Archive for October 22nd, 2008

China Daily reports on how primary school students in the county of Guizhou are required to “salute” the drivers of passing cars (I don’t think they’re talking about the one-fingered variety).

Story here or after the jump…

(more…)

Via Berkeley’s Center for Future Urban Transport is a new study that I imagine will be generating some discussion. The work, by Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath, is meant to: “develop comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) models to quantify the energy inputs and emissions from autos, buses, heavy rail, light rail and air transportation in the U.S. associated with the entire life cycle (design, raw materials extraction, manufacturing, construction, operation, maintenance, end-of-life) of the vehicles, infrastructures, and fuels involved in these systems. Energy inputs are quantified as well as greenhouse gas and criteria air pollutant outputs. Inventory results are normalized to effects per vehicle-lifetime, VMT, and PMT.”

Among the more eye-raising findings noted:

• Roadway construction particulate matter emissions are as large as tail-pipe emissions for the automobile per passenger-mile-traveled.

• Urban buses with peak-hour occupancies have the best energy and greenhouse gas performance, followed by rail and then air systems, and trailed by automobiles. But off-peak bus travel is the worst performer.

• Air travel is environmentally competitive with rail travel and can outperform rail modes when the aircraft is about 80 percent utilized.

• The use of ground support equipment at airports contributes roughly one-third of the total carbon monoxide lifecycle emissions for aircraft.

• While rail systems are the best energy and greenhouse gas performers, they exhibit the largest shares from infrastructure effects in the lifecycle. This results from environmentally much larger infrastructure requirements per passenger-mile served.

Based on my absolutely unscientific observations:

1.) The drivers are nuts. At least more so than those I’ve seen in Vancouver or Toronto. You get the feeling, walking, that they haven’t quite made up their mind whether to stop, particularly as make turn into crosswalks (I was told, by the way, that this is “one of two cities in North America where right turn on red is prohibited”; hmm, is this true?). I don’t see much enforcement (which makes me wonder, as an aside, whether corruption levels have been tracked to be higher here than in other provinces). In bad travel articles and the like you see things about the “more relaxed pace of life” in Montreal; I’m not sure drivers got the memo on this one.

2.) Pedestrians are too docile. This could be a result of having been cowed by point #1, of course. But I feel alone sometimes in my jaywalking. C’mon people, take back the streets! Look at cars, not signals! When January comes around, do you really want to be waiting on that corner?

3.) Every other car seems to be a Mazda.

4.) At many intersections there is absolutely NO clearance phase. No 1.7 seconds or so of grace. One light turns red, the other instantly turns green. Any comparative data on intersection crashes, I wonder?

5.) Most signs are in French (or simply graphic), except for the quasi-secessionist stop signs of Westmount.

6.) There are some really good separated bike lanes. But I’ve only seen them in certain areas. I don’t know how well linked up they all are. But I’m on foot in any case.

7.) The Turcot Yards area has to be one of the most spectacularly dystopic interchange conurbations I’ve ever seen — anyone looking to film J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island, look no further.

8.) I was a bit surprised by the number of suburban-style gas stations and mini-marts in town. The city is not as dense in places as I thought it might be.

9.) The “walk man” here has strangely long legs and a quite wide, jaunty stride.

10.) There’s a lot of it (traffic, that is).

I was intrigued by this slide from a talk by Michael O’Hare, at the UC-Berkeley’s School of Public Policy. I imagine there would have been few people in 1968 predicting that by 2008 smoking in public places would largely be a thing of the past.