly to me than to the car.

I’m not giving up my iPod when running anytime soon. And I don’t believe that asking people to not use their mp3 players is the solution either. I think it is a matter of respect and both cars and pedestrians respecting the rules of the road.