Adding bike lanes to new construction projects...

The ferry from Manitoulin Island to Tobermory was cold and windy, but upon landing in the famed and picturesque harbour town, I was regaled with stories of the Bruce Peninsula by Bob, a local dog breeder. After we chatted about my bike trip for a little while I told him I'd be taking Highway 6 south to Owen Sound, the only major highway on the Peninsula.

He told me that major construction had been taking place on the highway for most of the summer and that as a cyclist, I should love it. Instead of adding bike lanes after repaving the highway -- as is a typical way to add bike lanes, but is costly and obstructive, since the highway needs to be shut down for some point of time -- the province, with funds from the federal stimulus bill, decided to add them as it repaved the highway. Two birds. One stone.

And it is fantastic. The lanes -- which at this point are simply paved shoulders -- are very wide and could even accommodate two bikes side by side. And there are many signs that clearly say 'Do Not Drive on the Paved Shoulders', which is very necessary given that the shoulders look like part of the regular car lane.

I'm presuming that they will be painting lines in due time to mark the lanes, although another local I chatted with said they won't be. According to a discussion she had with one of the project's engineers, they may decide not to add painted lines because it could be harmful to cyclists.

Hmm. Sounds a little counter-intuitive. But according to the engineer, once lines are painted, motorists won't pay as much attention when passing cyclists on the road, assuming each vehicle will stay in its assigned lane. Unfortunately, this might lead to cars flying by at full speed within close distance to cyclists, which can be very dangerous. Without the lines though, motorists are forced to notice the cyclists and be more likely to slow down and go around carefully. I'm on the fence about the argument -- the government might just be cheap -- but it's interesting nonetheless.

The incorporation of bike lanes into highway reconstructions is rare in Ontario and the Bruce project is only the first leg in what is supposed to be a much larger highway network, including Manitoulin Island. I wish them all the best.

Bill Rees, The Ecological Footprint and Climate Change

Bill Rees is a prominent academic ecologist who co-created the Ecological Footprint concept back in the mid-1990s. Bill is also a distinguished professor in my graduate program (SCARP) and is well-known at UBC and in the City of Vancouver.

The 9-minute clip above is an introduction to a lecture he delivered at the World Federalists' Meeting this past April.

Bill draws on the problematic impacts that humans have had on ecology and explains the notable climate change implications. He also summarizes the ecological footprint concept very succinctly. Some of the points are a bit pessimistic but will hopefully give you an idea of the great challenges that planners and other professionals are currently confronted with. Bill works with a number of students in my program to develop ideas that will have salient policy impacts that alleviate human stresses on ecosystems.

Minnesota's Adopt a Highway Program...

I am nearly 1000 km into my bicycle journey and have just arrived into Michigan, having passed through Manitoba, Minnesota and Wisconsin over the past week. The routes have been absolutely stunning, as fall approaches and the roads are lined with miles and miles of multi-colored leaves sitting in the trees, just waiting to fall. But before they fall, plenty of volunteers will be making the final roadside clean up throughout much of northern Minnesota.

Along my route in Minnesota, I encountered what seemed like hundreds of different "adopted highways". Adopt A Highway programs typically involve and organization of some kind volunteering to pick up trash along a stretch of highway a few times per year. In exchange, the government puts up a big sign exclaiming the group's effort. You see these from time to time in Ontario and Manitoba (I'm sure they are elsewhere in Canada, too), but I have never seen them in such abundance as I did in Minnesota.

I have never personally been involved with an Adopt A Highway program, but it seems like a great idea. You get free advertising, the roadsides become cleaner (very noticeable by those of us who stop there frequently) and people can get outdoors and do some volunteering. Moreover, it reminds us that some environmental problems are still fixed simply by doing a little hard work, even though much of the world has moved on to the more exciting and global problems, like climate change and solving our energy needs.

