In the July 22 2006 Globe and Mail the following column appeared, I quote the article in its entirety.
The other day, as I drove to my exercise class (yes, yes, I know there's a contradiction there), people on the radio were telling me to take the TTC. There was a smog alert, and I was contributing to the problem. But it's next to impossible to get to my class by bus, so I drove.
"Hah!" said my instructor, the Pilates queen. "You know what TTC means? Take The Car." She's no fan of Toronto's public transit. That's too bad because, according to the politicians and the urban planners, public transit is the answer to all our woes. Everyone knows cars are responsible for everything from gridlock to pollution and obesity. Pry people from their cars, and the world will be a better place.
Unfortunately, most people are refusing to co-operate. In 1988, TTC ridership was 463 million, the second largest in North America. By last year, despite the Greater Toronto Area's explosive growth, ridership had shrunk to 410 million.
Transit advocates blame higher fares and service cutbacks for this decline. If only we invest more in improving public transit, more people will use it. To a limited extent, this may be true. But transit advocates ignore the overwhelming evidence from around the world: People still prefer their cars.
"It may not be the faster way, but public transit remains the better way," The Toronto Star argued this week. New statistics on commuting times reveal what everyone already knows: Public transit is a whole lot slower than driving. People who commute to work by car spend an average of 59 minutes on the road each day (round trip). Transit riders spend 106 minutes. The Star says the answer is massive new investments from all levels of government so public transit can "better compete against the unwholesome lure of the automobile." My own trip to work takes less than 20 minutes by car, but an hour by TTC, much of it standing up. The unwholesome lure of the automobile is darned hard to resist.
Southern Ontario is the third-fastest growing region in North America -- in the next 25 years, the population is projected to grow by a staggering four million people. So what's the plan for constructing new road systems and highways? Um, there isn't one. The province plans to re-engineer people's behaviour so they'll take public transit.
Last month, Ontario unveiled a new long-range plan to put an end to car-dependent urban sprawl. Higher-density developments will reduce the sprawl, promote more "compact living" and build "complete communities," where people can live, work, shop and play without needing a car. Not only will this plan cut down on smog and gridlock, promises the government, but it will enhance people's sense of community (because they'll be closer together, I guess) as well as improve public health.
"Studies tell us that people living in car-dependent communities miss out on natural opportunities for physical activity," declared the minister of infrastructure. "Moreover, they are prone to health problems, such as obesity and heart disease. Our children, in particular, are at much greater risk." In other words, make the little buggers walk.
As for Toronto, everyone agrees it should become more like Paris, where people live in higher-density apartment buildings instead of single-family houses, and walk everywhere to do their shopping. There's just one problem: Most Parisians don't live in central Paris any more. Three-quarters of them live in the suburbs, where they can find single-family houses, get around by -- mon Dieu! -- car and shop at -- quelle horreur! -- supermarches and big-box stores.
The idea that people will use public transit to get to work ignores the fact that most people don't want to live near their work. And because people are so mobile, they no longer have to. On top of that, people use their cars for much more than commuting. According to one study, 20 per cent of all trips by auto are for work, 20 per cent for shopping, and 60 per cent for things that are "social." The idea that public transit can replace the car in people's busy lives is a fantasy.
As for lower-income people -- supposedly the main beneficiaries of public transit -- they have an alternative, too. It's called used cars.
And yet, nowhere in all the hype about the province's new growth plan is there a mention of the words "roads" or "highways." This omission reminds me of the Duke of Wellington's comment about railways, whose construction he opposed because they "only encourage the common people to move about needlessly."
Public transit systems are certainly no bargain. "Transit subsidies are hugely greater than any subsidies to the automobile," says Peter Gordon, a California professor of planning and economics. And some people say the cleaner, greener virtues of public transit are vastly overstated. "Most new autos generate little or no more pollution per passenger vehicle mile than the average bus," says Robert Bruegmann, author of Sprawl: A Compact History. He argues it would require a massive increase in the use of public transportation and improvements in transit vehicles to bring about any meaningful reduction in energy use or pollution.
Mr. Bruegmann's comments about urban planners' war against sprawl are an apt description of the mindset behind Ontario's new master plan. "Very few people believe that they themselves live in sprawl. Sprawl is where other people live, particularly people with less taste and good sense than themselves. Much anti-sprawl activism is based on a desire to reform these other people's lives."
