by Deming Smith

The SPEC Transportation/Air Quality/Land Use Committee is involved in the campaign to halt the provincial government  plans to “fast track” construction of a new SkyTrain extension from New Westminster along the Broadway Corridor to Glen-Clark Dr. in East Vancouver.  SPEC’s opposition  is based on several factors; chief  being our belief that  better bus services are needed and  should be the  first transit spending priority. Buses are the backbone of the transit network and account for 85
percent of all trips. Building an extension to SkyTrain without  providing badly needed new buses is a bad decision.
 
Other aspects of this project are also troublesome. Premier Glen Clark’s unilateral decision to counter  previous studies and opt for SkyTrain rather than follow established  plans for a cost-effective and attractive street-level light rapid transit (LRT) system, is of grave concern to public transit advocates. The decision on SkyTrain technology was, amazingly, made without calls for  proposals from other providers of rapid transit technologies. The public now risks being left with a SkyTrain system that will cost close to $3 billion, rather than the $1.5 billion  estimated to build  conventional LRT. Clark’s decision caught everyone by surprise; including BC Transit and GVRD staff as well as affected municipalities.

As a result transit planners  doubt whether the new Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority (GVTA) can deliver other promised (and overdue) transit improvements. Greater Vancouver transit users could be left with an over-priced and underutilized new SkyTrain extension, but with even worse bus services than we currently endure. The outcome could be an
under-funded bus service  no longer able to compete with the comfort and convenience of driving a car. Users may  find the transit experience so frustrating and unreliable that many will  choose to drive rather than endure  transit hassles.

It is true SkyTrain is  fast, effective and relatively pleasant - if it happens to serve your destination. The trouble is for most transit users, SkyTrain doesn’t take them where they want to go. A  more viable solution for improving  services is the addition of more buses.  Every transportation study in the last 10 years agrees that adding  buses should be the highest transit spending priority.  This is not to say that the addition of any rapid transit line would be an inappropriate expenditure of transit dollars. But rapid transit should come only after bus services are increased. This is the plan agreed to by Victoria and  the GVRD - and
they should stick to it..

The existing SkyTrain has caused a severe and negative impact on Transit’s ability to place adequate numbers of  buses on the road. When SkyTrain went into service 12 years ago, buses were  curbed  to accommodate  new SkyTrain stations. In some areas bus service still hasn’t reached previous levels because  Transit has such high SkyTrain debt  costs  that little is left for other transit  needs.

BC Transit’s 1996/97 budget was approximately $527 million. Of this a staggering 36 per cent - $192 million - went to SkyTrain debt service charges. SkyTrain’s  excessive debt load means transit operating costs have increased dramatically over the past decade, thus making the addition of new buses that much harder.  Consequently, Greater Vancouver now has fewer buses per capita of any major Canadian city. It is easier to catch a bus in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Toronto or even Mississauga, Ont. than in the Lower Mainland. This isn’t much of a surprise to long-suffering  transit users. The fact remains  buses are the most important component of any transit system. They are  cheaper and more efficient to operate than the expensive SkyTrain.

The problem is Victoria is not building SkyTrain for transit purposes, perse. Rather, they are hoping that the $1.2 billion they pour into this project over the next 2 years will serve as a job-creation tool, which presumably would also help to stimulate the region’s economy. While job creation may be a laudable objective, we feel strongly that meeting this objective should not come at the risk of bankrupting the region’s transit system.  Decisions regarding investments in public transit should be based on
what’s needed to build the best transit system we can build – rather than decision-making based on other objectives and agendas. Maintaining a strong and healthy transit system is too important to this region’s social and environmental well-being to be put at risk by another costly and ill- timed SkyTrain project.

SPEC is urging Lower Mainland residents to contact their provincial MLAs, municipal councilors and members of the GVTA Board of Directors to express their concerns about this project. Ask them what they are doing to protect and promote the health and viability of regional transit. If they care about transit, they shouldn’t be supporting this new SkyTrain boondoggle.

Since arriving in Vancouver from Southern California in 1990, Deming Smith has studied transportation and land use issues for SPEC.  Deming has been a SPEC director since 1991 and is currently Chair of the Transportation, Air Quality and Land Use Committee, and sits as SPEC’s representative on the GVRD’s Lower Fraser Valley Air Quality Advisory Committee.

After the June  announcement of a new SkyTrain extension, Deming was instrumental in organizing a coalition of groups including BEST, Sierra Legal Defence Fund, West Coast Environmental Law and Transport 2000 which became known as the "Coalition for SkyTrain Review.”

The Coaltion  held meetings with Finance Minister Joy MacPhail and others, and was successful in persuading the provincial government to reverse a previous decision to bypass the B.C. Environmental Assessment Act.  A Special Commission on SkyTrain Review, headed by Derek Thompson, was subsequently established to conduct a public environmental review of the proposed SkyTrain extension project. Deming is currently acting as coordinator for the Coalition for SkyTrain Review.
 

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One Year After: Post Kyoto Politics of Climate Change

by Ivan Bulic

One year ago,  120 world leaders descended on Kyoto, Japan determined to do more than just talk about the weather, they were going to change it. A legion of reporters went along and put climate change on the front pages world-wide. For a short time, global warming was on the top of the political agenda.   When many of those same leaders assembled in Buenos Aires this
November for the Fourth UN Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention, the story was buried on the back pages or in the business section with some petroleum producer predicting economic doom if oil production stops growing. So what happened since Kyoto?

