Case in point: electric bus adoption. The Toronto Transit Commission has 400 in operation – a fifth of its fleet – and claims to be North America’s leader. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has about 500 – less than a 10th of its fleet – and aims to complete the transition by 2040. Metrolinx, which operates hundreds of GO buses in the Greater Toronto region, is still plodding through a six-stage procurement initiative.

But the pace of conversion isn’t slow everywhere. Transport for London (TfL), for instance, now has 1,900 e-buses, while Santiago, Chile, has 1,800, up from just two in 2017. The agency, known formally as Red Metropolitana de Movilidad (RMM), says it will have 4,400 e-buses by next year – 68% of its total fleet – and asserts that it has become the second-largest e-bus operator in the world, outside China. (RMM runs 391 bus lines that carry 3.3 million passengers per day across Greater Santiago, which has a population of almost seven million people.)

China, in fact, is the telling detail in this decarbonization narrative. TfL’s new e-buses, including new double-deckers, are made by Shenzhen-based BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles. Santiago’s are also sourced from Chinese manufacturers. The unit prices have fallen from about US$400,000, when the agency secured its first pilot vehicles, to about US$260,000 today, according to Alejandro Schmidt, chief technology officer.

“The buses we have in operation are from China,” he adds. “They have been very aggressive in terms of the pricing of the product, but now we are seeing also competition from European OEMs like Volvo, Scania and Daimler, with their bodies built in Brazil.” Even more relevant: the Chinese bus makers can deliver vehicles in six to nine months, which is considerably faster than what’s on offer among other manufacturers.

As Chile’s transportation minister, Juan Carlos Muñoz, an academic specializing in transit and logistics, put it at an international forum in Leipzig on May 21, “We do not close the door to technologies coming from any country, and that has been very good in terms of finding competition. It has been key for us to allow every charging system in the world to be open for operators to provide.” A former board member of Santiago’s Metro system, Muñoz has been one of the driving forces behind the electrification of the city’s far-flung transit agency.

Santiago’s transformation isn’t only about going after low-cost suppliers, and as such serves as an interesting model for transit operators looking to, well, accelerate.

The national government in Chile provides transit subsidies and has also agreed to backstop private-sector investment in the new fleets. (The Canadian government in 2023 kicked in $700 million for the TTC’s e-bus fleet.) Early on, Schmidt explains, the first external investors were actually Chilean electrical utilities, which had a commercial interest in fleet electrification. But the financing now also comes from private equity firms, which ink leasing deals with the local operators (several municipal bus companies operate within Metro Santiago).

Hastening the changeover is a law banning the purchase of diesel buses and an open procurement approach that sets out the performance specifications. However, the agency’s e-bus procurement policy doesn’t include pre-conditions stipulating locally manufactured content – a reflection of Chile’s long-standing and at times controversial neo-liberal political outlook in the post-Pinochet era. “We are a very open economy,” Schmidt says, adding that there’s no vehicle production in Chile, and thus no incumbent that needs to be protected, as is the case in Brazil as well as North America (New Flyer Industries is the dominant supplier).

Energy, of course, is the final piece of this puzzle. According to Schmidt, Chile’s electricity mix includes hydro, fossil fuels and a rapidly expanding portfolio of solar, in the country’s north, and offshore wind, in the south. “We’re reaching 75% green energy,” he says. For the e-bus fleet operators, the trick has been to ensure that they’re not overly exposed to high spot market rates for green energy. The agency is also looking at using hydrogen to round out the supply of low-carbon electricity. “We’re trying to figure out the best way to solve these challenges,” Schmidt says.

Public response has been, unsurprisingly, positive. Electric buses are quieter and provide a smoother ride, and there are predictable air-quality improvements.

With RMM’s e-bus transition now irreversible, Schmidt explains that Santiago’s remarkable pivot was the result, initially, of some political risk-taking at the national level, plus a totally open approach to technology procurement, the involvement of private capital and the willingness of the local bus operators to make the shift. “We weren’t able to do it by ourselves.”

The post Santiago has figured out how to electrify city buses, fast appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The effort comes as transit agencies in Canada’s largest cities have either implemented or are considering similar restrictions on using public transit to advertise for Big Oil or related industries. Montreal’s transit agency, the Société de transport de Montréal, has indicated that it intends to ban misleading fossil fuel advertising. Toronto’s proposal would potentially remain open to ads that align with the city’s net-zero goals and don’t run afoul of new federal anti-greenwashing regulations.

In September, DeSmog reported that Toronto City Councillor Dianne Saxe had introduced a motion proposing to restrict false and misleading advertising from oil and gas lobby groups on public transit. The motion did not advocate for a full ban on all fossil fuel ads.

“Toronto’s decision to limit fossil fuel advertising is a landmark win for public health and climate action,” said Melissa Lem, a family physician and president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), in a statement. “As physicians, we’ve long recognized that fossil fuel pollution, like tobacco smoke, poses severe health risks to our communities – especially to children and other vulnerable populations.”

