Put a Train on the Champlain

The Harper government has promised to rebuild the Champlain Bridge of Montreal which is a very good move. The infrastructure of Montreal falling apart and that bridge is necessary to the transportation needs of the city. But, when infrastructure must be rebuilt, it gives us a golden opportunity to build it smartly and sustainably.

The new Champlain bridge will have a reserved lane for public transit, it just hasn't been decided what mode. Quebec is studying putting a train on the Champlain bridge. This would be a good idea, to have LRT that can run on the surface downtown and have priority on the bridge. LRT has much more capacity than buses and is a much more attractive option than buses. The Champlain bridge is an example of how to implement the tram-train in Montreal.

MONTREAL - Quebec is working on a plan to put a train on the new Champlain Bridge, part of a 13-kilometre transit system that would link Longueuil and downtown Montreal. 

But it’s unclear who would foot the bill – hundreds of millions of dollars – or even if the train will ever be built

Read more at the Gazette.

Pigheadedness Makes us Uncomfortable

Every summer, the topic comes up: why don't we have AC on Montreal's public transit. The basic answer is that our pigheaded mayor, Gérald Tremblay insists that it's too expensive and it decreases fuel efficiency, thereby harming the environment. Yet, poll any transit rider and ask them if they would pay more for air conditioning and they will say yes. Who really wants to take a hot crowded bus? Nobody. AC would attract more transit riders and that's why Montreal should catch up to the standard being adopted around the world. Montreal needs comfortable and cool Metros and buses.

MONTREAL - If you rode a bus or métro in Montreal on Thursday, chances are you arrived at your destination hot, damp – and more than a bit cranky.
The searing temperatures on the Société de transport de Montréal’s transit network are a reality of life in this city.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Montreal+m%c3%a9tro+stations+become+underground+saunas/5141074/story.html#ixzz1SqNv4AwH

Make Some Noise for Quiet Trains

High speed rail has not made much noise throughout this election campaign. It seems that parties are much more content to talk about the economy, health care, education and the usual instead of big infrastructure projects like bullet trains. Because apparently, Canadians are not concerned with fast transportation. They probably aren't, but high speed rail could provide many benefits to Canada and to parties that seek to talk more about it.

The economic benefits for Canada may not seem clear at first. Why would building a rail line spur permanent economic growth? Consider this: by making cities virtually closer together and therefore jobs much closer together, we will have a mobile workforce capable of getting from city centre to city centre much faster. This is in addition to the thousands of construction jobs created by the initial project and permanent jobs maintaining the rail line. Airplanes do not do this as airports are more frequently situated on city boundaries and not downtown like rail stations.

There are a few benefits I can think of for parties who seek to talk about high speed rail. Firstly, that party would be able to repeatedly show that as an example of their devotion to building a sustainable future for Canada. It would also show them as a party that will spur job creation and stimulate the economy. Finally, it would provide that party with that "vision" aspect that everyone wants. Supporting a project of this size to bring Canada closer together would surely benefit political parties.

So far, the only party that has talked at length about this issue is the Green Party. If others were to talk about it and commit to actually building high speed rail lines instead of study after study, they would, in my opinion garner more support.

While the idea of high-speed rail remains little more than a good idea along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, it's a way of life in Japan. That country recently launched the "Huyabusa," a bullet train capable of speeds of 186 mph that's equipped with a businessclass carriage modelled on airliner cabins.

Read more at the Windsor Star.

Bixi will Expand into Westmount

Since a few years ago, Bixi has become an integral part of Montreal. During the spring and summer, you can always see Bixi stands in the street and many people use them as a part of getting around the city. For the third year straight, the service will be expanded. This time to Westmount. I would like to see them expanded even further, along with more bike paths. Bixi and bicycle paths composes a good part of sustainable development in Montreal. We need to reduce the number of cars on the road and that means more bicycle paths.

MONTREAL - With Bixi poised to announce five new stations in Westmount and likely at least two more in Notre Dame de Grâce on Tuesday, cycling advocates are shifting focus to their next goal; a safe route across the Décarie Expressway. 

Westmount Mayor Peter Trent was pleased to confirm his successful negotiations to bring Bixi to Westmount for about $235,000, a lower price tag than initially proffered by Montreal’s public bicycle sharing system.

Read more at the Montreal Gazette.

Related articles

• Bixi bike-sharing returns to Ottawa-Gatineau (cbc.ca)
• Bixi bike-sharing program ready to roll in Toronto (thestar.com)

Seven Billion People

By the end of 2011, it is expected that the world population will exceed seven billion. With more people in the world, we must plan. The world's problems will grow larger if we do nothing. We must ensure access to clean drinking water and make sure we do not waste, as our fresh water reserves are just going to decline. Probably most important of all, we must invest in cleaner, greener energy. Seven billion people are going to need more energy than ever before and peak oil looms. The tar sands are a symbol of our desperation to find oil. This non-conventional way of exploiting oil shows how far we have to go to get our oil. We must shift the economy to use alternative energy that will not peak and at the same time, does not pollute as much.

