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Dangerous by Design 2021: Pedestrian Deaths Up 45% (US)
by Beth McKechnie 26 Mar '21

26 Mar '21

*Dangerous by Design 2021: Pedestrian Deaths Up 45%* The new edition of Dangerous by Design 2021 <https://pedbikeinfo.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7ae385fc8506278c2e45…> from Smart Growth America reports that the number of people hit and killed by drivers while walking in the US increased by 45% in the last decade, and that the last four years have been the deadliest for pedestrian deaths since 1990. The report also highlights ongoing disparities in which groups of people are at greatest risk of dying while walking. Older adults, Black or African American and American Indian or Alaska Native people, and people in low-income communities continue to be disproportionately represented in fatal crashes involving people walking. The report uses the most recent federal Fatal Accident Reporting System data on pedestrian fatalities combined with data on population and walking rates to rank states and the 100 most populous metropolitan areas by their “Pedestrian Danger Index." Forty-nine states and 84 of the 100 largest metro areas have become more dangerous since the 2019 edition of the Dangerous by Design report. The report calls on states, localities, and the federal government to make improving pedestrian safety an urgent priority and identifies actions that can save lives. These include passing the newly introduced Complete Streets Act of 2021 <https://pedbikeinfo.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7ae385fc8506278c2e45…>, which would require state DOTs and MPOs to plan for all people who use the street, including the most vulnerable users. Learn more about the Dangerous by Design report in a webinar on March 25 at 2:00 pm ET <https://pedbikeinfo.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7ae385fc8506278c2e45…> .

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Americans Drove Fewer Miles in 2020. Pedestrians Weren’t Any Safer. - WSJ
by Terry Zdan 23 Mar '21

23 Mar '21

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-drove-fewer-miles-in-2020-pedestrian…

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CTV: Winnipeg planning to build more pedestrian bridges (Mar19'21)
by Beth McKechnie 21 Mar '21

21 Mar '21

https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg-planning-to-build-more-pedestrian-brid… WINNIPEG -- With more and more Winnipeggers choosing to walk or cycle as a mode of transportation, the City of Winnipeg also has plans to add more pedestrian bridges around the city. According to Chris Baker, a City of Winnipeg senior active transportation planner, the city has two current priorities when it comes to pedestrian bridges. “The top priority is the Fort Rouge McFadden Bridge, connecting the Downtown to Osborne Village,” he said. “The next priority would be the Pembina Highway overpass at the Bishop Grandin Greenway.” Baker added that these shovel-ready projects are part of the city’s infrastructure priority list and will be built once the city finds the funding. *THE CITY’S CURRENT PEDESTRIAN BRIDGES* Currently, there are more than 50 pedestrian bridges in the city of Winnipeg. “That includes everything from the signature bridges, the Disraeli pedestrian bridge over the Red River or the Esplanade Riel and all the way down to a bridge in a golf course or in a city park,” Baker said. He noted the city’s active transportation policy is what guides where it chooses to build bridges, adding that the policy calls for several bridges and other grade separations throughout the city. *ARE THE BRIDGES NECESSARY?* Baker said through the city’s monitoring of walking and cycling it has discovered that people are partaking in these activities more and more. He said that in the spring of 2020, some locations reported a 30 per cent increase in the number of pedestrians and cyclists compared to 2019. Anyone who is looking to provide feedback on pedestrian bridges can contact 311.

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CBC: Winnipeg still considering whether to continue, or expand, active transportation route program (Mar19'21)
by Beth McKechnie 19 Mar '21

19 Mar '21

City reviewing pandemic program that was popular with users, but not always with residents on closed streets https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-city-open-streets-active-t… Thousands of residents pedalled and pounded the pavement of Winnipeg's "open streets" routes earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic — but decisions on what will happen with that initiative this spring are still on hold. The restrictive nature of public health orders in 2020, as the pandemic began, prompted the City of Winnipeg last spring to expand its four regular Sunday/holiday bicycle routes <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/city-winnipeg-active-transportation…> to seven days a week. It later added several other locations <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/city-winnipeg-more-active-transport…> across the city. Sections of Lyndale Drive, Wellington Crescent, Wolseley Avenue and Scotia Street were, as usual, reserved for pedestrians and cyclists during daytime hours until the Thanksgiving weekend last year, with motor vehicle traffic limited to one block on those routes. The city added sections of Assiniboine Avenue, Churchill Drive, Egerton Road, Kildonan Drive and Kilkenny Drive to that list in April, and Vialoux Drive in July. They remained closed to daytime vehicle traffic <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-open-streets-closed-labour…> until the Labour Day weekend last year. Now, with temperatures rising and some health restrictions still in place, there are questions about where the city will take the program this year. Some feel limiting motor traffic on certain streets should not only be continued, but expanded. "Absolutely. It's been life changing to have a place where we can walk and we can actually space" apart to observe physical distancing, Debbie Kroeker said as she strolled with a friend down Wellington Crescent. "If we didn't have this, we couldn't walk with more than one person. So it's just a way to really energize the community." A report on the active transportation routes was ordered by city council last September, but the public administration has asked for, and received, extensions to finish the work — the latest being until the middle of April. Staff with the city's public works department are expected to find options for other streets across the city that could be closed on some basis to motor traffic, and recommendations for establishing year-round active transportation route. The chair of the city's public works and infrastructure committee is keen to get going on some sort of expansion of the program, and is chafing at the wait for feedback from staff. "I, for one, would like to see them open right now," said St. Boniface Coun. Matt Allard. "The public service has had two extensions to produce the report.… Seeing the snow melt and recalling the huge success last year, I'm really eager to get this going, and I don't see why we can't get it going right away." 'A lot of confrontations': Wellington resident Not everyone thinks expanding the program would be a good idea. One Wellington Crescent resident says turning her street into an active transportation route has prompted plenty of friction between cyclists and pedestrians, and residents trying to get to or from their homes. "The people that are using the street don't really have any regard to the people that live on the street and need to access the street," said Leanne (she declined to give her last name). "So there's been a lot of confrontations … you know, yelling at people for being on the street or having your vehicle when you're just trying to get to your driveway and get home." She says she filled out a city survey seeking feedback on the routes <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-open-streets-program-surve…> last year, and hopes some attention is paid to the residents. "Think of it from our point of view as well. We want everyone to be safe and walk, and it's a beautiful street and we want to enjoy it too, but we do live on it and we need to get our vehicles out," she said. Kroeker hopes the people who walk and bike the streets, and the residents along them, can find a way to use them together. "Everybody needs to dig a bit deeper and be tolerant and patient — and of course, please be respectful of our wonderful neighbours here and vice versa," she said. A spokesperson for the city's public works department called last year's open streets program "unprecedented" and said it was taking extra time to prepare the report on what to do next. "The additional time needed to present our recommendations has been a result of doing extensive due diligence in terms of consulting with stakeholders and working to ensure that any identified corridors are able to function as open streets," spokesperson Ken Allen said in an email.

