AVC (Alta Vista Corridor) Environmental Assessment

Myths about Roads and Rails

            Good evening.  My only credibility in speaking to you tonight is based on the fact that Ottawa is my home, and like everyone with a home, I want it to be as nice a place as possible.

            Today in Ottawa we have excellent cycling routes, lots of roads, 27 km of dedicated transitway, and the O-Train.  But even while we have the elements that one sees in an integrated multi-modal transportation system, they are not yet sufficiently integrated - nor adequate - to meet projected growth in this city.  So, planning is underway and people are starting to express preferences.  All too often, however, the debate on transportation issues tends to slip into a simplistic argument of roads on one side versus rails on the other.

            Given that this may be the tenor of the debate for some time to come, what I would like to do over the next few minutes is to set out a few comparative observations regarding roads and rails in the urban context.  These points may not be ‘Ottawa-specific’ enough to prove conclusively that one mode is more appropriate than the other.  But I do hope that they will provide some pause for thought and will help to expand the debate to consider the full range of factors that play out in this issue. 

            I’m going to focus on three areas of comparison - the efficiency/effectiveness of moving people, the impacts on the environment, and cost.

1.  Efficiency/Effectiveness

            This is a classic apples/oranges situation.  Traffic engineers and planners have traditionally viewed the movement of vehicles as the issue.  When congestion occurs, that means that there is not enough road surface to handle the volume of traffic.  And the solution from an engineering perspective becomes obvious - more roadway must be provided.  But a more valid standard to apply to this issue should be the movement of people, not the movement of vehicles.

            The effectiveness of a particular mode of transportation is a factor of quantity (numbers of people transported). In general, roads do move more people than either dedicated transitways or light rail, but this simply reflects the fact that there are more roads than anything else in our urban areas.  Now consider this: a freeway lane typically carries from 1,500 to 1,800 cars per hour - approximately 2200 people.  But a single light rail track can carry at least as much as a freeway lane, and ultimately this capacity can be increased 6 or 7 fold depending on the type of alignment, headway and train length. As well, the roadway mode comes with additional negative baggage.  In addition to en route congestion, roads lead to downstream congestion and parking requirements, neither of which are factors with transit/light rail.  And the environmental implications are severe, as will be seen in a moment.                

            The efficiency of different travel modes tends to be a matter of time and convenience.  When main roadway routes become congested, the incidences of cut through traffic impact adjacent neighbourhoods.  While the standard traffic engineering solution to this situation is to add more lanes and/or build a new road, studies have shown that congestion relief is only temporary.  New or bigger roads actually act as an attraction for traffic; in short order, they tend to fill up and congestion again occurs, but at a greater scale than previously.  On the other hand, congestion is not a factor with transit/light rail.

            In addition, roadway traffic is easily - and all too frequently - influenced by the common delay factors of accidents and weather. Again, light rail is relatively immune to such delay factors.

            So, is one mode of transportation ‘better’ than another from a singular effectiveness/efficiency perspective?  Let’s look first at environmental and cost implications. 

2. Environmental Impacts

            I’ll quickly run through a menu of comparative elements that individually - and collectively - speak for themselves.

footprint -       Rights of way are much narrower for light rail than for roads.  Remember as well that light rail can optimally carry the load of 6 to 7 freeway lanes of cars.

water quality - surface and ground water are affected by liquid leaks and spills (oil and fuel) and  by road salt.  Roads are designed to shed water - and everything dissolved in that water.  In our climate, the tons and tons of road salt used every winter is a major pollutant of both surface and ground water.  Conversely, one doesn’t have to use salt or sand to keep rail lines open in winter.

air quality -     vehicle pollution emissions affect local, regional and global health. They are broken down as follows:

Local/Regional:  

- Carbon monoxide

- Nitrogen oxides

- Volatile organic hydrocarbons

- Ozone

- Sulphur oxides

- Fine particulates

- Road dust

Global:

- Carbon dioxide

- Methane

- CFC

noise - traffic noise can be disruptive and can affect property values.

            On the other hand, Electric Light Rail has low noise and no local emissions.  Modern diesel Light Rail also achieves very low engine noise and emissions.

            There are some who may argue that the concern in Ottawa over environmental impacts of vehicles is overblown.  After all, light vehicles only account for about 17% of Carbon dioxide emissions in Canada, which means that the vast majority of this principal greenhouse gas comes from other sources, primarily heavy industry.  Ottawa has little heavy industry, so what’s the problem if we build more roads?  Well, it’s true that Ottawa has little heavy industry, but we do have more than our share of smog alert days, due to the sink trap effect of the Ottawa Valley.  And the primary source of the air borne pollutants that fill this sink trap is - surprise, surprise - vehicle emissions.  So, adding more roads instead of other more environmentally friendly modes will have a deleterious effect.  We owe it to our children - that age group most susceptible to asthmatic conditions and allergies triggered by poor air quality - and to the earth, to make the cleanest choice possible on future transportation modes.  Walking, cycling and electric light rail are at the top of  the list.

3. Cost Considerations

            Sceptics may argue that developing a light rail system will be a monstrous boondoggle and will cost much more than roads.  Admittedly, this perception may have been fueled locally by the monstrous cost overruns of the Ottawa Rapid Transit Project. Originally approved in 1981 for $97.5 million, cost estimates by 1986 had ballooned 400% to almost $390 million!  Thus, sceptics demand that it be proven conclusively that a light rail system is less costly than other transportation modes before they will even consider getting onside.  However, it is a bit of a mug’s game to provide such an illustration until an actual system is designed and costed.  But in the interim, consider these points:

·               Light Rail costs per km can be as low as $2M for infrastructure, as per the O-Train example.  Bus transitways cost about $15M per km.  Roads can cost even more.

·               Recent North American light rail projects have an excellent track record (no pun intended) in coming in on time and on budget. And this includes both Edmonton and Calgary.  By contrast, highway projects are notorious for completion delays and significant cost overruns. 

·               It costs an awful lot to drive a car.  Factoring in vehicle purchase, fuel, maintenance and insurance, the CAA estimates that it costs us an average of more than $7,000 a year to drive a typical vehicle 12,000 km.  One could ride the current transit system for 8 years for the same expense.

·               Contrary to popular belief, the cost of providing roads imposes a higher subsidy on all of us than does the cost of providing transit/light rail.  Hidden costs include subsidized parking, health costs due to pollution (not to mention damage to crops, plants and animals, and buildings), accident costs not covered by insurance, and police, fire and court costs.  According to recent comparative studies of suburbs to city centre commuting in New England, when all of this is taken into consideration the full cost of solo driving is twice the cost of either car-pooling or transit.

To conclude, what does all this mean?  Simply, that achieving a well-integrated multi-modal transportation system is complex, and that if we want our home to be a nice place in which to live, light rail must be the preferred choice when considering new transportation infrastructure.

Tim Sookocheff

Citizens for Healthy Communities

June 4, 2002