While his end of camp tag line seems comical now, Toronto’s bus system is depleting so rapidly that it might take a year for you to see your friends again (ok, not really). Unless you live directly on the subway there is little hope that you can travel on the transit system efficiently.

40 minutes to go 5 kilometers?

Reported in the Globe and Mail yesterday, Toronto’s bus routes “fail those who need it most.” According to their research only those who are part of the ‘creative class‘ can afford to live on the subway routes. The remainder, the working and the service class can’t afford to live along the subway, despite needing it the most. Unable to afford a car, insurance and parking these people are forced to use ‘The Better Way‘.

Would a Congestion Charging Scheme Improve Bus Scheduling in Toronto?

In early 2003 London introduced a congestion charging scheme; camera’s were installed and charged people who drove into the city. Rates varied by time of day and day of the week. People who lived in Central London were charged a tax to own a car. And more buses were added to there vast route network just prior to the congestion charging scheme implementation.

The overall result: there was a 30% reduction in automobile traffic. Reliability of the buses increased. With reliability increasing more people saw buses as an attractive alternative to get in and an around town.

Toronto currently does not have a congestion charging scheme. Individuals commute to and from the suburbs, local Toronto residents drive anywhere and everywhere with no other viable option available. In the end the TTC, along with individual automobiles, competes for space on the road.

Forget “fancy, European-style light-rail transit” and subways. Create dedicated bus lanes and carpool lanes during rush-hour. Implement a congestion charging scheme. Promote living where we work. Once again make all aspects of the TTC ‘The Better Way.’

Yesterday Dalton McGuinty shuffled cabinet in a hope to improve operations of Ontario Governments. Although, that’s also what he said in January when he had again shuffled cabinet. Instead of efficient, reliable government Ontarian’s were sidled with an eco-fee debacle, a raid on ministries and a strengthened sense that our government is no longer serving the needs of the province.

The shuffle also saw the split of the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure (MEI). Both with sizable mandates, they warrant having two ministers. Infrastructure is responsible for the implementation of sound infrastructure strategies for the province; given that the population of the province is exploding and our current infrastructure is aging and failing, this is no small feat to accomplish. Energy is responsible for developing the energy policy framework that is central to the building of a strong and prosperous economy for Ontario; green energy, smart-metering, conservation, etc … again more work than one minister should be responsible for. To be fair to Ontarian’s and to move this province in the right direction MEI needed a split, let’s just hope it wasn’t too late.

Now that the Ministry of the Environment has a new leader, will it be enough to undue the mistakes made with an Eco-fee?

An eco-tax was inevitable. To move from cradle-to-grave to cradle-to-cradle (i.e. eliminating and minimizing our waste) a fee was needed to encourage consumers to buy more eco-friendly products and to choose products with less packaging. My favourite criticism of the new tax (because it’s not a fee, it is a tax) is

“Taxpayers on the hook as eco fees scrapped.”

And who else was going to pay for it? I must have missed something but I believe that most people paying the eco-tax also pay their provincial taxes. Granted how the tax payments are distributed may not be as equal as if we all had bought our own products. But don’t blame Queens Park for that the media spun the eco-tax as evil. Why don’t we sidle them with the millions of dollars that will be generated from the eco-tax? But then again what’s the point?

Until there is transparency as to where our eco-tax is spent and who get’s what proportion of it, no one should be footing the bill.

Maybe the money generated from the eco-tax should be donated to those suffering from the flooding in Pakistan, Kashmir, China and all the other places we never hear about. After all at least we would know where are money was going.

It seems like most north-south routes through the core of the city are under construction (Bayview, Mount Pleasant, Yonge and Avenue). And a select few east-west streets are also under construction, namely the Gardiner Expressway and Bloor Street, Toronto’s main lateral arterials.

Construction is only adding to an existing gridlock problem. Last week the National Post reported that Toronto was rated the 2nd worst city in the world for traffic congestion by IBM. Johannesburg took the #1 spot for worst traffic. Residents perceive that traffic is getting worse (9% of commuters felt the quality of their commute had declined) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED) estimated that Toronto lost $3.3 billion last year in productivity due to the congested roads.

Toronto’s gridlock is getting worse, between the increase in population and the increase in construction it is excruciating to travel through the city by car. And currently there is no public transit solution worth considering (would you rather be stuck on a crowded bus or in your own car?)

Someone said to me the other day,

Is all the construction a conspiracy by David Miller to convince Dalton McGuinty and Queens Park that we need Transit City Now?

The solution is not just a mass transit upgrade for Toronto. Part of the solution also includes a cultural shift (i.e getting people out of their individual cars and back on to buses, getting people to move back into the city and out of the suburbs). It should also include more bike lanes, but bike lanes with a buffer from traffic; Toronto’s driving culture still isn’t capable of sharing lanes.