Canada's Trainwreck

It has been almost fifty years since Japan has launched its Shinkansen, the first high speed rail line in the world and Canada now finds itself the only country in the G8 without a high speed rail network of some sort. This would allow for a two hour trip between Montreal and Toronto, instead of the present five to eight hours.
In 2009, EKOS found out that 88% of Canadians support high speed rail coming to Canada. That is because the benefits are clear. Besides providing more jobs and enriching the economy, high speed rail is ridiculously safe and punctual, with many countries offering a refund if a train is more than five minutes late. It provides a rival to polluting cars and airplanes, reducing transportaiton emissions. Investing in high speed rail would be a good thing for Canada. The studies are done, the benefits are clear. It's time to start building.

Dedicated high-speed rail lines are ridiculously efficient -- at least in Japan. Officials there point out that trains are punctual down-to-the-minute, even with 300 million riders a year.

They're safe. There has not been a single fatality in either the Japanese or French system. An average of seven Canadians die in road accidents every day.

Environmentally, there is no better way to move a large amount of people, unless someone builds a really, big bike.

Read more at CTV.

Biofue vs. Regualr gasoline.

Biofuel and regular gasoline are both two types of energy used for fueling cars. Energy is the ability to do work. In this case energy is the ability to move a car. Regular Gasoline is a non-renewable resource that many people tend to use for their car fuel. Biofuel is a renewable resource that comes from corn that farmers produced. Currently there have been many discussions about the two on which one is a better car fuel.

Biofuel has been seen as the solution for future car fuel, but in order to make biofuel you need energy. Meaning in order to make more Corn for biofuel you need to use energy to process the corn into a fuel, and currently most of the energy used to make this fuel is coal and natural gas which are non-renewable resources. The highest amount of corn based biofuel used in a car can only go up to 85% biofuel and 15% gasoline. Biofuel has a EROEI ratio of 1.34. (EROEI is the ratio of how much energy is invested to how much energy you get out) This means that for every unit of energy used to make the fuel you only get 1.34 unit of biofuel, so if you wanted to be really be green in using biofuel as the energy to make the biofuel rather than coal or natural gas you would be keeping ¾ of the biofuel you made this year into making more for the next year. Only ¼ of the biofuel you made would actually go to be made as a fuel. This shows that using biofuel as car fuel can’t work as it takes too much energy just to make it without using nonrenewable resources. Some would say that oil isn’t a renewable resource and we can’t keep using it. Yes that is true there will not be enough oil eventually to continue being a fuel or an energy source, but even if you convert every single field in the in the U.S into a corn field for biofuel you will not have enough biofuel to run the U.S. Oil may not be able to be an energy source in the future, but corn can’t even be the source of energy today.



Biofuel made from corn has been seen to be the solution to global warming. The theory is that if you use biofuel you will have a zero CO2 output in total even if a car running on biofuel emits CO2, but any CO2 realest when used is taken away because the CO2 was sucked up when the biofuel was a plant. This argument doesn’t hold water. When you actually put it to the test in the real world you see in order to have Biofuel you need to plant more crops, but where? If you take Grassland in the U.S, and change it into a field of Corn for biofuel CO2 even before you start planting will be released. Grass and trees stores Carbon in them in fact the amount of Carbon in Plants across the world stores 3 times the amount of Carbon in the atmosphere , so when plants are cut there Carbon goes out and is transformed into CO2 that goes out into the atmosphere. Meaning when you change grassland to a field of corn 134 Metric tons of CO2 will be released per hector. In order to actually pay off this 134 metric tons of CO2 it will take 93 years of using that land for Biofuel and nothing else. Changing jungles or rain forest into corn fields will take centuries to pay off the carbon debt. By this time there won’t be any oil left to mix the oil with biofuel. This proves that biofuel isn’t as green as it claims to be. Some would say that Oil is no greener. True, but if we instead plant more trees rather than making more corn fields we could have more forest sucking up more CO2 than the amount Cars create running on Oil.

In the future we should look at different sources of biofuel like cellulose a biofuel that comes from waste products, but having looked at the impacts that corn made biofuel can do environmentally, and seeing how inefficiently it is corn based biofuel is defiantly not the answer to Global warming or a proper alternative to regular gasoline.