Scientists are compiling  more evidence of global warming. 1998 will go on record as the warmest year in  history. And the most destructive weather event experienced in Canada - the Eastern Ice Storm - occurred  this year. More convincingly, the conservative Munich Re corporation, the world’s largest insurer, puts 1998’s weather related losses at a staggering $130 billion. That includes Hurricane Mitch which killed 10,000 in Central America and caused $6 billion damage. This year’s losses dwarf  1996’s record $98 billion. Insurance companies don’t need convincing that humans are tampering with the climate.

"More and more there’s a human fingerprint in natural disasters in that we’re making them more frequent and more intense and we’re also making them more destructive," says Seth Dunn, Munich Re’s climate researcher. "When hillsides are clearcut, rainfall will rush across the land or into rivers without being slowed by trees and allowed to be absorbed by the soil or evaporate into the atmosphere. This leads to floods and landslides strong enough to wipe out roads, farms and fisheries."

In BC the largest source of greenhouse gases that are warming the climate come from the exhaust pipes of millions of cars. The Lower Mainland’s  car population is growing faster than people. And despite a 1995 BC government commitment to cut emissions below 1990 levels, emissions continue to rise about  20 per cent a year. And across Canada emissions are still rising, despite Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s Kyoto commitment to cut emissions to six per  cent below 1990 levels by 2008. The problem isn’t  that Chretien doesn’t know the latest science or hasn’t seen the insurance numbers. The problem is political.

David Manning, head of the  Canadian Petroleum Producers, says if Ottawa keeps its Kyoto pledge it will "wreak havoc on the economies of Alberta and the other energy producing provinces." He adds that “potential actions would likely have to include a doubling of consumption taxes on fuels as well as limiting families to no more than one small, energy efficient vehicle."

Ralph Klein is blunter. "It (complying with Kyoto) would  have devastating consequences for Alberta. There is no deal as far as I’m concerned." And BC  is following Klein’s lead.
 
"With provinces like BC  that are still undergoing considerable economic growth, there has to be differentiation," said Environment Minister Cathy McGregor.  For McGregor differentiation means variable levels that let BC and Western fossil fuel  provinces increase emissions while other provinces bite the greenhouse gas bullet.  "In some provinces there is a natural decline in emissions as a result of the ending of certain types of economic activity," said McGregor. In BC according to McGregor, the problem is  cars and people moving into the province as well as long distances that people have to drive.

At this October’s environment ministers’ meetings in Halifax, the discussion focused on  emissions trading schemes. The idea is to establish a world-wide pool of greenhouse gas credits with producers  assigned credits which can be traded, bought and sold. Petroleum producers and Environment Canada favour schemes which allow corporations to buy credits from developing countries. As a result, Canada could increase emissions while getting credits for doing something about greenhouse gases. Cash strapped ex-East Bloc economies are already jockeying to sell credits to North American producers.  The scheme was condemned by David Suzuki Foundation’s Jerry Scott who walked out of the Halifax meetings. But neither environmentalists,  labour nor anyone else is part of  government’s policy process.

When Chretien  got back  from Kyoto he set up a  $150 million Inter- Ministerial Secretariat on Climate Change. The new bureaucracy, run by Agriculture Dep.-Min. David Oulton, spent millions on full page ads, a 1-800 information line, glossy brochures and Issue Tables to involve Canadians in setting policy. The hitch is that Oulton’s notion of Canadians seems restricted to industry and high-level bureaucrats. Workers and consumers are marginalized on the Issue Tables. The process is so lopsided labour is backing out.
 
"Representation on the Issue Tables was strongly stacked in favor or business," said Dick Martin of the Canadian Labour Congress. "... the mandate of the Issue Tables is so feeble it is clear to us that the government has no intention of responding positively to the Kyoto Agreement. We will not encourage further labour representation, since we have had no indication that the Issue Tables... serve any useful public purpose."

But labour crticism hasn’t dampened Env.-Minister Christine Stewart’s enthusiasm for emissions trading. Alberta and BC  fossil fuel companies may be happy, but for the rest of the planet that is suffering the effects of human actions on the climate, it isn’t good enough.

Ivan Bulic is SPEC campaign coordinator.

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A former Californian strives to keep Vancouver smog and sprawl from reaching LA levels.

by Deming Smith

I arrived in Vancouver in the spring of 1990 as a refugee  from the city many Vancouverites view as their fair city’s evil alter-ego – Los Angeles, California. I recall finding it  amusing that new friends and associates in Vancouver used LA as their  reference point for everything they didn't want Vancouver to become: a city of sprawling suburbs and vanishing farmlands, too  dependent on the private automobile, with polluted air and water, unsustainable population growth, homelessness, crime and a
growing gap between the  poor and rich residents.  After spending the previous 20 years in LA, Vancouver struck me as
attractive, diverse and clean with few of the urban problems common in LA . “Air pollution - what air pollution? You've got to be joking!”

But after a few months in Lotusland,  the shine  began to wear off. With the arrival of summer I found  we really do suffer from the same kind of air pollution as LA.  And we do pollute our rivers and waterways with raw sewage. And sprawling automobile-dependent suburbs surround  the city. I didn't have to look  far to find homelessness was a fact of life in
downtown Vancouver.  These were the reasons   I got involved with SPEC. I loved my new hometown and didn't want to see it become like the  city I had left behind.

Several months after moving here, I was walking  walk on West 7th Ave., in Kitsilano.  As I turned onto Maple St. near Sixth I noticed a sign posted on  a peculiar white building which I learned was  the home to an organization called SPEC. The sign read  "Leave Your Car at Home Day.” This interested  me as my  work in LA involved a local commuter management and ride share organization which among other was responsible for  similar "car-free" days and pro-transit activities in Southern California. I walked  into the SPEC building to le