I’m both surprised and elated at the response to my Twitter live-blogging of the Herring Cove Road bike lane issue, and the comments on the vote tally I posted early today. It’s heartening that so many people are so concerned about bike infrastructure issues. (If you’re not familiar with the issue, see here.)
The actual outcome of the vote, however, is of course disheartening. Check that. The outcome of the vote is depressing as all hell.
It’s tempting to shrug off the Herring Cove Road issue. We’re talking about just 900 metres of roadway, and hardcore cyclists will use the road regardless, bike lanes or no.
Moreover, the neighbourhood seems to be disinclined to support the bike lanes. At least, a couple of thousand of them signed a petition against the bike lane (I have no idea how many more were supportive), and the Spryfield & District Business District is solidly opposed to the bike lanes, saying that removing traffic lanes will hurt their sales. So why shove something down their throats, only to have cyclists become regarded as an elite trying to force their way upon everyone else?
And, in the scheme of things, this is a tiny, tiny issue. Move on, there’ll be another day, another issue.
That’s all wrong, of course.
First, the 900-metre section of bike lanes was to fit into a much larger active transportation plan for the entire city (as outlined here [very large PDF]), which envisions an inter-connected network of bike lanes and paths. This 900-metre section would be connected with future bike lanes/paths as they are built.
Second, the business commission is simply wrong: bike lanes and slower traffic don’t detract from business, they improve it. This has been demonstrated time and again. Fast-moving car traffic has a hard time slowing down to turn into businesses, broad stretches of concrete bring a disconnected feel to business strips, and the businesses become single destination retail stops. But bike lanes and slower car traffic bring a sense of a neighbourhood to a business strip. People who live nearby are more likely to make short bike trips to the area, and with a slower, calmer atmosphere, shoppers at one store are more likely to linger and go to the business next door or across the street. In short, the business strip becomes a destination.
But the issues are much broader, and much more important, than how this particular 900-metre stretch of pavement is painted.
More and more lately, I’m struck by how our society is simply ignoring the looming challenges that are coming our way, that are upon us already. First and foremost is peak oil. This is no longer speculative: global oil production has been flat for the past couple of years and will fall far short of demand in coming years. Whether the actual peak of oil production is a couple of years into the future or we passed it a couple of years ago is almost immaterial—we’re at the plateau, regardless, and the near-term future will see skyrocketing gas prices and gaps in availability. Increasingly, we’ll find gas won’t be available for purchase, and when it is, many of us won’t be able to afford it.
During last night’s budget debate, one thing escaped mention: this 900-metre repaving job costs $1.2 million. That’s a hell of a lot of money! The price of asphalt, a petroleum product, has about doubled over the past couple of years. It doesn’t help that we have an effective local duopoly in asphalt, but that aside, most of the increase in price is related to the increase in oil prices. And in coming years, those prices are going to get higher still, doubling again, and then yet again.
So, gas prices will soar, and the costs of maintaining car infrastructure will soar. Never mind that a couple of hundred million dollars of new roads (at today’s prices) are planned for the next couple of decades, locally—how the heck are we going to be able to afford the existing costs of driving and maintaining infrastructure for cars? Answer: we won’t be able to afford them. It simply won’t happen. Roads will deteriorate, lots of people will abandon cars as their main means of transportation, and we’ll see unprecedented demand for transit.
The local transportation network is really one of the least important aspects of peak oil, but it is the one that our local government has most control over. To its credit, Halifax council has approved the five-year expansion plan for Metro Transit. But that plan is a pale shadow of what will be demanded in post-peak oil Halifax. At best it’s a good start. Still, while council has approved funding for the first two years of the expansion, the third year plans might unravel as councillors fight over financing for them.
Halifax council has also approved a regional plan that gives lip service to increased density and transit, but even the best case scenarios projected for the plan say that 20 years from now we’ll have twice as many people driving the bus. The reality will be much greater demand for transit much sooner. But the city is presently debating whether to weaken, not strengthen, the regulation of suburban sprawl.
In other words, we are now at a crisis moment. Big, big challenges are coming our way, and yet local businesses think they can continue to rely on a car-driving customer base, our city government blithely ignores staggering increases in car infrastructure costs, and any effort to provide even a small alternative to car transportation is regarded as an effete affront to the manly status quo.
Saying we have our heads in the sand is an insult to ostriches.
This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2010.
Spryfield, the Drive-Thru Village. How many independent businesses exist in Spryfield? All I see are McDonalds, Shoppers, and Sobeys etc. This plan would have been a boon for places like Blooming Cafe and longterm would have encouraged more like-minded small businesses. Instead, Spryfield will continue to be the place I drive through to get to the Saturday Market, dine, and shop in Halifax. “The Strip” is within biking distance for me but I’d rather drive into town than leave any money at any of the businesses who bullied this proposal off of the table. And yes, I bike to work everyday, skipping this section.
The reason the community didn’t support this proposal is because it was a stupid proposal. To remove traffic lanes and replace them with bike lanes is a non-starter in a city with an obsolete and overloaded road network like ours. If the proposal was instead to ADD bike lanes, nobody would have given a shit. But to just overlay them like HRM has done in most other places up until now is being recognized for what it is — namely, a bad solution to a problem that really does not exist in the first place. Kudos to Coun. Steve Streatch for pointing out the elephant in the room by suggesting that HRM’s active transportation plan needs to be revisited. It is politically-correct nonsense that caters to a small special-interest group at great cost to the vast majority of taxpayers who will never use bike lanes.