I'm on a bike most of the time, so I'll admit I have little desire to research this any further and I have no substantive evidence that proves how popular Minnesota's program is. This is simply something I've noticed. Why is it so popular compared to other places? My only guess is that the signs the Minnesota government puts up are far larger than what you'd get in Manitoba or elsewhere. Advertising is advertising.

China's dependency on Coal

The Green Blog from the NY Times discusses China's heavy reliance on coal.

"the single most important issue is how to get China to deploy carbon capture and storage into its coal sector.”

"the technology is still in its infancy, with only a handful of projects up and running globally, and expensive to deploy. Who will cover the cost?"

"China, which counts itself as a developing country, say the industrialized world should underwrite such investments. But will Western countries be willing? To what extent should China be responsible for curbing its own coal emissions, and how much should the industrialized world contribute?"

China will probably consider carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology but is waiting for the United States, Canada and other Western nations to prove their commitment to this technology. Like many technologies for climate change mitigation, there are big costs and lots of uncertainties. Given China's coal dependent economy, there is a lot of opportunity for CCS. I think Canada and China should partner up and run a trial CCS initiative to evaluate its efficacy. This could showcase its potential and attract other nations.

China's straddling bus

A couple of weeks ago, Chris (and people around the world) reported on China's nine day traffic jam. The traffic jam was on the Beijing-Tibet expressway. Beijing itself has had many challenges with traffic congestion due to poor urban planning and transit policies that favor the automobile over public transport. When I was in Shanghai, I noticed the impressive transit system and was told by locals that it is well used. Beijing's public transit system is less impressive I'm told.

As Chris mentioned, congestion zone charges, highways tolls and carbon taxes could help ease traffic and pollution in cities like Beijing. Alas, these sorts of policy tools would probably not be well received by the motorists.

The straddling bus has been proposed by Chinese civil engineers. It would help save road space and could carry up to 1400 passengers. I think there are two really unique aspects of this transit mode (if is does come into operation). 1) The bus stations will have supercapacitors which would re-charge the bus with energy so it could make trips continuously. 2) It could carry over 1000 passengers. You do the math to figure out how many cars that could take off the road over a one year period and the drastic reductions in carbon emissions that would accompany this process.

Powered by electricity and capable of carrying over 1000 passengers, it sounds like a promising project for China's top tier cities like Beijing. Can't subways do the same thing? They sure can, but they are really expensive ($100 million per kilometre of construction) and they take years to construct.

Can the straddling bus help improve urban transit? We'll have to see what happens. 186 kilometres have been planned out in Beijing's Mentougou District.

Trent University Officially Bans the Sale of Bottled Water...

Trent University has hit a milestone shared by only a handful of post-secondary institutions across North America. Earlier this month, the school officially banned the sale of single unit bottled water on campus and will fully come into effect in the fall of 2011.

Over the course of the upcoming academic year, customers are being encouraged to reduce their consumption of individual bottles of water as the number of bottles available from cafeterias, vending machines and other sellers will steadily decrease, ultimately reaching none. Moreover, under the policy, no bottled water will be sold by "any member, club and group, organization or administrative or academic department at the university".

This is a major victory for Trent University and all groups fighting against the sale of bottled water. This is an especially important victory for Trent's Central Student Association and Sustainable Trent, the two student groups that have been fighting for this for several years. Several years ago, the likelihood of achieving such a ban was considered next to nil, considering the stranglehold held on the food services at Trent by Aramark. However, I first noticed a major shift in the tide at Aramark during a meeting one of its Reps had with Sustainable Trent in which he implied that a ban on bottled water might actually prove more financially beneficial to the food provider as the closest alternative to bottled water is the much more lucrative 'vitamin water', which is not covered in the ban.

Importantly, the school is providing an investment in water fountains on campus, which, up until earlier last year, were almost nowhere to be found on campus. In fact, under the food service contract with Aramark, it was able to place vending machines in front of old water fountains, thereby eliminating any competition between bottled water and water fountains.

