An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance.
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THE PRE-MOTORDOM CITY IN ACTION
David Sucher reminded me of this remarkable video taken from a streetcar traveling down Market Street in San Francisco in 1905, before the earthquake. It’s fascinating – as evidenced by the 2.5 million views – since it portrays the city just at the time when the automobile was competing for space with all the other users – pedestrians, horses, cyclists, streetcars – who presumed they had as much right to the use of the street.
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RELATIONSHIPS
Larry Frank, a prof at UBC, is well-known for his research demonstrating the impact of urban form on health. Here’s some of his latest:
Description: This study is one of the first to test the effect of sidewalks on travel patterns and the first we know of to relate sidewalk availability with VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled) and GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions.
Despite some data limitations, “we still developed a useful tool out of this and applied it in the City of Seattle in two communities to evaluate how sidewalk coverage, urban form, parking pricing, transit service, and some other factors (demographics) impact VMT and GHG.”
What’s also significant about this work is that it’s being funded by the Washington State Department of Transportation – another sign that the inheritors of Motordom, the road builders, are moving in a new direction.
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TOLLS AND TIME
A local CTV report:
Drivers are avoiding the tolled Golden Ears Bridge in favour of the congested Port Mann Bridge, but a CTV News test drive has revealed that shelling out for the toll pays off in time — and money — saved.
On Tuesday afternoon, CTV News put the two bridges to the test, beginning in Langley at the 200 Street exit and driving both routes to the intersection of Lougheed Highway and Shaughnessy Street in Port Coquitlam.
If gas and wear on a vehicle costs 45 cents per kilometre, taking the tolled Golden Ears route saved 62 cents and eight minutes.
Langley Mayor Peter Fassbender agrees that many drivers are trying to avoid the toll on the Golden Ears. “In point of fact, maybe it’s costing them more to drive around than it is to actually pay the toll,” he said.
Gordon Price, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, says that people are more concerned about paying tolls than other considerations like time and gas money. “People have gotten really used to the idea of free,” he said. “It turns out people don’t actually value their time that much, particular if they feel they’re saving a few visible dollars.”
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LET THE CLASS ACTIONS BEGIN
From the (Brisbane) Courier-Mail:
THE company responsible for forecasting traffic volumes for the Clem7 Tunnel may face a class action from angry investors determined to recover their losses. Law firm Maurice Blackburn is investigating a claim against Aecom on behalf of those people who bought units in RiverCity Motorway which was taken into receivership in February with debts of $1.3 billion.
Principal lawyer Andrew Watson said they were looking at whether Aecom left out of the product disclosure statement critical information about much smaller traffic volumes using the tunnel. “Aecom did the modelling for the council’s Environmental Impact Study and forecast traf fic volumes of 57,000 a day in 2011,” Mr Watson said. “This is way below its forecast of 90,676 within six months of operation in the Product Disclosure Statement and probably would have made the whole project uneconomic.”
The tunnel was currently seeing about 25,000 vehicles a day since tolls were raised last Monday to $3.95 for cars.
Mr Watson said thousands of investors helped raise a total of $724 million for RiverCity Motorway. “There will be some who invested significant sums of money and as a result lost significant sums of money,” he said …