Regardless of the outcome, Toronto is stuck with massive delays, congestion and, thus, pollution from the added construction to the gridlock. And while I understand that there is a huge infrastructure gap and the roads NEED to be fixed a better construction mitigation plan should have been sought out.

1. Climate change science, sources and trends
2. The importance of climate change to the state DOTs
3. Strategies to reduce GHG emissions from transportation
4. Climate adaptation for Transportation Agencies
5. Climate legislation and policy

Burbanks’s presentation began by discussing the unequivocal evidence of global warming, increased GHG emissions and the effect of humans on the rising levels of GHG’s. I won’t get into that much here. Although she agreed that there is some science out there disqualifying climate change, the science behind human effects on climate change is overwhelming. Her presentation on climate science was quite good and if you have a few minutes go through pages 12 to 18 of her slides.

What I thought was more interesting were her findings on climate change and its effects on DOTs.

The Three-Part Challenge to State DOTs

1. Reduce transportation GHG’s: by as much as 60-80% by 2050
2. Adapt transportation infrastructure: most importantly to severe storms, but also rising sea levels, high temperatures and flooding
3. Find a new revenue stream: one based on low carbon fuels

In the US highway vehicles = 82% of Transportation CO2 emissions, 23% of total US CO2 emission

The Economist vs. Political Debate

Burbank is an economist and argued that GHG reduction should be done as cost effectively as possible. She stated that the evidence supports that an 80% reduction in GHG’s in transportation maybe more costly in some sectors than others. i.e. From an economic perspective transportation targets should probably be lower

BUT the political reality is that each sector will have to contribute its ‘fair share.’ Therefore the DOTs will likely be forced to achieve a reduction of GHG’s of 60-80% from current levels

Initially we thought of reduction strategies in terms of a 3 legged stool, which included vehicles, fuels and vehicle miles traveled (VMT). That has known grown to a five legged stool to include Operating Efficiency and Construction, Maintenance and Agency Operations. Brown notes that a 50% cut in GHG/mile is feasible from conventional technologies and biofuels by 2020-2030 (slide 25 has some worldwide GHG rates).

“In the long term, carbon free road transport fuel is the only way to achieve an 80-90% reduction in emissions.” Although the number of light duty vehicles in the developed world (OCED) will not dramatically increase over the next few decades, those in the developing world (non-OCED) will dramatically increase. We have to decarbonizes fuel because of their increased use of light duty vehicles.

To further reduce the carbon footprint of transportation the DOTs have to starting thinking about pricing schemes. As Burbank says “Without price signals, trying to reduce GHG is swimming upstream.” Pricing will encourage consumer purchase of lower carbon vehicles/fuels, business Investment in low-GHG technology, decreased VMT, Eco-driving
and more efficient land use.

And the pricing tools already exist; auto ‘feebates,’ carbon/fuel prices, PAYD insurance (Pay-as-you-Drive, i.e. by km/annum), mileage fees, increased parking pricing, and congestion Pricing (just like in London and Singapore)

Alongside pricing tools government’s will have to employ strategies to reduce GHG in light duty vehicles by 10-20%. These can include:

• Managing speed (35-55 MPH/56-88 KPH is optimal)
• Speed limits/enforcement (reduce fuel use by 2-4%)
• Eliminating bottlenecks
• “Active” Traffic Management to smooth traffic flow
• Improving signal timing (could reduce 1.315 MMT CO2/yr)
• Roundabouts
• Reducing Car and Truck Idling
• Work zone management to smooth flow
• Encourage eco-driving

Strategies to reduce GHG’s in our vehicles and fuels will not be enough. It will take a coordination of strategies for Construction, Maintenance and Agency Operations that will help to decrease GHG emissions. Some examples that governments can employ:  LED traffic lights, low carbon pavement, energy-efficient buildings (i.e LEED certified), solar panels along the right of way, alternative fuels and hybrid vehicles in agency fleets, and alternative fuel and hybrid buses.

Why do Agencies need to plan for Adaptation?:

Climate change is a reality that transportation agencies need to deal with . Those that are proactive will be the ones that spend less money over the long run.

Her presentation was twofold, to talk about some of the biomedical trends with new tissues and their future in Ontario as well as the future of the infrastructure, the hospitals.

New Biomedical Technologies

Gate Analysis. Functional Electrical Stimulation. Tissue Engineering. It’s all part of the future of medicine, not just here in Ontario. These methods are all designed to be preventative, to predict what your future may hold.

Did you know that by placing electrodes on your legs, having you walk and running it through a computer model can help to identify when and where you might have degeneration in your knees? You could change how you walk just to preserve the life of your knee.

You can stimulate the brain through functional electrical stimulation and rewake the muscles in a paraplegic’s body. Imagine giving them their freedom back? Aside from the savings in health care look at the personal enjoyment you just gave someone back in their life.