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CBC: How pandemic bike lanes made some Canadian cities more accessible
by Beth McKechnie 19 Mar '21

19 Mar '21

Cycling advocates say temporary bike lanes should be made permanent https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/pandemic-bike-lanes-canada-1.5951863 Several Canadian cities set up temporary bike lanes to accommodate the pandemic cycling boom, and biking enthusiasts want the changes to stay. According to a survey <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/200810/dq200810a-eng.htm> from Statistics Canada, more Canadians are now biking or walking to work than using public transit. After the pandemic began last year, many viewed cycling as a safer alternative to being crammed together with others in small spaces and increasing the potential risk of contracting COVID-19. Research <https://findingspress.org/article/19069-the-impact-of-covid-19-cycling-infr…> from the University of Toronto published last month suggests the pandemic bike lanes improved access to jobs, parks and stores. Cycling advocates say the changes should be made permanent and expanded further — similar to what is being done in Europe. According to cycling advocacy organization Vélo Canada Bikes, several cities, including Moncton, Kitchener, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Calgary and Winnipeg have extended their bike lane networks since the pandemic began. In Montreal, Société du parc Jean-Drapeau, which runs the park area that includes Île Sainte-Hélène and Île Notre-Dame, opened a new, year-round cycling route this winter between the Jacques-Cartier and Concorde Bridges. In Calgary, 13 kilometres of roadway with vehicle traffic was temporarily closed to provide space for cyclists and pedestrians to use during the pandemic. In Toronto, 25 kilometres of new temporary bike lanes <https://www.toronto.ca/home/covid-19/covid-19-protect-yourself-others/covid…> were approved in June 2020 through ActiveTO <https://www.toronto.ca/home/covid-19/covid-19-protect-yourself-others/covid…> — an initiative that opened up streets for cyclists and pedestrians to have more space for physical distancing while spending time outdoors. "These benefits are all temporary, and that's why we have an ongoing push to keep ActiveTO, retain the routes beyond 2021 and keep expanding," said Keagan Gartz, executive director of bike lobby group Cycle Toronto. New bike lanes expand access In the U of T study <https://findingspress.org/article/19069-the-impact-of-covid-19-cycling-infr…>, researchers mapped the provincial capital's entire cycling network using city and survey data. It was discovered that the COVID-19 cycling lanes increased cyclists' road access to stores and jobs by 10.4 per cent to 22.3 per cent and increased access to parks by 6.3 per cent. In the study, the researchers classified each roadway based on how stressful it is to cycle on. Roads where a child might easily ride were ranked at the low end of the scale while dangerous, busy roads were pinned at the top. Using this ranking system, the researchers were able to measure the impact of new temporary bike lanes on accessibility. Middle-class neighbourhoods benefit most One of the other researchers leading the study, Shoshanna Saxe, said the areas with the most improved accessibility were those where new infrastructure built on existing networks. "The places where we connect new bike lanes to old bike lanes are the places that benefit the most," she said. "And that means that places in parts of the city that didn't already have bike lanes are starting off a little bit farther behind. And so we need to build more for those parts of the city faster." Brian Pincott, executive director of Vélo Canada Bikes, said more work needs to be done to create equal access to cycling networks. "They were in places that were nice to go for a bike ride, not in more socio-economically challenged neighbourhoods," he said. "We have to look at cycling as a tool for equity so that lower-income neighbourhoods can access safe cycling infrastructure to get around." The federal government recently announced Canada's first active transportation fund <https://www.canada.ca/en/office-infrastructure/news/2021/03/government-of-c…> in response to the need for safe, alternative transportation options. The $400-million National Active Transportation Fund will be spent over the next five years on projects such as new cycling paths and trails. Bike lanes not always welcome However, not all efforts to expand bike lanes have been well received. The Vancouver Park Board recently met with criticism for approving to reinstate a temporary bike lane <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-stanley-park-bike…> on Park Drive in Stanley Park. Last summer, the board opened up a lane dedicated to cyclists and pedestrians to make more room for physical distancing, restricting access to vehicles. The lane was later reconfigured to be shared between cyclists and cars as pandemic restrictions eased. Some argued that the addition of the new bike lane caused serious congestion as it forced the park's slow-moving horse-drawn carriages into a single car lane. Business owners in the area voiced concerns about customers being driven away by the closure. The public responded with a 27,000-signature petition in September demanding the park board reverse the decision. Pincott said that as municipalities develop new cycling infrastructure, they're learning more about which changes work. "We can always make adjustments, but we have to be open to trying," he said. Europe's investments in cycling U of T's Saxe said Canada should follow the lead of European cities in making temporary bike lane expansions permanent. "Around the world, we see examples of places that have said this is the future," she said. "This is how we get more people moving around in healthier, more environmentally-friendly ways. And Paris has been really leading the charge on that." According to the European Cyclists' Federation, 42 out of the 94 largest European cities have built new pandemic cycling networks and more than 400 kilometres of them are permanent. European cities have made significant investments in making it easier to travel by bike: - In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo recently made the expansion of 50 temporary bike lanes permanent. - The European Cyclists' Federation's COVID-19 measures tracker <https://ecf.com/dashboard> shows that London, Milan and Granada, Spain, have put in the most cycling infrastructure since the pandemic began. - The British government announced funding <https://www.gov.uk/government/news/2-billion-package-to-create-new-era-for-…> last year for a new bus, cycling and walking initiative in England. That will provide 240 kilometres of permanent, protected bike lanes, as well as wider sidewalks, safer intersections and bus-only lanes by 2025. - Kraków, Poland, introduced five kilometres of pop-up bike lanesand has developed a five-year plan to connect all the city's districts with the centre. - Brussels imposed a 30 km/hr speed limit through most areas of the city at the start of the year and is conducting feasibility studies for a network of fast bike highways linking the city centre and the suburbs. - Barcelona has accelerated the construction of 160 kilometres of new or expanded bike paths, which will bring its bike network to 305 kilometres by 2024. Corrections - An earlier version of this story said the addition of a bike lane in Vancouver's Stanley Park forced cars, bikes, and horse-drawn carriages to share a single lane. In fact, bikes have their own lane while carriages and cars now share a single lane. Mar 18, 2021 12:17 PM ET