It should be noted that the school's claim that the school will be "bottled water free by 2011" can not be fully achieved by the policy. Indeed, the sale of bottled water is not the same as providing it for free. As far as I understand it, this policy does nothing to prevent anybody giving away bottled water, which is not uncommon at conferences, sporting events, etc. However, one can hope that the ban emanates to these facets as well.

Congratulations, Trent.

Ever heard of Blue Efficiency?

I found this video on the Freakonomics blog. Mercedes-Benz is now pitching blue efficiency to its avid buyers who ostensibly have an interest in reducing their carbon emissions. The horse manure part of the video was also covered in SuperFreakonomics when Dubner and Levitt discuss New York City's egregious horse manure problem in the late 1890s/early 1900s and how the automobile became the "environmental savior" by eliminating the issue.

Elizabeth Kolbert from the New Yorker discusses the horse manure problem in greater detail and provides a scathing critique of SuperFreaknomics.

SuperFreakonomics: A quick review

I just finished reading SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. The authors are Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The book is a follow-up to their first book titled Freaknomics which was a NY Times best-seller and led to the creation of blog to continue the dialogue.

There are a number of really fascinating and very insightful stories found in SuperFreakonomics- stories that really make you think about how human beings can respond or alter behaviour based on reasonable economic incentives. At first, their insights and comparisons seem to be completed unrelated, but Dubner and Levitt are very creative and pull together correlations that leave you amazed. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone. It is not about recessions, financial markets or inflation, instead the authors use compelling statistics to illustrate how selfish and irrational we can be and how incentives, pricing and public policy can lead to a more harmonious and healthy society.

Instead of touching on how drunk walking is more dangerous than drunk driving, or why doctors are so bad at washing their hands or if people are innately altruistic or selfish or how monkeys respond to economic incentives, or what Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common, I will share an example with you which covers a controversial topic known as geo-engineering.

In short, geo-engineering is large scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry.

While I don't have a particular stance on geo-engineering, it is worth some discussion. Let me share one SuperFreakonomics example with you where a geo-physicist has figured out a way to counteract a natural disaster provided by Mother Nature, hurricanes.

Hurricanes are deadly, since 1900, more than 1.3 million people worldwide have been killed by them. Between 2004 and 2005, there were six hurricanes in the U.S. with combined damages of $153 billion dollars. Without going into all of the technical details, hurricanes become more potent (accumulate more thermal energy) when they hover over warm waters. A geo-physicist has proposed a solution that can help prevent the water from getting too warm and thus too destructive.

The trick is as follows: hydraulic head is a force, created by the energy put into the waves by wind. This force would push the warm surface water down into the long plastic cylinder, flushing it out at the bottom far beneath the surface. As long as the waves keep coming in, the hydraulic head's force would keep pushing warm surface water into the cooler depths, which will lower the ocean's surface temperature. A molecule of warm surface water would take about three hours to be flushed out the bottom of the plastic cylinder.

The devices would take the form of rings made from old truck tires filled with foamed concrete and lashed together with steel cable. The cylinder extending six hundred feet deep into the ocean, would push the warm surface water under. The trick is to modify the surface temperature of the water. Bottomline: in large numbers, these devices could possibly make warm water cooler and thus less likely to build a destructive hurricane.

So, would this hurricane killer actually work? These devices would range in price (depending on size) but could be as little as $100,000 - allocating 10,000 of them around the world would cost $1 billion or one tenth the amount of hurricane property damage incurred in a single year in the U.S. alone.

This is just example proposed by imaginative scientists who think that such tricks could help decrease the impact of destructive hurricanes. Levitt and Dubner discuss specific geo-engineering examples here. They are controversial and may never be adopted by governments, but their point is this: changing the behaviour of individuals (to drive less or pollute less for example) is never an easy task, using geo-engineering solutions can cool the temperature of the earth at a cost considerably cheaper than public awareness campaigns or large scale government spending on carbon reducing technology. The ideas may seem far-fetched, but would be worth carrying out in smaller projects.

Take their thoughts and findings with a grain of salt, but understand that such solutions could be cost-effective if they were funded and embraced by governments.