I agree with you Tim. I think the problem lies in the likely fact that very few citizens (or policy makers for that matter) know anything about the peak oil issue or the implications it has for our current petroleum driven way of life. I find this disturbing because I believe that solutions to the challenges presented by living in a post-peak world will ultimately come from local communities, in a “bottom up” process, rather than some “top down” method with answers coming from Ottawa or . . . ?
We need more local community leaders who understand that “business as usual” just won’t cut it. There are some on HRM council, but apparently they remain a minority.
On a related note, I’m glad to see the nucleus of a Transition Halifax group forming. Transition Towns movement founder Rob Hopkins has some excellent ideas for getting local communities on board with tangible things like Energy Descent Action Plans, etc. I’ll be devoting some of my energies to helping this initiative get off the ground.
The price of asphalt in HRM has little to do with the price of oil.
Speaking with one senior staffer who knows, he detailed the price paid in Montreal, Toronto etc where there is plenty of competition.
We are being ripped off.
Just ask around City Hall and you’ll get the answer.
Bro Tim— While the price of asphalt isn’t directly related to the price of oil, the means of which we create the infrastructure is petroleum intensive. Although I’m sure that we are getting ripped off somewhere.
Peak Oil will happen, only because economists like Jeff Rubin predict it to be so. These same economists have a vested interest in watching the price drive high and drop the commodity like a hot potato. It’s even happening to gold, slowly, but surely. Tim, do you fall asleep to Rubin’s book every night?
Realistically, I’m less worried about bike lanes/peak oil and more worried about a company like NSP wanting a 12% increase in our power bill because they have to buy coal that has less mercury in it. In an age where we have cleaner tech like tidal, wind, and nuclear (yeah I said it, nuclear) out there, we creating power by using antiquated, ultimately Victorian, technology. There’s bigger fish to fry.
My apologies , that first comment was directed at Joeblow, not Bro Tim. Oy vey, it’s warm.
Dr Fever – I wish I had written down the cost I was given. You would be shocked if you knew, because I thought the cost to HRM was driven by crude oil pice but the staffer quickly disabused me of that notion. I am sure Tim can dig it out, I may even tell him who to talk to.
As for peak oil, perhaps the peak has been delayed with the anticipated arrival of vast new quantities of natural gas. I rode cabs in Tokyo powered by gas 40 years ago and it is easy to covert a transportation system to gas.
JB— For those who would benefit from it, peak oil needs to happen slowly, or else it spooks off the speculators that control it. Natural gas is a good idea, especially considering that it’s far less costly for most consumer applications, but that’s entirely fueled (heh, a pun) by low demand in most markets. If there’s a sudden influx of demand, natural gas will end up pricey, obviously.
What’s really going to ruin peak oil is the end of either the Iraq war, or the war in Afghanistan. If either of those conflicts end in the next 5 years, demand will plummet, as well as the price of oil.
Another thing I’d to add is that peak oil (if it happens) would put production at a standstill, and the oil-free utopia that is envisioned, wouldn’t be a utopia at all. We wouldn’t be building bikes, clothing, etc. or if we were, the costs would be astronomical. While a scary thought, we need to relinquish our fears of alternatives (natural gas/nuclear/tidal/wind/solar/biomass/bio-fuel), and ease the marketplace away from petrol.
Down with bikes, up with flying solar cars.
One thing that we can’t look forward to for much longer is cheap oil. We’ll actually have a supply of oil for a long time, many many generations to come, but it won’t be anywhere near as inexpensive as it is now. Like Tim suggested, the time where most of us cannot afford gas and heating oil is actually not that far off. Gas and heating oil will be available…it’s just that the majority of people won’t be able to pay for it.
That the price will go up is unavoidable. Most of the easy-to-find easy-to-drill fields are tapped out or have short lifetimes. For some decades now we’ve been drilling in very inhospitable conditions – like in the North Sea and off Newfoundland or even 5,000 feet down in the Gulf of Mexico – or extracting expensive stuff like from the Alberta tar sands. We wouldn’t exactly be doing that if there were still lots and lots of easy-to-get oil.
As it is there is no shortage of authorities who think oil production has already peaked.
The other big factor is exploding demand, exemplified by China and India. Exploding populations and dynamic economies, and all of that fuelled by oil. We are competing with them now and we’ll be competing with them a whole bunch more in decades to come. Inevitable result: increased prices.
Most people haven’t thought this all through. They have no idea how bad things will be if the price of oil only doubles and *stays* there. Gas prices go way up. Price of heating oil goes way up. The price of food skyrockets because transporting that food from California costs way more, and fertilizer is much more expensive. Clothes cost more, unless we start breeding lots of Nova Scotian sheep. Medicines cost more. Your average middle class family out in Elmsdale or Tantallon or Upper Sackville is going to have a very hard time of it.
This is not doom and gloom pessimism. This is actually a middle of the road picture. Quite frankly anyone who thinks it’ll be anywhere close to business as usual in a few decades’ time is delusional or ignorant.
As for our continued ability to maintain road infrastructure, well, we’re barely doing it now. Drive enough in the country and you’ll find plenty of paved roads that are safety hazards; pretty clearly there’s not enough money to fix roads and twin them too. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if within a few decades a fair few Nova Scotian backroads are converted (back) to gravel.