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CBC: ActiveTO poised to return in 2021, may include bike lanes and patios on Yonge Street
by Beth McKechnie 17 Mar '21

17 Mar '21

*ActiveTO poised to return in 2021, may include bike lanes and patios on Yonge Street* Major weekend road closures are recommended to continue even after the pandemic https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/activeto-report-2021-1.5951691 <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/activeto-report-2021-1.5951691> Toronto is recommending the return of its ActiveTO program in 2021, which could include the addition of temporary bike lanes and curb lane patios on a major portion of Yonge Street. ActiveTO was created in the spring of 2020 to promote modes of active transportation such as cycling, running and walking during the early stages of the pandemic. A report recommending the renewal of the program <http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2021.IE20.12> this spring goes to the city's Infrastructure and Environment Committee on Tuesday, March 23. The city is recommending that the program become a permanent fixture even after the pandemic ends. "This report shows that ActiveTO was a tremendous success in 2020 and city staff are confident that we can build upon that success this year," said Toronto Mayor John Tory in a statement. "I think this report shows we are doing everything we can as a city government to support more active transportation options." According to the city, people who took part in the weekend road closures were overwhelmingly supportive of the initiative, with 92 per cent saying they wanted the closures to continue beyond COVID-19. The staff report also found minimal evidence for increased vehicle traffic delays due to the program, with some exceptions on the Gardiner Expressway and The Queensway. Yonge Street redesign to follow Danforth Avenue model The proposed changes on Yonge Street would be installed between Bloor Street and Davisville Avenue. The redesign of the street would be considered a pilot project with a tentative end date of Apr. 30, 2022. The report suggests temporary changes to Yonge Street that would mirror the redesign of Danforth Avenue undertaken last year. (Toronto) The proposed changes would mirror the approach taken on Danforth Avenue last summer, where new bike lanes and patios were installed using temporary blockades and paint. The report says the changes on Yonge Street could likely be implemented this year, though city staff have not provided a target date. Toronto city council approved a plan to add bike lanes to a larger stretch of Yonge Street <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/yonge-street-bike-lanes-council-1.57…> last fall. That decision called for the bike lanes to be installed sometime during the second quarter of the year. City to consider additional tweaks The version of ActiveTO proposed for 2021 includes several changes compared to the initial program introduced last year, which had three primary components: weekend road closures, the creation of "Quiet Streets" neighbourhood zones, and the expansion of the city's cycling network. While some major weekend road closures are slated to continue, the closures will likely not include a section of Lake Shore Boulevard West that proved to be among the more popular ActiveTO destinations last summer. City staff say construction projects taking place in the west end of the city would likely cause significant traffic delays if Lake Shore Boulevard East were closed to motor vehicles in either 2021 or 2022. The weekend road closures on portions of Bayview Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard East are planned to continue. The report also recommends the cancellation of the Quiet Streets program, which saw the installation of traffic calming measures such as signage and barricades in 30 locations around the city. The report instead recommends "refocusing" on other measures such as reducing speed limits and automated speed enforcement.