Australia Thinking About the Future

In the Last Australian election just months ago the Labor party was tied in the election results with the Liberals, and after some co operation the Green party and some other ind pendants decided to support Ms. Gillard to create a Government. Since then People have been motioning that in order to keep the Green party with her she needs to put a carbon tax in place. Now I like that idea very much, because it is way better than the former Prime Minister's plan Kevin Rudd who was trying for a carbon trading system with a latter on addition of a carbon Tax. Now the Labor party is looking into the idea of a carbon tax, and might be going for it. This i find great now in a long while a another country could join the Carbon tax countries. Countries like India, South Korea, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Costa Rica and in States or provinces like Maryland, California, Colorado, British Columbia and Quebec. I hope to Australia on that list shortly.

The Story about The Story of Stuff.

Annie Leonard is the face of "The Story of Stuff" since 2007 she has made some video's talking about the problem with our world. I may not agree with a few  things she says, but she definitely is right we have to change the way we do things in the world. She has talked about issue's varying from Cap and Trade (and why it is bad) to water. Her idea's of making sure that we have a clean environment that works with the economy and not an economy based on what she calls "made for the dump" items. Made for the dumb means that companies make products that they know will stop working very soon so the buyer has to keep buying more of that product, and this creates a problem as we are throwing everything in the trash and it's not helping our environment. She gives create solution to the problems we face from making sure you take the extra second to look for good cleaner and healthier items. I recommend all of you to see her video's.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

HST Helps BC.

British Columbia like Ontario has implemented the harmonized sales tax. Economist have all said that having a harmonised sales tax is a good idea, because currently in other parts of the country provincial taxes can continue to tax a product again and again then it is taxed one last time when you buy it. With HST you will eliminate this tax on a product and it will help business have more money to invest in Canada. Without HST it will make Canadian business less competitive to foreign industries. Now, because there was a petition made the HST is now being put on a referendum in September. If a simple majority support the destruction of the HST then Campbell said he would get rid of it. First Campbell is the premier he has to help BC even if it unpopular. Second There was a referendum on changing the voting system in BC, and that referendum needed 60%. In 2005 58% of BC who voted supported BC-STV (the new voting system that put up on a referendum). BC should know that the HST will help them, and I hope that they vote no on repealing the HST.

Read more here

Montreal's going Green.

In Montreal the mayor Gerald Tremblay has put out his new green plan for the city. In Montreal we are going way beyond our provinces GHG emission reduction. Reducing 30% of the GHG by 2020 rather than the Quebec 20% by 2020. Both these targets are great, and are very ambitious. With more cycling opportunities renovating buildings to be more energy efficient and much more. Quebec is moving forward while Harper is taking us back with his so called "Eco plan" he wants to increase green house gasses from 1990 levels up by 2% by 2020. A disgraceful agenda, and I bet if he doesn't even reach that he will blame Quebec.

Canada is Paying Off it's Debt.

Since the effects of climate change is caused by the more developed countries, and the effects of climate change occur in the more poorer nations the term debt has a new meaning. It is called our ecological debt. As we here in Canada pollute a CO2 that creates the effects of climate change on these nations then we are in a way responsible for them. Which means we are in debt to these nations for letting us pollute to make there lives harder. The Conservative Government is paying off this debt now. 400 million dollars is going to help developing nations like Haiti,Ethiopia and other parts of Africa. I find this a very genouruse gesture that I hope Haper continues.

Canada and other rich countries at last year's Copenhagen climate talks agreed to set up an annual $30 billion global pot for poorer nations to tap into.

— $20 million for the Least Developed Countries Fund;
— $10 million to improve climate research centres in Africa;
— $5 million for various climate-change initiatives in Haiti;
— $7 million for adaptation and food security in Ethiopia;
— $3 million for a Vietnamese climate program;
— $293 million for the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank that funds projects in developing countries;
— $40 million for a World Bank forestry fund;
— $5 million in various small-scale projects; and,
— $18.5 million for the Global Environment Facility.

 Read more here

Transport Cocktail Service Station

The Montreal-based non-governmental organisation. Équiterre has launched a new campaign meant to promote the transportation cocktail. That means using different types of transportation and mixing them. This could mean driving to the train station and using the train for the rest of the trip. This NGO has opened a Facebook page where you can suggest ideas on transportation improvement throughout Quebec. Even people without a Facebook account can contribute.

$50B Transportation Stimulus

Yesterday, Obama announced a new stimulus for the American economy. This is a long-term spending plan on transportation meant to create long-term jobs, whereas, the other US stimulus was designed to create immediate jobs. Included in this plan is building 4000 miles of railways. As a railfan, I couldn't be happier that high speed rail is going to be funded. If the US starts constructing high speed rail, Canada could follow. Not only that, but this could be partly paid for by the end of tax breaks for big oil. Unfortunately, this plan might not pass. With the elections coming up, Democrats might lose their seats and we can expect a lot of Republican resistance. High speed rail must come to the United States and Canada to support the economy of tomorrow.

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is asking Congress to approve at least $50 billion in long-term spending on the country’s roads, railways and runways in a pre-election effort to show he’s trying to stimulate the sputtering economy.

