At the beginning of the 20th Century there were 200,000 horses in New York City. Horses and carts were responsible for 200 pedestrian deaths in 1900. The horses quite often died under stress and were left to rot so their putrid remains were easier to cut up and dispose of. Horses generated five million tons of manure... a day. It piled up to 60 feet deep in vacant lots.
The problem was not solved by a better variety of horse. Cars and trucks solved the problem making horse travel obsolete. Within a decade horses were no longer working in NYC. (This information from a book, Super Freakonomics by Dubner and Leavitt).
Fast forward one hundred years and now cars are the problem.
Cars are a town planner’s nightmare. In Penticton, the campus for the SOEC, Casino and PTCC is mostly dedicated to parking. Taxpayers likely paid millions to accommodate cars in the Penticton Regional Hospital parkade. In Summerland we have 150 kilometres of paved roads to maintain. A huge and expensive waste of real estate. A goodly portion of Kelowna airport is dedicated to thousands of cars at a profitable daily rate of $17.25.
We have created the original ALR – Automobile Land Reserve.
How do we manage our dependence on personal vehicles? Incentives would be the answer, if only there was political will.
We could make the owning and operation of vehicles just too painful by implementing negative incentives. By reducing parking, allowing traffic congestion to create traffic jams, hiking up the cost of gas and government mandated insurance, eliminating the minimum number of parking stalls required for new housing, creating more segregated bike lanes out of existing roadways as examples.
Any or all of these solutions are political suicide except in Alberta. Devin Dreeshen, Alberta’s transportation minister is calling on Edmonton and Calgary to remove bike lanes as they create traffic congestion and do not accommodate traffic growth. Contrary to sensible planning, Dreeshen said “Reducing road capacity on major corridors isn’t responsible planning. It’s a recipe for congestion delays and gridlock”. A similar policy was announced in Ontario last fall.
We could try positive incentives to reduce car ownership. Making public transit more frequent and convenient, and less expensive. Creating more and safer dedicated cycling lanes.
Allowing smaller low speed “golf-cart” like vehicles, encouraging ride and car sharing.
The adoption of self-driving cars to work as super 24-hour Ubers to make commuting faster and more convenient than driving and parking yourself.
Incentives to purchase electric vehicles, help with pollution issues but do not address the huge wasted spaces dedicated to managing roads and parking.
None of these options will happen anytime soon.
Maybe we will soon be saved by Jetson flying cars or Star Trek transporters.
Full disclosure. I own five gas powered cars and 8 motorcycles (that my charming wife knows of), but I do feel guilty.
Dorn Driving Tip #3
When my charming wife is waiting to turn right onto Hwy 97 to go to Penticton, and you are in a vehicle in the rightmost slow lane also going to Penticton, if clear to do so, ease into the passing lane so she does not have to wait.
John Dorn is a retired tech entrepreneur who resides in Summerland.