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The Dangerous Rise of the Supersized Pickup Truck - Bloomberg
by Beth McKechnie 15 Mar '21

15 Mar '21

[You can also check out a recent webinar recording with Angie Schmitt at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zoXDPi8-40] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-11/the-dangerous-rise-of-th… What Happened to Pickup Trucks?As U.S. drivers buy more full-size and heavy-duty pickups, these vehicles have transformed from no-frills workhorses into angry giants. And pedestrians are paying the price. To get a handle on what’s happened to pickup trucks, it really helps to use a human body for scale. In some nerdy Internet circles — specifically, bike and pedestrian advocacy — it has become trendy to take a selfie in front of the bumper of random neighborhood Silverados. Among the increasingly popular heavy-duty models, the height of the truck’s front end may reach a grown man’s shoulders or neck. When you involve children in this exercise it starts to become really disturbing. My four-year-old son, for example, barely cleared the bumper on a lifted F-250 we came across in a parking lot last summer. [image: relates to What Happened to Pickup Trucks?] Look out below. Photo courtesy Angie Schmitt Vehicles of this scale saddle their drivers with huge front and rear blind zones <https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investigates/13-investi…> that make them perilous to operate <https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/19/21522959/cadillac-escalade-2021-first-d…> in crowded areas. Even car guys have been sounding the alarm about the mega-truck trend recently. A few months ago, the *Wall Street Journal*’s Dan Neil <https://www.wsj.com/articles/pickup-trucks-are-getting-huge-got-a-problem-w…>complained about his close encounter in a parking lot with a 2020 GMC Sierra HD Denali: “The domed hood was at forehead level. The paramedics would have had to extract me from the grille with a spray hose.” Since 1990, U.S. pickup trucks have added almost 1,300 pounds <https://twitter.com/kevin_degood/status/1166359839855054850?ref_src=twsrc%2…> on average. Some of the biggest vehicles on the market now weigh almost 7,000 pounds <https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/10/14/the-most-massive-cars-…> — or about three Honda Civics. These vehicles have a voracious appetite for space, one that’s increasingly irreconcilable with the way cities (and garages, and parking lots <https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2020/03/05/suvs-pickups-trucks-ga…>) are built. Styling trends are almost as alarming. Pickup truck front ends have warped into scowling brick walls, billboards for outwardly directed hostility. “The goal of modern truck grilles,” wrote *Jalopnik*’s Jason Torchinsky in 2018 <https://jalopnik.com/we-need-to-talk-about-truck-design-right-now-before-it…>, “seems to be… about creating a massive, brutal face of rage and intimidation.” The Electric Pickup Truck War Is Here During the pandemic, U.S. buyers seemed to respond <https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2020/10/31/pickup-trucks-carguru-cov…> to this kind of packaging. In May 2020, Americans bought more pickup trucks than cars <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-05/pickups-outsell-passenge…> for the first time. Five of the 10 top-selling vehicles in the U.S. last year were pickup trucks <https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/pickup-trucks-dominate-americas-10-best-sel…> . Giant, furious trucks are more than just a polarizing consumer choice: Large pickups and SUVs are notably more lethal to other road users, and their conquest of U.S. roads has been accompanied by a spike in fatalities among pedestrians and bicyclists <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-08-12/why-are-cars-still-so-da…>. As I wrote in my 2020 book <https://islandpress.org/books/right-way> *Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America*, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety <https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-suvs-are-more-le…> and the *Detroit Free Press <https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/06/28/suvs-killing-americas-ped…> *have pointed to the rise in SUVs and large pickups as the main culprit in the pedestrian mortality surge. The truck trend is contributing to another troubling crash-related disparity: In a new study <https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicle-choice-crash-differences-help-expl…>, the IIHS shows that women — who tend choose smaller vehicles — are suffering higher injury and death rates than their male counterparts, despite the fact than women engage in fewer risks and crash less. Why have pickup trucks morphed into such huge, angry, and dangerous presences? Traffic safety experts, commentators on U.S. automotive culture, and social scientists have suggested a range of forces behind truck bloat. The truckification of the family car One key driver of pickup growth relates to how they are now being used. If you overlook their gleefully violent styling and garage-unfriendly footprint, these vehicles have become more practical as family vehicles <https://www.consumerreports.org/pickup-trucks/are-pickup-trucks-becoming-th…> . Despite the agrarian pursuits that TV commercials suggest, today’s pickup trucks are being built more to haul kids and families than sheep and boulders. Until the 1980s, almost every pickup truck sold in the U.S. had a single cab, meaning seating for three max in a single bench-style seat, with a bed that was eight feet long for a full-sized long-bed vehicle. That old no-frills working-style truck is fading into history. [image: Loading Hay Bales] In 1967, this was a pickup truck. Photographer: Underwood Archives/Archive Photos In 2020, 85% of pickup trucks sold had “crew cabs” or “extended crew cabs” or one of a handful of other tough-guy euphemisms with two sets of seats for five people — most with four doors. Some have four regular-size doors. These passenger-heavy, cargo-lite arrangements are so popular that some automakers — like Ram — have stopped even offering single cabs in their best-selling pickup brands. As pickups transformed into family vehicles, they also became more luxurious. The average truck in the U.S. sells for almost $50,000 now <https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2020/03/03/why-annual-pickup-truc…> — a 41% increase compared to a decade ago — and many boast posh, feature-laden interiors designed to compete with high-end SUVs and sedans, as auto writer Jim Gorzelany writes in *Forbes* <https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2020/03/03/why-annual-pickup-truc…> . As a result, today’s truck owners include all kinds of people who don’t necessarily need (and rarely use) <https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-size-pickup-truck-…> these vehicles’ defining features: the open cargo-hauling bed and towing capabilities. Some choose big trucks because smaller vehicles make them feel too vulnerable on modern highways. Michael Powell, a social worker who lives in rural Maine, says he’d rather drive a compact car, but he has PTSD from a former car crash: He drives a truck, he says, “because everyone else in my town does, and it’s the only way I can get around without feeling like I’m gonna die.” Jeff Weidner, an assistant professor at a college in El Paso, Texas, says he feels a little guilty about choosing to buy a full-size Toyota Tundra — but admits he likes it. “We were looking for something that would hold six people, would be good for long trips in terms of space and carrying our stuff,” he says. At first, he planned on buying the mid-size Tacoma, but “they upsold us hard with the Tundra. They barely even had stock of Tacomas — they probably do not make enough money on them.” The U.S.’s perverse regulatory and tax environment contributes to this arms race. Ford’s heavy-duty F-250, for example, benefits from its regulatory status as a commercial vehicle, unlike the slightly smaller F-150. The same goes for other heavy-duty models like the Ram 2500 and Silverado 2500HD, which aren’t classified as passenger vehicles, but as work machines <https://jalopnik.com/its-time-to-call-bullshit-on-the-biggest-cover-up-in-a…>, and are thus exempt from EPA fuel economy reporting regulations. “Nobody tracks the gas mileage — there’s no EPA rating for that car,” says Dan Albert, author of *Are We There Yet?: The American Automobile Past, Present and Driverless <https://www.amazon.com/Are-There-Yet-Automobile-Driverless/dp/0393292746>* *.