Media Clipping — Sunday, December 3, 2006, The Chronicle-Herald

Superhighways or smart growth

By Silver Donald Cameron

IF YOU WANT to avoid being killed on the highway, it's helpful to stay off the highways. This seems like a simple idea, but thus far it has eluded Nova Scotia's traffic authorities and urban planners.

That thought emerged from the release last week by GPI Atlantic of the GPI Transportation Accounts: Sustainable Transportation for Nova Scotia. The Faithful Reader will recall my deep admiration for this band of intrepid researchers based in the St. Margarets Bay area. Full disclosure: This time I had the pleasure of helping with the release of this study.

GPI stands for Genuine Progress Index, and GPI Atlantic's mission is to develop a means of measuring genuine social progress, as opposed to gross economic activity, by applying "full-cost accounting" right across the economy.

In assessing social well-being, a genuine progress index would count everything of value — including things like housework, volunteerism, standing forests or untapped mineral deposits, all of which are ignored by traditional measurements of GDP. Conversely, a GPI would deduct the cost of things that diminish our real wealth and security even though they do generate economic activity — crime, pollution, resource depletion and natural disasters, all of which count as positives in the GDP.

In its transportation study, GPI notes that in general we want access, not travel. We rarely travel for the joy of it. We travel to get to work, to see our families, to go shopping. We don't particularly want to drive 30 or 40 minutes to do these things, but the layout of our lives and our cities demands it.

As cities grow, rising costs force people ever farther from the urban core. The result is suburban sprawl, long commutes and webs of highways encircling the city: It's an expensive infrastructure that merely permits us to move our carcasses around.

As commuting increases, so does the demand for faster and safer highways. Although upgraded highways mean fewer accidents per kilometre, however, the accidents that do happen are much worse. Often commuters select vehicles such as SUVs — heavier, better-armoured, air-cushioned, safer for their occupants but more dangerous to others.

Encased in heavy vehicles on divided highways, people drive less cautiously because they feel safer. They are not. Todd Litman, executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute and co-author of the GPI Atlantic report, explains that while improved highways do reduce the number of crashes per vehicle-kilometre, the real issue is that these "improvements" induce more people to live farther out of town and to drive many more kilometres.

Litman writes: "One of the largest factors affecting peoples' chance of being a vehicle-crash casualty is the amount that they drive, particularly on higher speed suburban and rural roads."

In other words, if Nova Scotia twins highways 101 and 103, more people will elect to live farther from Halifax. Their commutes will be longer, and more kilometres driven by more people ultimately means more traffic fatalities after the twinning than before.

The better alternative, Litman says, is "smart growth" — the development of satellite communities with shops, schools and workplaces clustered within convenient walking distance and linked to the urban core by fast, convenient public transit. Such developments, he says, reduce transportation costs, air pollution and energy use dramatically, and by encouraging residents to walk and bicycle more they enhance public health, safety and fitness.

Furthermore, because their residents drive so much less, smart-growth communities also reduce traffic fatality rates by about 75 per cent. It's worthwhile to encourage seatbelts and child restraints, reduce impaired driving, improve vehicle and road design and upgrade emergency services. But the cheapest and most effective way to reduce highway deaths and injuries is simply to reduce the need for highway driving.

Smart growth also makes perfect sense in a province where wonderful small communities already surround the only city of consequence. Imagine places like Chester, Mahone Bay, Musquodoboit Harbour and Windsor, all linked to Halifax by rapid light rail. Downtown Dartmouth, within walking distance of the ferry, already demonstrates the benefits of smart growth.

Smart growth, Litman says, would "address the needs of an aging population, reduce the economic risks from rising fuel prices and climate change, support economic development and allow individual consumers to choose the lifestyles they prefer."

GPI Atlantic is using Nova Scotia to test the theory and technique of full-cost accounting, and it has already released about 60 studies. Nova Scotians now know the costs of crime, gambling, obesity, inactivity and tobacco use. We know the real state of our forests, fisheries and energy use. We know our ecological footprint. The list goes on and on.

Nova Scotia is the only province to receive this unique gift. But are the decision-makers listening? What was Transportation Minister Angus Mac-Isaac's reaction to last week's careful study of his own area of responsibility?

"I don't know," said MacIsaac. "I don't think the people of Nova Scotia are ready for this."

Visit Silver Donald Cameron's website at www.silverdonaldcameron.ca