Re-grow degenerative spinal discs. Create a functional gallbladder from stem cells. Develop a polymer that can beat like heart tissue. And this is just a short list of examples of what is to come.

How to design a future hospital

The hospitals of the future should be more sustainable. Not only should they draw less energy they should produce less garbage. They should move patients through the hospital more efficiently. There may even come a time where patient and doctor do not meet, that the conversation happens through a computer.

Most importantly the big campuses we build in the future must be built by a collaborative team. It will take doctors, engineers, mechanics, biologists, architects, technologists, etc to design the best and most efficient hospital. It should not be built as a band-aid to correct the mistakes of our previous hospitals; it should be innovative and design for the future. Remember the hospital we can build isn’t just here for today and the next few years, it will be a centre of treatment for the next forty to fifty years.

Barriers

What stands in the way of a state of the art hospital? Most importantly costs. It will not come with a small price tag to build for the future. But that initial upfront cost of the innovative hospital over a lifetime should be less than a traditional energy-sucking, inefficient traditional hospital.

Another barrier is sources. Sources of tissue. Unfortunately it takes quite a lot of work to grow just a small amount of new tissue. We aren’t currently able to do this in mass-production. Add to that the current best source of stem cells is the placenta and now fewer of these are being donated to science. (Dr. Woodhouse joked casually to look up recipes online. I think I should be afraid!)

Another potential barrier is our lack of planning. Planning doesn’t happen over the forty to fifty-year time frame, it happens in four-year, election blocks. Although the politicians may change, the doctors, engineers, architects and patients will be in it for the duration.

What will the future look like?

There will come a time when we no longer head off to our family doctor. Instead from a different clinic, we’ll have our blood pressure, heart rate, ears and eyes checked. This will all be diagnosed electronically and sent to your physician. Instead of a visit there will be a note on your file. You will be able to get into your electronic file and look at the results.

Of course for acute care and serious disease people will still need to see a specialist. But instead of waiting all that time in a family doctors office, you’ll be able to take the middleman out and just go to your specialist.

Emergency rooms will triage patients differently. Already with some e-health infrastructure the number of hospital visits will decrease.

Car crash and other similar victims will be able to have surgery to repair their broken limbs. new bone and other tissues will be grown in your body to replace the broken. Dr. Woodhouse commented on the increased healthcare costs due to psychological treatments to patients to have great facial damage. Understandably if you weren’t confident in how you looked, especially with damage to your face, you would need some support.

To Plan For the Future Hospital

It will take entrepreneurs, bold thinkers and a government that is not afraid to take a risk. It will be a greener, leaner building. The old, inefficient hospitals can hopefully be a thing of our past. Innovate, educate, involve and you a project can evolve.

To date the government has offered no incentives to commercial businesses to invest in individual renewable energy.

I’ve spent the week doing a lot of research on renewable energy, specifically wind energy. I was amazed at the responses I was getting from business owners, particularly those in ideal wind zones.

The initial set up cost is so high that it is complete barrier to entry in the renewable energy sector.

But wait didn’t we hear from the government through the media that a large portion was to come from individual, renewable energy investment?

It got me thinking about the whole triple bottom line approach to things; evaluating something from an economic, environmental and social perspective. Yes the government wants to improve our energy grid and reduce green house emissions, but it cannot be at the economic expense of businesses.

It can cost upwards of $4million for a single wind turbine

That’s a lot of money. And businesses these days just don’t have that kind of money to invest. Most are fearful that this economic downturn is not quite over yet; I’m on the fence with that one.

Here are some suggestions for getting these programs going:

1. Government should offer NO interest loans to companies to invest in renewable energy.
2. There should be co-sharing of the long-term costs – the government still comes out ahead, this way they don’t have to invest in all of it.
3. More R&D is needed to figure out how to lower the cost of production – although as more people the demand the technologies, economies of scale will prevail and costs will naturally decrease
4. Charge people the ‘real’ cost for electricity. This one is a little controversial, but there is some evidence that we are not paying enough for our electricity. Renewables become much more economically attractive if the price of electricity doubles or even triples.

Renewables are part of the future, lets just make them part of the near future.

No cars? Ok well it would make transporting food, goods and people impossible so Zermatt allows small electric shuttles – they look like mini buses. All the vehicles are made in the town. The goal is to minimize the air pollution and preserve the view of the Matterhorn by eliminating the combustion engine.

The first thing I noticed on my trip was the amount of electric vehicle congestion. The roads are very narrow in Zermatt and everyone walks, with their skis in tow, to and from the lifts. Our walk each day was almost a km and we frequently were halted as we had to wait for the vehicles to pass us and others coming from the opposite direction.