* [image: GMC Holds Vehicle Reveal Event] The mighty prow of a GMC Sierra Denali HD. Photographer: Sandy Huffaker/Bloomberg Business tax structure also encourages many business owners to opt for the bigger F-250 over the F-150, making the added cost almost negligible. Going large doesn’t necessarily exact a major toll in fuel expenses, either: While pickups have gotten bigger they have also become — while not exactly green — certainly less gas guzzling. Equipped with a hybrid powertrain, the 2021 Ford F-150 can achieve 25 miles per gallon in the city <https://www.motortrend.com/news/2021-ford-f-150-hybrid-mpg-fuel-economy/>, six more than a Honda Odyssey minivan. “We have gotten better at making them more efficient,” says Benjamin Sovacool <https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p373957-benjamin-sovacool>, a researcher who studies energy transitions. That fuel efficiency is set to leap forward again, with the arrival of Tesla’s Cybertruck, GM’s rebooted 1,000-horsepower Hummer EV, and host of other electrified rigs <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-10/electric-cars-ford-f-tes…>: battery-powered vehicles that overcompensate for their non-polluting powertrains with hyper-aggressive styling and power ratings. Make way for “petro-masculinity” But that doesn’t mean the decision to buy a $50,000 truck with a 4,200-pound payload rating for the occasional trip to the golf course or hardware store is strictly rational. Personal vehicles are not merely functional appliances: They are used as refuges, fortresses and private enclaves, and serve as important signifiers of class and gender identity, as Sovacool explored in a 2018 study <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856416311247#b0140>. To Albert, the booming appeal of bigger and more brutish trucks reflects “a crisis of masculinity,” he says. “Nothing could be more emasculating than driving a minivan. So you want the vehicle that’s going to maintain your performative masculinity.” The fact that supersized pickup trucks were often deployed as political props (and weapons <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/why-vehicle-attacks-agai…>) during the Trump era did not escape the notice of scholars like Cara Daggett, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech. In a widely shared 2018 journal article <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0305829818775817>, Daggett coined the term “petro-masculinity” to describe flamboyant expressions of fossil fuel use by men (and some women as well, but mostly men) as a reaction against social progress. To these drivers, “the affront of global warming or environmental regulations appear as insurgents on par with the dangers posed by feminists and queer movements seeking to leach energy and power from the state/traditional family,” she wrote. Petro-masculinity helps explain not only these vehicles’ confrontational styling, but the often equally belligerent way in which they are operated. The EPA estimates that more than half a million trucks — 15% of the diesel-powered pickups on U.S. roads — have had their emissions equipment modified over the last decade in order to increase their power and polluting potential. There’s a cottage industry <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/09/auto-car-emissions-defeat-d…> devoted to the practice of bypassing emissions standards; such modified vehicles are believed to emit as much pollution as 9 million emissions-compliant diesel trucks. While illegal, some drivers flaunt their ability to pollute, via the behavior known as “rolling coal <https://newrepublic.com/article/143083/republicans-rolling-coal-party>,” in which drivers of modified diesel trucks blow black smoke at targets of their disapproval (often Prius drivers or bicyclists). “Burning fossil fuels can come to function as a knowingly violent experience,” Daggett writes, “a reassertion of white masculine power on an unruly planet that is perceived to be increasingly in need of violent, authoritarian order.” Built for battle Geopolitical factors have long played a role in car and truck design in the U.S.: Jeeps, of course, began as military vehicles adapted to civilian use, a heritage the company still proudly announces <https://www.jeep.com/history/1940s.html> on its site, saying the brand is “forever tied to freedom, capability and adventure.” The first iteration of GM’s Hummer brand spun from the high-profile role that Humvee military vehicles used in the Persian Gulf War <https://taskandpurpose.com/gear-tech/humvee-failed-battlefield-sparked-cult…>. Other manufacturers continue to cultivate connections to the military as well. Ford advertises <https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2014/01/13/ford-use…> its F-150 is made of “military-grade aluminum alloy” for the “working warrior.” In his excellent illustrated essay “About Face <https://popula.com/2019/02/24/about-face/>,” cartoonist Nate Powell, whose father was an Air Force officer, explores the recent emergence of the overtly “paramilitary aesthetic” in truck and SUV design and connects it to recent U.S. “forever wars,” in which regular troops have mixed with private security units, special forces and law enforcement officers in battlefields around the world. Many veterans of these campaigns employed up-armored civilian vehicles, and they brought a taste for such machines back home with them. “It’s a kind of spectacular performance of power.” That aesthetic can be detected not only in the raised “militarized” grille height of pickup trucks, but also the popularity of aftermarket modifications like blacked-out windows and “bull bars” affixed to the front end. Together, the way these trucks look speaks to a “rejection of communication, reciprocity and legal accountability,” Powell writes. At their heart, these consumer choices also reflect something else, says Sovacool: fear. “We are questioning our place in the world, with globalization and Trump. We’re also feeling really uncertain and unsafe — the pandemic, terrorism.” With its “bulletproof” stainless-steel skin and “bioweapon defense mode,” perhaps no vehicle feels as precisely calibrated to the anxieties of its era as the Tesla Cybertruck <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-22/tesla-s-cybertruck-is-bu…>. Such vehicles promise more than just “defensive security,” wherein a larger vehicle at least theoretically protects its occupants better in a collision with a smaller vehicle: They are built to project “offensive security,” Sovacool says. “If you do need a vehicle that will go off road, carry lots of weapons or run over people,” he says, “then these bigger vehicles do it better than these smaller ones.” Only in America Threaded within the pickup’s militaristic branding is a powerful appeal to national pride. U.S. automakers have long dominated pickup truck sales, which produce enormous profits for Detroit-based companies and employ a lot of domestic auto workers. No wonder there’s such hesitancy among regulators to stand in the way of some of their more egregious styling trends or emissions loopholes. “In a way, critiquing them is seen as anti-American and anti-jobs,” says Sovacool. [image: Pickup trucks with American flags affixed to their attennas] America’s “Big Three” automakers dominate the large pickup market. Photographer: Jack Smith/Bloomberg In a 2016 essay for *N+1*, Albert also reflected on the burden of associations — nostalgic and nationalistic — that pickups carry: “To drive a thirsty truck is to live in a pre-EPA era, before the spikes in gas prices, before political correctness,” he wrote <https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-american-pickup/>. “To fill the bottomless tank of a pickup … is to practice the religion of the American Way. It is to affirm climate denial, petrol-adventurism, and American exceptionalism.” There are many ways to untangle pickup trucks from this trap and rein in their most destructive excesses. Federal regulators could revise the EPA mandates that the largest pickups now avoid, and impose stronger rules <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-17/how-cities-could-push-ba…> on pedestrian safety to make trucks and SUVs less lethal. The tax code could be reformed, so businesses that purchase the largest commercial trucks aren’t rewarded with a 100% depreciation bonus <https://gscpa.com/how-much-can-businesses-deduct-for-vehicles-placed-in-ser….> on the first year. Cities could stiffen parking policies and raise vehicle fees <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-17/how-cities-could-push-ba…> so that such impractically scaled machines will be less appealing to buyers who have little need of their capabilities. But any such efforts can’t be merely “technocratic,” Daggett says — they must grapple with the broader societal forces that these supertrucks have tapped into. “A lot of things are attached to fossil fuel culture because they are symbolically a part of a certain way of life or an identity,” she says. “It’s no longer possible to operate in the world and not understand that fossil fuels are violent. It’s a kind of spectacular performance of power.” *Angie Schmitt <https://twitter.com/schmangee> is a writer and planning consultant and author of *Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America <https://bookshop.org/books/right-of-way-race-class-and-the-silent-epidemic-…> *.*