The infrastructure spending is part of a package of targeted proposals the White House announced on Monday. With November’s elections for control of Congress approaching, Obama planned to discuss the proposal later Monday at an event in Milwaukee marking the U.S. Labor Day holiday.

Read more at the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.

Oil Must End

Barack Obama recently said that the oil spill is a reason to cure our addiction to oil. He is completely right. Fossil fuels are powerful, but will only give us trouble in the future. They are non-renewable meaning that they are going to run out eventually. They pollute the environment and the air. Compared to clean electricity, fossil fuels don't look so good. While Obama says he is going to increase investment in green technologies, who knows if he's actually going to do it. The future will tell whether he will live up to his promise. Meanwhile, in Canada, we have a prime minister who is continuing to give tax breaks to big oil. They already make billions of dollars each year. You may as well give the companies subsidies for destroying the environment. What we really need in North America is alternatives to oil. We need high speed rail, subsidies for electric and hybrid cars and cleaner electricity. Most of all we need a carbon tax so that our addiction to oil will end and soon.

The stakes are high for Canada, as U.S. President Barack Obama starts talking about a greener energy future, because any attack on the oil "addiction" in the United States influences our own oil habit.

BP's Gulf oil spill gives Obama a terrific opportunity to make changes. Now we have to hope the president has better cards up his sleeve than his predecessors.

Read more at the Ottawa Citizen.

Smog Day!

Today, there was a smog warning in place for Montreal. It was mostly because of the forest fires around but also because of pollution. I could smell the ozone and fine particles in the air. In fact, pollution is the reason for smog. Smog is yet another consequence of polluting in cities. I would guess that transportation is the leading cause for smog. There should be more funding public transit and even more funding for zero emission transportation like biking and walking. We need to reduce the space for cars and replace it with pedestrian, bike and public transit reserved lanes. That is good urban planning and great sustainable development. Nobody likes smog nor breathe it. Cutting down on the polluting cars would ensure fewer smog days.

Dixi

Washington is ordering over one thousand Bixis from the Montreal-based company. Many other cities have already ordered Bixis. While they are buying, Bixi is always expanding in Montreal. Bike stands that used to have one row, now have two rows. One week ago, when the metro shut down, a ton of commuters decided to go out and rent bikes. This shows great progress for Bixi. Now, it is right at the top of commuters' minds. It's environmentally friendly and practical. Expanding this business will be good for everyone.

The expanded program will replace the SmartBike D.C. bike network, created in 2008.

"The response to the bike-sharing program has been unprecedented, and we are pleased to be able to join with Arlington in our expansion efforts," Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said in a statement.

The District program has 1,500 members making more than 100 trips a day on 100 bikes, said James R. Sebastian, a city transportation planner. He said the current network is "maxed out" and that the city is "trying to meet that demand with this new system."

Read more at the Washington Post.

Public transit is Worth It

According to the STM, a return trip using public transit once a week for a year is equivalent to the benefits provided by 52 trees and recycling for three weeks. These are just more examples supporting the environmentally-friendly public transit. There should be more funding for public transit. Public transit should get priority on the road. That means less space for cars, more space for buses, trams, trolley buses etc. Funds should make public transit less expensive and faster than cars. Federal, provincial and municipal governments need to do more to support public transit. It is the way of the future.

What a Project!

The Plateau district of Montreal is planning to close 10 to 15 streets beginning with on June 17. This borough of the city was swept by Projet Montréal in the 2009 elections. They are the ones doing the right thing in city hall. There need to be less cars on the street and a good way to do it is by closing streets. The closed streets will go to expanding existing parks. Parks are places where people have fun, not in the middle of congestion. I support Projet Montéal and hope they win many more seats in the next municipal election. Only good can come out of this party.

Beginning June 17, the borough intends to open a farmer's market on the street on Thursdays, featuring local and organic producers.

It is the first of 10 to 15 streets that Ferrandez said would be closed to traffic in 2010, adding he hopes other boroughs will follow suit.

"We hope it will send a message and start a movement," he said.

Earlier this year, Projet Montréal announced an end to free on-street parking for non-residents in the Plateau.

Read more at the Montreal Gazette.

Bicycles Only

The chief of the National Capital Commission said that Ottawa should consider closing car lanes to allow more room for bicycles. He said that bicycle commuting should be a priority. This is a great idea. The car is becoming more and more an idea of the past. Public transit, bicycling and walking should be the priority in the reorganization of roads. Ottawa should become a bicycle city role model for Canada. More cities should be buying into this mode of transportation and less into the car. Just look at Europe's beautiful streets.

This is the kind of thing I would love in Canada. Ottawa, as the capital should be a leader and take lanes away from cars, and give them to bicycles.

Read more at the Ottawa Citizen.