June 4, 2001 from The Halifax Herald

Love affair with car comes at high price

Environmental, health-care costs high

By Joey Fitzpatrick - PERSONAL AFFAIRS

Herald file Halifax-bound traffic on the MacKay Bridge during rush hour is more than usually congested these days because of construction. Besides being hard on drivers' nerves, our over-reliance on cars is costly to society.

GRIDLOCK is all the rage in Halifax this spring, as anybody who's been traversing the bridges at rush hour well knows.

Our traffic congestion will never be as bad as Toronto or Vancouver, but still it's impossible to sit in the middle of this impacted sea of motorists and not think: there's got to be a better way.

And it's not just the nerves of motorists that are being frayed. Our over-reliance on the automobile is an expensive habit. The direct annual costs of running an automobile, according to the Canadian Automobile Association, come to $8,320 on average. This includes the capital cost of the vehicle, insurance, financing, fuel, oil, tires, parking and maintenance.

The external costs - those borne by society rather than the driver - are harder to quantify, but infinitely greater. These cumulative costs are in the hundreds of millions in this province alone, according to a study by GPI Atlantic Transportation Indicators, headed up by Dr. Larry Hughes, associate professor at Dalhousie's department of electrical and computer engineering.

There's the cost to the health-care system due to respiratory problems, accidents, and the many health issues related to a sedentary lifestyle.

The cost of a fatality is put at $1.5 million and covers things such as medical and insurance expenses, road cleanup costs, emergency services costs, human grievance and suffering costs.

Money spent on roads is money not spent on health, education and other programs that are more beneficial to society.

"If drivers were paying the true costs of operating their automobiles, it would be at least 50 per cent higher," Dr. Hughes says.

Levels of greenhouse gases are higher now than at any time in the past 420,000 years, scientists tell us, and the Earth is heating up. Even a slight increase in temperature could have disastrous consequences on Canada's fisheries, coastlines, forestry and agriculture.

Statistics Canada also tells us that the average car makes 2,000 trips of three kilometres or less - trips that could presumably be made by foot, bicycle or public transit.

Breaking the one driver/one car syndrome requires offering people alternatives. Riding a bike to work is an excellent option, but it's not for everybody, and not feasible in Nova Scotia's winter.

Carpooling is a solution that can work for many people, and it offers a number of benefits. You share the costs of commuting and the hassles of driving, pay lower parking charges, and have less stress commuting to and from work.

The Ecology Action Centre's TRAX program is designed to promote transportation options in the Halifax Regional Municipality. One of the ways it does this is by finding carpool matches for people who live near each other and have similar work schedules. You can register at www.trax.ns.ca. Once you're entered in its database, TRAX will send you a match list.

Once you've made contact with potential carpoolers, you can work out things like maximum waiting time, smoking policy, pick-up/drop-off points and radio playing policy.

TRAX also provides information on bus routes, park-and-ride lots, carpool lots and current developments with bicycle lanes.

It's all designed to help reduce the 27 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Nova Scotia that come from transportation - mainly the automobile.

"North Americans really have to reconsider their love affair with the car," says Peggy Cameron, programs officer with Clean Nova Scotia. "Especially the dependence on single-occupancy vehicles."

Joey Fitzpatrick is a Halifax writer.

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