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WFP: City urged to add bike lanes on Salter Street in rebuild (Mar13'21)
by Beth McKechnie 13 Mar '21

13 Mar '21

City urged to add bike lanes on Salter Street in rebuild https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/city-urged-to-add-bike-lanes-on-sal… ON any given day, the intersection of Salter Street and Selkirk Avenue is bustling with cars, trucks and buses. Those looking to cycle through the neighbourhood often find themselves on the sidewalk, deftly dodging a steady stream of pedestrians. As the City of Winnipeg plans to rebuild a swath of Salter Street, community leaders are questioning its decision to leave out active transportation routes — and are advocating for a design model that includes a bike lane on the busy roadway. All his life, Nelson Flett has navigated his North End neighbourhood by foot, bike and even rollerblades. Having bike lanes in the community, he says, would offer a safe way to get around and bring about some revitalization. “I want the future generations to be safe, have fun, get outdoors and enjoy the life I had, because I’ve been riding bikes most of my life,” Flett said Friday morning, during a news conference on the corner of Salter and Selkirk. “I think it would just rejuvenate the area, bring the life out in people.” Flett joined members of Winnipeg Trails, Couns. Ross Eadie (Mynarski) and Vivian Santos (Point Douglas), and other community leaders to call for the building of active transportation routes as street revitalization projects take place in the North End. The group envisioned what a bike lane might look like on Salter Street. “Seven feet, that’s all we’re asking for,” they called out, holding up a tape measure at the seven-foot mark. “We want to see them fix Salter and do it right; $6 million spent through the heart of the North End without bike lanes in the middle of a pandemic is wrong,” Winnipeg Trails executive director Anders Swanson said. “We want the city to integrate bike lanes into all of its road reconstruction, because we are tired of chasing after multimillion-dollar projects that could have been done better.” In late 2020, the city tendered a project to rehabilitate Salter between the Slaw Rebchuk Bridge and Cathedral Avenue. But due to a “limited scope,” the project will not include any public engagement activities, according to the city’s website. In February, the city awarded a tender valued at more than $4.2 million to Winnipeg-based Darco Group Ltd. for the rehabilitation project, which will have roads and sidewalks rehabilitated for pedestrian safety. “This considers neither current nor best practices in active transportation, otherwise the moment you see one person riding on the sidewalk here, you would put in bike lanes,” Swanson said. Flett — who has biked over the bridge to his work in West Broadway — said the busy traffic lanes in the neighbourhood are “scary” to traverse, leading many on bikes to take to the sidewalks and causing safety issues for pedestrians. In an ideal reconstruction, Flett said he would like to see protected cycle lanes, like the ones on Maryland and Sherbrook Streets, start popping up in the North End. Ground is expected to be broken on the Salter Street project in summer. julia-simone.rutgers(a)freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @jsrutgers

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FW: $400 Million for Bike Paths, Walkways, etc.
by Charles F 12 Mar '21

12 Mar '21

Federal AT funding and engagement announcement.One small step...Sent from my phone.

