If we want economic independence from the USA, we should build more bike lanes, not rip them out.
We should learn the lessons of Copenhagen in the 1970s.
I will likely not be posting for the next few days; I have been obsessed with Canadian politics and want to refocus on my core preoccupations with sustainability and sufficiency. I need a break to work this out.
The Ontario election is over. A victorious Doug Ford will likely get serious about ripping out Toronto’s bike lanes while wearing his “Canada is not for sale” hat and telling people to avoid buying products made in the USA. The message that the anti-bike lane member of Parliament was one of the few Conservatives to lose will be lost on him.
Meanwhile, he continues with policies that promote using Pennsylvania’s natural gas and importing 33,000 barrels a day of refined petroleum products (RPP, mainly gasoline) mostly from North Dakota. The ethanol blended into the gas is also from the USA. Peter Tertzakian explains in theThe Financial Post:
“What we have is a peculiar situation in this country that’s not just economic. It’s also about energy security. We don’t have an East-West energy security situation, and it also hurts us economically.” Tertzakian explained that that’s because the bulk of the oil produced in Western Canada goes to one customer — the U.S. At the same time, the bulk of the oil consumed in central Canada is purchased from the U.S.
He calls for a new east-west oil pipeline, but notes that it could take seven to ten years just to get approved.
There is an alternative to a pipe; If Doug Ford were serious about avoiding products from the USA, he would be promoting renewable energy, heat pumps, and learning the lessons of Copenhagen.
When the 1973 oil crisis hit Denmark, the city of Copenhagen introduced car-free Sundays to reduce fuel consumption. Jens Loft Rasmussen of the Danish Cyclists Federation tells John Greenfield of Streetsblog:
“And then people realized that the car-free Sunday was the best day of the week, or some people did. They joined the Danish Cyclists’ Federation and there were huge demonstrations in Copenhagen. The attitude of the city government changed step-by-step from building highways to the center of Copenhagen to realizing that bicycling was a very important part of the transportation picture.”
The city of Copenhagen went from a modal split of less than 10% cycling to over 30%, dramatically dropping fuel consumption. But they had to rework the roads; Rasmussen continues:
“We had mixed traffic in Copenhagen in the Seventies so cars and bicycles used the same roads. But we had a lot of [crashes] when we mixed the traffic. So the planners and politicians in Copenhagen decided that we should take some of the space from cars and build separated bicycle paths. Because you have a problem when you mix bicycle and car traffic. And [separated bikeways] seem to be a very good solution because the injury rates for cyclists dropped. And the cycle tracks give you a better feeling of security.”
So if Doug Ford were serious about reducing imports from the USA, he would be building more bike lanes, not removing them.
Doug’s approach to reducing carbon emissions is to build nukes and electric cars, both unlikely to happen if a tariff wall goes up on the USA border. If he were serious about reducing carbon emissions (he’s not, he is aligned with the American president on this and many other issues) he would be doing everything he could to plan our cities and towns to handle more bikes instead of cars.
If you crunch the numbers, it turns out that getting someone out of a car and on to a bike saves more energy and carbon than going Net-Zero in our buildings. An architect in New Orleans did the math, published in Linkedin by Tristan Roberts a decade ago:
According to CBECS, the national treasure trove of building energy data, total source energy consumed by office buildings works out to 40,300 kBtu/yr per employee.
The mean commute distance for Americans is 18.8 miles; 81% commute alone by vehicle. Assuming those commuting alone by car are doing so in a vehicle that gets the typical 22 mpg, they consume 340 gallons of gas per year commuting.
Gasoline has an energy content of 125 kBtu/gallon, so the average commuter will consume 42,500 kBtu/yr.
The drive consumes more BTUs than the building! So getting someone out of a car and onto a bike is better for the environment than building Net Zero. We also have e-bikes now that can carry more people longer distances. They are the future of urban transportation.
One might also note the carbon and energy savings that come from not having to bury streetcar/ LRT lines and not building a fantasy 60km long tunnel under Toronto, all because there are fewer drivers on the roads.
Then there is Landrick Bennet, writing in Spacing, who notes that “For decades, cities worldwide have learned that expanding road capacity or prioritizing vehicle movement doesn’t alleviate congestion — it makes it worse. It’s called induced demand: the more space you make for cars, the more cars show up.” He calls for better street design that serves everyone, not just people in cars:
“Complete streets that prioritize transit, cycling, and walking move more people, more efficiently, than car-choked roads ever will. CaféTO and ActiveTO have already demonstrated how reallocating road space can create vibrant, people-focused environments while maintaining business activity and easing congestion. Instead of removing these programs, the city should be expanding them.”
Of course, none of this matters to car-brained Doug Ford, who doesn’t care about my daughter’s safety in the bike lane every morning. His “Canada is not for sale” schtick did its job and helped get him reëlected. Now he can get back to building highways and sprawl.
But if we are going to be truly independent of the USA, we have to stop buying their oil, gas, and pickup trucks. Promoting bikes and building bike lanes is a lot faster and cheaper than nuclear reactors and pipes from Alberta.
If my writing sounds stilted because I write “from the USA” instead of “American” it is because the country’s name is the “United States of America.” It is OF America, it is not America. According to the Library of Congress blog,
In 1984 William Safire, concerned about the accuracy or propriety of using “American” as the name of a denizen of the United States of America, sought alternatives, finding none, such as “Unisian,” “United Statesian,” “Usian,” or Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Usonian,” satisfactory. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1965) observes that “the use of ‘America’ for the ‘United States’ and ‘American’ for ‘citizen of the U.S.’ … will continue to be protested against by purists and patriots and will doubtless survive the protests.” Evans’s Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage comments “If it’s any comfort to those who resent it, the usage is founded on a lazy disinclination to pronounce the longer name rather than arrogance.”
It’s lazy and arrogant and incorrect, and I don’t see why we should let it be co-opted, other than it makes the “Gulf of America” change even sillier.
I want to apply Copenhagen’s lessons, to ALL of North America.
Most Ontario voters want Doug Ford to destroy bike lanes, public healthcare and public education. Either that or they do not care about their lives in Ontario.