Challenge 5: Throwing down the gauntlet -- and the keys

Not more joking around.

You’ve switched your light bulbs, screwed in your water-saving nozzles, even given up one of those T-bone dinners you love so much every week. But, if we are really going to rope in climate change before it’s too late, we need to address one inescapable habit: driving.

No matter how many pet names you have for your car, it’s still chief among evils when it comes to greenhouse gases – not to mention smog, acid rain and sprawl.

So, this week, it’s time to cut back on the gas.

For some of you, whose Hondas resemble igloos right now, it might hardly seem a stretch. But if you count yourself among that special Greater-Toronto breed of commuters, spending up to an hour and twenty minutes behind the wheel every day just to get to work and back, it will seem a serious sacrifice.

The Challenge: Spend one less day in the car this week than is your norm. Period. Taking a cab instead of driving doesn’t count.

If you are a road-warrior who all but lives in your car, that means one day on transit, carpooling or walking.

If you are like me, and only really drive on weekends, it means schlepping your groceries the old-fashioned way – on your shoulders.

Motivation: Transportation makes up more than quarter of our green house gases in the country.

Specifically, for every kilometre you drive in average-sized car, you spew out 316 grams of green house gases. Your SUV discharges an extra 145.

The average Canadian round-trip commute is 16 kilometres. But in the GTA, where people are known to leave their homes before dawn to avoid parking on Highway 401, it’s much, much more. One commuter profiled in The Star last December, Michael Barrett, drives 150 kilometres a day to get from his Oshawa home to his office in Mississauga and back.

So, let’s take a happy median. If you chuck your keys and cut out 32 kilometres of driving over one day, you’ll cut out more than 10 kilograms of carbon dioxide. Do that every week for a year, and you’ll cut out as much carbon as if you’d unplugged your home for two whole months. Astounded? It's true -- if you factor in the fact that in Ontario, about about 80 per cent of our electricity comes from green sources. (I know that building nuclear plants requires a lot of greenhouse gases, but so does building solar panels.... I'm talking output here.) To do the math on that, the World Wildlife Fund Canada's Keith Stewart pointed me to Environment Canada's inventory on greenhouse gases, which shows that in Ontario every kilowatt-hour of electricity translates to 220 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Process: Remove car keys from pocket, put them in a distant drawer for the day. Locate the nearest public transit stop.

Cost: Time spent planning. If you live in the suburbs and need to cross town for work, you’ll have to get familiar with a host of Go Transit and TTC maps.

Savings: About $14. Not driving 32 kilometres will mean you’ve just saved about four litres of gas – or about $4. Add to that the ransom you pay daily to park downtown.

-- Catherine Porter

Comments

[Chris Winter]

This is a great challenge, but you've missed a "key" solution (oh, pardon the pun). Driving less is a deeper commitment that requires careful planning and, most importantly, some help. Thanks to the combination of walkable communities, transit, car-sharing, rentals, and trains, going car-free is not only possible in Toronto, it saves money and is healthier.

Readers can find some of the tips, tools and links at http://www.greenontario.org/solutions/transportation.html

[Jan]

Just musing a bit more on the cost/savings factor.

Cost of my GO ticket plus TTC token: $8.20 for a one-way trip. Or about $220/month to get to work. This is clearly way less than *owning* a car (payments + insurance + gas + maintenance + parking).

But if I already owned the car, your projected one-day savings of $4 on gas and $10 on parking would be more than eaten up by my one-day $16 on transit.

So what saves $ is to get off the car treadmill altogether, but that's a huge step.

Is there anything the little guy can do to agitate for transit good enough to get us off that treadmill - such as fare subsidies (I hear in Austin Texas bus rides cost 50 cents) or free transfers to the TTC or more express routes... so not owning that car becomes a viable option?

(Time savings is another thing - I'm looking at 45 minutes in the car, 90 minutes without it.)

[Ho]

Good luck finding a parking spot at most GO train stations after 7:30.
Sure you could ride "Mississauga Chance it" to my Go trian station I live 5 km from. On the two buses i need to take whose transfer schedule is terrible & doesn't encourage you to use them to get to the GO. Also coming home when the train has been a few minutes late I've watched the buses pull away empty as our train is pulling in.

I live 8 km from the Kipling subway station, parking lot filled by 7:30. I again need to take 2 buses to get there. 1 Mississauga Chance It bus that end at Sherway gardens wait for a TTC bus to get me to the subway. How come all of the east west buses in Mississauga goes to the subway expect the mine?

We need a concrete plan that moves people to other transit hubs quickly and in a timely manner.

I wonder how much of a carbon footprint is being reduced on all the buses in the evening with on or two passengers makes green sense. Perhaps small buses in off peak times?

I'd love to toss away the keys and use public transit exclusively from my home but doubling my travel time of already 2 hours daily doesn't appeal to me or my family.

[Ken Adams]

The Union of Concerned Scientists has identified transportation as the area where an individual in North America has the most potential to reduce their GHG emissions.

I wholeheartedly agree that taking public transit is a very important way to do this. I sold my last car in 1999 to reduce my emissions and have not owned one since. I have used carsharing or just rent a car once in a while, but most of my travel is by walking, biking, or public transit.

The reality is that we need to do a whole lot more than not drive one day per week, we need to plan our cities better planned, we need to stop suburban sprawl, we need carbon taxes, we need investments in higher order transit (not just a few more buses), we need a more efficient rail system, and we need it yesterday!

[Therese Taylor]

Instead of just leaving the car at home one day a week, why not ask your employer if you can telework one day a week or more. My neighbours, husband and wife across the street and another one next to me all work for companies that allow them to telecommute. Another neighbour told me that his wife's company, Hewlett Packard, has informed their IT staff to set up home offices. Basically, if you sit in front of a computer all day and talk to people by phone, you can work from home. Some meetings, of course are planned on-site. Just ask telecommute expert Linda Russell. Canada is way behind on this.

[Tim]

Try actually commuting on the GO Train for any length of time. Just try it. They are continually late, and when they're late, they have a habit of simply cancelling those trains and skipping to the next one. Usually with no explanation, as if the passengers are incidental.
I know they quote an overall on-time rate of something like 80%, but that likely includes all the daytime trains that fewer people need. I would like to see a *per capita* on-time rate. In other words, take into account the number of people travelling on any given train that is late or cancelled. I think their on-time rates would fall.
Is it caused by equipment failure? Is it the archaic "seniority list" that means a train has to wait for a driver to travel from Brampton to Hamilton before that train can leave, just because he's next on the list? I don't know. It would be nice to know, I'm paying for it.