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WFP: A Route to the Future - Transit Master Plan (Mar6'21)
by Beth McKechnie 06 Mar '21

06 Mar '21

A Route to the Future https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/greenpage/transforming… The city will unveil a public-transit blueprint in the coming weeks that could transform Winnipeg; there’s a lot riding on it, including the number of people willing to ride on it THIS spring, Winnipeg’s civil service will unveil its new master plan for public transit, coming on the heels of Ottawa’s announcement to shovel billions of dollars into programs across the country over the next decade in an effort to lower emissions from the transportation sector. This convergence of public money and planning seems to offer Winnipeg a chance to reimagine what is possible in the realm of transit — what the system could be going forward, despite past failings. However, it is quickly becoming clear there are no visions of streetcars or light rail dancing in their heads. Dreams for Winnipeg’s transit system are much smaller, even among its biggest proponents, which speaks to how far the system still has to go in order to meet a threshold of service that would successfully convince people to leave their cars at home. Or, even more radically, not buy a car in the first place. Breaking people of their car-driving habit is a key aspect of national and municipal climate plans. More than 40 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions in Manitoba came from the transportation sector in 2018. Of the emissions from transportation, about 37 per cent comes from vehicles classified as light-duty cars and trucks. Electrification will help lower passenger vehicle emissions, but prospective civic policies also rely on getting more people out of their vehicles altogether and on to bikes, buses and trains. “Investments in public transit will also require some behavioural changes on the part of commuters,” declared the Senate’s 2017 report on decarbonizing the transportation sector. “Unless taking transit is easier, faster and cheaper than taking a car for one’s daily commute, investments will not result in the desired emission reductions.” Ideally, all of the pieces are meant to come together to help solve the emissions problem. But in Winnipeg, the road forward is shaping up to be a long, slow one. ●●● Coun. Vivian Santos grew up getting around the city by bus, accepting the hour-long commute between her childhood Southdale home and downtown that would otherwise take 15 minutes by car. As she got older, a bike became a better alternative to the bus, cutting her commute time in half. “I stopped taking transit because it was just, to be honest, a waste of my time in the morning,” she says. In the decades since, bus service hasn’t really improved, but her financial flexibility did, plus she added kids to the mix. And so, the Point Douglas councillor made the same choice most Winnipeggers who can afford it make, and she bought a car. There are now two in her household to shuffle her family around the city. Her children are getting to the age where they could start taking transit on their own — and she’d like to encourage them to do so — but it’s not realistic, based on where they live in the northwest part of the city. “There’s actually no transit service out here, to be honest with you. So if my son were to take transit, he would actually have to walk 10 minutes to McPhillips. Or he’d have to walk maybe seven minutes the other way down towards Pipeline and Templeton. So we’re really kind of outside of the transit system,” she says. Winnipeg has some of the lowest transit use rates per capita in the country, according to a recent report from Climate Reality Canada, the Canadian arm of former U.S. vice-president Al Gore’s international environmental non-profit organization. Among large cities with more than 600,000 residents, Winnipeg came in last, with an average of 67 transit trips per person annually. The next lowest was Calgary with 84. The Canadian leader in transit trips per capita is Montreal, with 236. Nationally, transit ridership has increased from roughly 1.8 billion regular service trips in 2009 to 2.1 billion in 2017, according to the Canadian Urban Transit Association. But in Winnipeg, ridership stalled and even declined in that same time period, according to city statistics. The last census revealed Winnipeg was the only Canadian city where commuting by public transit had declined over the preceding 20-year period. Santos believes getting more people on transit isn’t about building rail lines or any other flashy, grand plans. To her, it’s much more simple — it’s about making transit more frequently accessible and reliable, and charging less money to use it. “I think a good balance of both should be done,” she says. “They need to be done together. Because I understand that if we lower the fees, we’re going to have more people come on, we’re gonna see an uptick rate of people taking the transit. So obviously, we need to increase purchasing buses, and we need to better our frequency.” To that end, she put a motion before the city’s public works committee in February to study what the impact of lower fares might be in Winnipeg. It was rejected in a 2-2 vote. Curt Hull, director of Winnipeg’s Climate Change Connection, agrees with Santos’s evaluation of what’s needed to bring the transit system up to speed, and explains why aiming higher at this point isn’t practical. “Implementing rapid transit by rail is really a long ways further from where we are. You don’t start with that. You start with building the demand with things like developing frequent service, and then once you get enough demand, enough ridership on a particular route, then you make it rail. So we’re a long ways away from that,” Hull says. Efforts to regenerate the transit system with rapid bus infrastructure — the second leg of the Southwest Transitway was completed last spring — have proven lacklustre, Hull says, but he is hopeful new, less capital-intensive improvements will help deliver more riders. In addition to Santos’s hopes for more frequent, cheaper service, Hull adds a couple of things to the wish list. The routes need to be simple, he says, and access to lines criss-crossing the city needs to be easy. He envisions something like an on-demand service for suburban neighbourhoods, where a small van or a similar vehicle shuttles a rider to the main bus lines. Having regular but empty buses running through those neighbourhoods doesn’t make sense, he says, but you can’t cut them off from the network, either. “The issue is the availability of funding for it,” he says. ●●● Winnipeg relies more heavily on the fare box to fund transit than any other city in the country on a per capita basis, which pins the system’s progress directly to ridership. It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario — the system can’t be improved until ridership