If we really wanted to tackle smog and congestion, we wouldn't be fantasizing about massive new investments in public transit. We'd be investing in transportation infrastructure, less polluting fuels, more intelligent roads and vehicles with sensors to control traffic flows, peak-time user fees and more flexible forms of public and private transport, such as group taxis. But you won't find the planners talking about these things because, to do so, they would have to concede defeat to the unwholesome lure of the automobile -- to say nothing of the overwhelming preference of the public. And that would be very, very wicked.
- Margaret Wente
And I reply:
Dear Mrs. Wente,
I read with more than a modest amount of frustration your tirade against public transit in the Saturday Globe and Mail. Frustration because a person of your intellect and persuasive ability seems to have taken such an incredibly foolish and short sighted stance in support of single or, in those rare occasions, double occupancy vehicles.
I am not going to argue against your article on the grounds that excessive use of driving is a major source of green house gases, the impact of which the former residents of New Orleans are all to familiar with, despite what Mrs. Bush might say. I will not waste time tracking the flow of so much oil money to the Middle East and then to countries of less than liberal political values, suffice it to say the Bin Laden family probably would not be quite so rich if air conditioning Mecca was not quite such a fantastically profitable enterprise.
Rather, I would like to take something else from the script of the recent George Clooney movie Syriana. In a scene where the character played by Matt Damon is talking with the prince of fictional oil rich Persian Gulf country Damon says the following:
What are they thinking? They're thinking we're running out. We're running out and ninety percent of what's left is in the Middle East. So if you look at the whole progression from Versailles, through Suez, 1973, Gulf War One, Gulf War II, it's really shaping up as a fight to the death.
Over the past 150 years humanity has extracted roughly 800 billion barrels of oil from our planets crust, which represents roughly 40% of what can be extracted in a commercially viable manner. However before your relax and think about ways to squander the other 1.2 trillion barrels consider, for the first fifty years we had no cars, the only real application for oil was kerosene lamps, the rest of the Pennsylvania tea was dumped in the nearest river. I suppose I hardly need point out that under such conditions we hardly even tapped the ground for energy. All of that has changed.
Today demand for oil is higher than it has ever been, China's economy, India's economy, our economy, heck even the economy of undeveloped sub-Saharan African countries depend on oil. Not only do we use oil to get fresh strawberries in February, we use oil to build things like credit cars and expressways. (As I look around my desk at the office a sinking feeling sets in, just about the only thing I have at my desk that does not involve oil was the box of Kleenex. Never mind, the dyes that make up the decorative paints are no doubt synthetic, petrochemical, byproducts.) Naturally with all the wonderful uses we have for oil demand for oil is only increasing.
Is all this demand for oil just good news for Alberta? Well not exactly, Today something in the neighourhood of 30 million barrels of oil come out of the Persian Gulf sand, by comparison something around 1 million barrels comes out of the Fort McMurry tar. If all the tar sand projects that are under discussion are completed, a highly unlikely proposition, something like 10 million barrels a day will come out of Alberta. The sad fact is, we are running out and as we reach our Hubbert peak, that is the period of peak oil production (if we have not already passed the peak), the supply will start to fall off while the demand continues to grow.
If you saw Syriana you will notice that when I quoted the movie I cut out the last portion of Damon's remark, "so when you finally wake up, they will have sucked you dry and you will have squandered the greatest natural resource in history."
Towards the end of your article you mention new less polluting fuels, obviously you bought into the oil industry marketing pitch that they are hard at work developing new sources of energy, you bought that story, hook, line and sinker. We.ve been using oil for 150 years, it has been a crummy source of energy all that time, but we keep using it. I think the reason we have no new energy source that is as dependable and versatile as oil is because we're just too lazy or maybe we're just too uncreative to concoct a new miracle energy. Maybe, just maybe, oil is a non-renewable resource? Maybe we should try a little harder to conserve oil.
I like fresh strawberries in February, I guess thanks to Global Warming I'll be getting plenty, of course I'll have to share them with everyone who had to move inland because their cities are under water.
July 24, 2006
Back to Michael Cole's letters.