Zermatt is also in a construction boom, in every direction you look you can see a crane. This means even more vehicles are passing through the streets delivering construction materials. Plus they have now permitted large, diesel trucks to deliver concrete and other large machines (i.e. bobcats) to site. Some of the sites were so inaccessible that goods were delivered by helicopter. Overall is what congestion mania, in the sky with the cranes and helicopters, and in the streets with all the vehicles.

Overall Zermatt is pristine, preserving the air and it’s cultural heritage. Hopefully this construction will come to an end soon. I’v never been to Zermatt in the winter, when the slopes are fully covered, but even in my preseason visit I can see the majesty of the Swiss Alps.

Presentation #1: Analysis of the Low-Bid Award System in Public Sector Construction Procurement

The main thing that I took away from this presentation was that typically a project in the public sector has about a 25% final cost escalation after the bid. What this really means is that public sectors budget for ‘$x’ but really they need to budget for ‘$x+25%’ – that can get really costly for us taxpayers!

Other things highlighted in this presentation:

• Pre-qualified Vs Open Bids: Typically the public sector has Vendors of Record and only allow specific companies to bid on projects. In an open bid anyone can bid the job. The author noted regardless if the company was pre-qualified that all jobs saw a 25% cost escalation.
• What project are they bidding on?: The author suggested that companies will ‘low-ball’ their job price just to get the job knowing that they can charge for many extras. Other companies will bid the ‘whole’ job and build in contingencies. I wonder which overall in the end would be cheaper?

I thought the research as lacking, particularly in consistency of level of government; there is a big difference between municipal, provincial and federal jobs in terms or budgets, project size and complexity.

What should we do In the Future?

The author didn’t offer research ideas for the future I these should be incorporated:

• Analysis of government levels: i.e break it down to municipal, provincial and federal
• Project Scope: Some $100 million jobs are the easiest so break the projects down by complexity
• Project Cost: Even though those $100 million dollar jobs are easy how do they compare in over-runs with the bigger and smaller jobs?
• Schedule: one season vs multi-year – what are the impacts?

I questioned the author on pre-qualified bidders under completed designs and asked if an investigation was done on contracts where no ‘extras’ were permitted. This area had not been explored because most of the projects looked at were bid on at the 30% design stage (I see a flaw here). But looking at the other conferences I’ve been to this year I would think that a P3 is needed here, such that the risk is transferred both to the client (the constructor) and the owner (the public sector). Using P3’s BC has been able to minimize cost escalations and has built many impressive projects.

Presentation #2: Investigation of Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) Reinforcing Bars as Internal Reinforcement for Concrete Structures

GFRP might be the future in concrete construction, well at least for certain applications. Typically concrete is reinforced with steel; to be technical concrete is great in compression and terrible in tension so without any reinforcing material in it everything would come crashing down.

Why switch from steel to glass? When steel is produced it is not in its elemental state, that shiny steel wants to return to it’s rust covered natural state. As the rust penetrates the steel it looses its structural strength. Plus steel is highly reactive and with all the chemicals in our buildings and roads the steel is once again on the defence and can break down.

Enter glass. A material that does not react to the chemicals the same way steel does. It is actually stronger than steel and has been shown to withstand twice the applied force of steel.

Drawbacks to glass:

• No way to monitor its behaviour: Because glass does not react the same way as steel and because it is so new there are many testing mechanisms to test the glass
• No way to tell it will fail: Steel has both an elastic and plastic phase. As it approaches its maximum load it enters plastic deformation. Basically we can see when it is going to fail. Glass on the other hand is only elastic and fails once it reaches it’s ultimate load
• Not recyclable: the glass fibers are covered in resin. Separating the glass from the resin is almost impossible. And to add insult to injury using recycled glass initially significantly lowers the strength so only new glass is used in GFRP.

A bulk of the authors work was testing the GFRP at extremely cold temperature, -40C/-40F. The author noted that the GRFP had no strength deviations at these low temperatures and performed well – good news for Canada!

In the end I have to say that I did enjoy both presentations. I thought the second candidate did a far better job at answering questions and proposed where future research could go (the student it starting his PhD this fall in GFRP and is continuing to build upon his research). But what I really took away from this was that a master defence at the University of Toronto is more of a presentation; these candidates weren’t sweating it out at all!

As much as we try in North America, it is almost impossible to give up driving. Not because we aren’t trying but because we lack the infrastructure to get anywhere without a car.

Tips for efficiency

Thanks to Sierra Magazine’s The Green Life: Daily Tips for Living Well and Doing Good for providing these simple tips.

I think the most important tip of all is to drive a fuel efficient car. With the ‘cash for clunkers’ program in the US individuals can trade in their old, gas-guzzling, monsters for smaller more efficient cars; unfortunately at this time Canada does not have a similar program, but Chrysler Canada is offering an incentive.

The reality is everyone does have to drive at times. By reducing the amount we drive and following these simple tips we can all help to reduce the footprints of our cars.

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.