increases, but that won’t happen without system improvements. It also puts the system at risk for ridership fluctuations, as was the case for most of last year because of the pandemic. Across the country, transit ridership fell by more than 60 per cent in 2020, according to Statistics Canada. While it rebounded somewhat in the summer months, those minor gains were lost again amid the second wave in late fall and early winter. “That hits our system that much more than other systems,” says Coun. Matt Allard, chair of Winnipeg’s public works committee. Winnipeg’s reliance on fare-box revenues was cemented in 2017 when the provincial government moved away from its 50-50 funding agreement with the city. In 2019, fares represented 45 per cent of total revenues on transit, which amounted to $91.7 million of $204 million. At the public works committee meeting in February where Santos put forward the idea of free or lower-fare transit, the conversation quickly turned from one that was simply about buses and dollar figures to a much more complicated question: is public transit something Winnipeggers consider to be a public good? Taxpayers who are childless or do not have school-age children still contribute money to the education system. Taxpayers who do not borrow books from the library still pay to keep the lights on and the shelves stocked. Those who do not drive still pay to keep the roads maintained. And all of those services are free of direct costs to the user. Winnipeggers have come to an implicit agreement that some things are in the public’s interest to fund. But so far, Winnipeg and its residents have yet to bring public transit under that umbrella. As long as the system relies heavily on the fare box, it will not be viewed as a public good. At least not to the same extent that other services are. Much like parents not bringing their children to a park with broken swings and garbage strewn everywhere, a neglected transit system will not yield higher ridership. It will not be a civic source of pride, as it is in many other cities. “Convenient access to public transit” is among the United Nations’ indicators for sustainable development goals. Yet, Winnipeg fails to meet measures of success that were created as goals in developing countries. International Institute for Sustainable Development targets for appropriate wait times and distance to the closest bus stop are unattainable for a third of Winnipeggers. Transit investments have been found to have significant positive spillover effects in economic development, especially in sectors such as tourism. It also stands to reason riders save money that would have otherwise have spent on a car. Then there’s the significant shared benefits between climate interests in transit and equity policy across different socio-economic classes. “If you see transportation as a way of participating in society — which it certainly is — the more accessible transit is, the more people can easily get around and the more their experience becomes comparable to somebody who owns a vehicle, who’s more economically advantaged,” Allard says. The push for change has become louder as the urgency of climate action increases. Carolyn Kim, the director of transportation at the Pembina Institute, argues that making the decision as a city to invest in transit would be transformational, in itself. “If you’re able to increase the level of service, and people can ride a bus that is more frequent, it’s more reliable. It’s affordable,” Kim says. Also critical to the conversation is deliberately targeting dense housing and business development along the main transit arteries, she adds. Getting people onto transit is about making it a more convenient, cheaper alternative to driving. So the flip side of the equation, though often unpopular politically, is to find ways to increase the cost of driving through increased parking rates, lowering parking availability and other planning tools. It’s another avenue to pursue transformational changes, Kim says. Take London, as an example. The British city has created an “ultra-low emission zone” where, depending on how much your vehicle pollutes the air, you are charged a daily fee to drive in certain areas. Cities are free to get creative with policies and find solutions that work for them, Kim says, but they have the power to set priorities and pathways that change residents’ behaviour. ●●● Winnipeg is also contemplating where the electrification of buses fits into the picture. A pilot project for the use of both battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell buses will be considered by council this spring. Allard says he’s looking forward to debate on the topic, but to him, more buses on the road — regardless of how they’re powered — is the priority, since the transit fleet is responsible for such a small fraction of emissions in the city compared to personal passenger vehicles. Joanna Kyriazis, a senior policy adviser with Clean Energy Canada, warns against that kind of thinking, pointing out that electric buses actually stand to save cities money, since operation and maintenance costs are so much lower, even if up-front costs to purchase the vehicles are still higher. “The life of a bus is 12 to 18 years. And so if we keep making diesel bus purchases today, that that decision has consequences for another two decades,” she says. And the added allure of electric buses might be another way for the city to persuade drivers to park and ride, she says. Along with electrification, the new buses also come with GPS to track where they are on routes, and that information can then be sent to users. Generally, they also come with electronic-pass scanners, so riders don’t need to fumble with correct change and tickets. All of these upgrades make the transit experience better, she says. Plus, no more diesel fumes. “It’s also a great way for people to experience an electric vehicle for the first time. And the more we see them on our streets, the more we ride them, the more we see how many benefits they deliver, the more likely those riders are to go and buy an electric car themselves. So there are these spillover effects,” Kyriazis says. “Doing the same thing we’ve always done isn’t working. And so modernizing and connecting these vehicles is going to help improve the rider experience.” In Winnipeg, transformational changes might not be as big and headline-grabbing as they are in other cities, but this city is coming from behind and has more ground to make up if transit is going to become a priority. Rail lines or a world-class network of multimodal transit aren’t on anyone’s realistic wish list. But perhaps Winnipeg is on the verge of a different radical change. One where transit isn’t looked at as a lost cause, but rather something to be invested in for the good of the community. sarah.lawrynuik(a)freepress.mb.ca <sarah.lawrynuik(a)freepress.mb.ca> Twitter: @SarahLawrynuik

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