Don Maroc by Don Maroc Last Wednesday, at the Cowichan Community Centre, Isobel Mackenzie, newly appointed Seniors Advocate for B.C., spent two hours listening to the concerns of about 50 seniors and explaining the functions of her new office. The following day a committee of the Cowichan Elder Care Co-operative
Continue readingTag: Transportation
PostArctica: Turcot Roundhouse Found?
Received these pictures from an urban explorer friend who says she may have found the foundations of the old Turcot Roundhouse which was demolished in 1961. I wonder if the Ministry of Transport (MTQ) has any idea of what they have dug up? If you look at the proximity of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Electric Vehicles Gaining Traction in Canada
WWF-Canada wants to get car drivers off their addiction to oil by getting consumers to buy electric cars instead of gas-powered ones. To encourage this switch in car-depender living they have former Toronto mayor David Miller going on ‘dates’ with people in EV cars to discuss what they are doing
Continue readingThings Are Good: London Lowered Speed Limits to Save Lives
Cars kill. Or is it like the gun debate – cars don’t kill people drivers kill people? Regardless of fault the results of car use as a primary means of transportation causes health problems and needless death. Cities around the world are taking steps to try and hold back cars
Continue readingThings Are Good: Lose Weight by Taking the Bus
Obesity is a health problem in North America and this is due to modern lifestyle choices. One choice is to live far from work and commute using a car (this has led to environmental problems in addition to health problems) which means that people physically move less than before. Some
Continue readingThings Are Good: Adding Bike Lanes Reduces Traffic Delays
Bike lanes are wonderful. We’ve already seen that bike lanes create jobs, save lives, and help local economies. Now from New York City there is a transportation report that says adding bike lanes can reduce traffic delays. So what happened here to overcome the traditional idea that bike lanes lead
Continue readingThings Are Good: Helsinki Wants to Send Cars to Purgatory
The Helsinki bus station theory will change you life and now the Finnish government wants to change people’s lives by making cars pointless. In the coming decades they will make use of data and various transportations to make owning a car a pointless exercise in futility. In many urban centres
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: New report chronicles regulatory failures behind Lac-Mégantic
New report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives details eight key ways in which regulatory failure contributed to the Lac-Mégantic disaster. The post New report chronicles regulatory failures behind Lac-Mégantic appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Even More Evidence That Bike-Friendly Cities Are Better Cities
Bicycles are wonderful contraptions that help people be healthier, have better commutes, and are a wonderful solution to car-based traffic jams. Yet, there are still cities out there that hate cyclists (like Toronto and it’s crack-smoking mayor). In a more civilized place, Aukland, they are embracing bike-friendly infrastructure to make
Continue readingThings Are Good: Swedes Get Free Bikes if They Promise to Drive Less
Car traffic cripples cities and destroys them. For the last hundred years the common solution to transportation issues was to cater to car drivers and this has left us with endless traffic and awful pollution. The solution today is a mixture of public transit and encouraging people to ride bikes.
Continue readingreeves report: Transportation sector key to reducing GHG emissions in Ontario: ECO
GETTING SERIOUS about tackling greenhouse gases has to start with dramatically cutting emissions from Ontario’s transportation sector, the province’s environmental watchdog warned recently. In releasing his latest update on efforts to curb climate change-inducing emissions in Ontario, Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller told reporters at Queen’s Park the biggest sector emitter
Continue readingThings Are Good: Addiction Therapy Applied to Car Use
It’s no secret that as a global society we are addicted to automobile use. It’s also no secret that cars are literally killing us (just starting the engine causes harm) and the way we have built cities to cater to drivers has damaged society from our health to our social
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Call to Think Bigger About Transit
The way we get around in North America is changing from a work-home orientation to a node based network with multiple destinations. At first cars were used to fulfil this but as traffic worsens we need to rethink how we all get around. The solution, of course, is to kick
Continue readingThings Are Good: Reducing Highway Size Doesn’t Negatively Impact Congestion
Nobody likes being stuck in traffic and in the recent past the solution was to build more roads (or add more lanes). Ironically this makes traffic worse as an increase in traffic capacity means more people will drive places. These narrow-minded solutions are still applied in some places like Toronto
Continue readingThings Are Good: France Pays People to Cycle to Work
France is experimenting with new way to subsidize transportation by getting more people to bicycle to work. Traffic in Paris is particularly awful and with ongoing population growth and car-focused infrastructure the transportation problems are only going to increase. France is hoping that getting people to ride bicycles will stymie
Continue readingThings Are Good: Solar Roads Could Provide Electricity
There are six days left for the Indiegog campaign for Solar Roadways and they have already met their goal! The $1,000,000 goal has been reached and passed – which is quite impressive! The idea behind the successful campaign is to turn roads from heat-producing to energy-producing. A network of roads
Continue readingThings Are Good: New Speed Limit in Paris: 30 km/hr
This week Wired published an article about the 20 deadliest US cities for pedestrians and they write: There, low-density neighborhoods “rely on wider streets with higher speeds to connect homes, shops, and schools—roads that tend to be more dangerous for people walking,” the report says. More than half of all
Continue readingThings Are Good: More Americans Are Biking to Work
Bicycling in urban areas has increased in the developed world over the last decade and the USA is no exception. The obvious health benefits from riding a bike and the increased attention to bike infrastructure contributes to the growth in riders. More people bicycling the better as it gets people
Continue readingThings Are Good: High Speed Rail Coming to……Texas?
Texas is an American state best known for its gun-loving, big truck driving, cowboy, remember the Alamo culture. It is the last place I’d expect high speed rail infrastructure to actually get support in the USA. The good news here is that not only are Texans in favour of high
Continue readingMelissa Fong: Planning the Metropolitan #Vancouver Region: A Critical Perspective
Here is a review of the Planning the Metropolitan Vancouver Region: A Critical Perspective- Thank you to AY for inviting me- great catching up with SCARP people and making new connections. […]
Continue reading