Pushing back against false claims by Big Oil

The new limits come on the heels of federal anti-greenwashing regulations that aim to stem the tide of misinformation produced by Canada’s fossil fuel sector and its lobbyists. They also follow a series of high-profile advertising campaigns launched by the oil and gas industry. 

Pathways Alliance, a consortia of Canadian oil sands producers, has been the most visible, with a comprehensive media blitz involving traditional print and broadcast advertising, advertorials, sponsorship and the use of public transit infrastructure – including buses and streetcars – that suggests they are taking an active role in reducing emissions. 

In fact, the Pathways Alliance is principally interested in developing a $16.5-billion carbon capture and sequestration project, as well as a 400-kilometre carbon dioxide pipeline to serve about 20 different tar sands production facilities.

Critics of the project, and carbon capture more broadly, argue that carbon capture overpromises and consistently under-delivers on its alleged environmental advantages. DeSmog previously reported that Pathways paid Google to redirect web searches on environmental and climate-change topics to its website, and further paid Google to redirect web searches specifically on the subject of greenwashing. When new anti-greenwashing regulations came into effect in Canada earlier this year, Pathways removed all content from its website.

Councillor Saxe specifically mentioned both Pathways Alliance and Canada Proud as two lobby groups the Toronto Transit Commission should cease advertising.

This bold move signals the end of unchecked fossil fuel advertising and positions Toronto at the forefront of a global shift.

—Melissa Lem, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

In reaction to the Pathways “Let’s clear the air” campaign, three Canadian environmental groups complained to the Competition Bureau in the spring of 2023, arguing that the campaign was misleading the public. The Competition Bureau, an independent Canadian law-enforcement agency tasked with protecting consumers and promoting competition, agreed to launch a still-ongoing investigation.

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In August 2023, DeSmog reported that Montreal’s bike share program, Bixi, had decided to pull ads for the Pathways Alliance. Pathways had also been advertising on Montreal bus shelters at the time, as well as using buses in Vancouver and streetcars in Toronto as mobile billboards. They featured slogans such as “Our net zero plan is in motion.”

In late 2023 and early 2024, ad campaigns by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and Canada Proud (an allegedly grassroots pro-oil lobby group) were spotted on public buildings throughout the Canadian capital of Ottawa. Ads by these groups have promoted claims that Canadian oil and gas resources are either in high demand or will reduce global emissions.

These high-profile campaigns, in addition to the campaign by Pathways Alliance, led various environmental groups in Ottawa to propose similar bans on fossil fuel advertising. Ad Standards Canada later determined that some of those Ottawa ads by Canada Action, particularly those that argued that Canadian exports of liquefied natural gas would reduce emissions globally, were misleading and amounted to greenwashing.

Mounting a defence against greenwashing

Pressure to crack down on fossil-fuel-advocacy advertising and greenwashing has been ramping up steadily over the past year in Canada. In February, DeSmog reported that long-serving Member of Parliament Charlie Angus proposed a private member’s bill that would ban misleading fossil fuel advertising.

Angus’s proposal was in response to the aforementioned ad campaigns by Pathways and Canada Action. His proposal was further modelled on anti-tobacco-advertising legislation passed in Canada in the 1990s. That proposal wasn’t passed but resulted in fossil fuel advocates spreading misinformation about it. Angus’s office was subsequently inundated with death threats. 

In June, Bill C-59 – another government effort to crack down on greenwashing – became law. Though mischaracterized as a ban on fossil fuel advertising, the new regulations in fact require environmental claims to be backed up with evidence. This prompted tar sands producers and industry lobbyists to scrub content from their websites, including their own environmental goals. 

Oil advocates, including the former and current environment ministers of the Canadian province of Alberta, continue spreading misinformation that the anti-greenwashing laws are part of a broad conspiracy to silence the fossil fuel sector.

“This bold move signals the end of unchecked fossil fuel advertising and positions Toronto at the forefront of a global shift,” CAPE’s Lem said of the Montreal and Toronto developments. “Toronto is clearing the air of both pollution and misleading propaganda, setting a powerful precedent for cities nationwide and globally, moving us toward a healthier, more sustainable future for all people in Canada.”

This article was first published on DeSmog. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original story here. 

The post Canadian cities are taking steps to restrict fossil fuel ads on public transit appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It’s not unusual for people at many different income levels to complain about the high costs of transit. It goes something like this: I would take transit to our event, but because three of us are going, it’s cheaper to drive. When you factor in the high price of gas and parking, this is rarely true. But people see transit as an expensive option and choose their cars instead. 

We’re facing a climate and affordability crisis. Thinking outside the box on how to get more people to ditch their cars for transit can pay big dividends. A three-month pilot in Germany offering cheap transit tickets kept about 1.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions from the atmosphere, according to the Association of German Transport Companies. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 200,000 Germans. With 52 million monthly transit passes sold for about US$9 each, transit replaced roughly 10% of all car trips during this period. Some Germans began regularly taking transit for the first time. After the program ended, many called on the government to offer a longer-term subsidized transit program.  

In Spain, the government is offering free commuter and medium-distance routes for train travel on the state-owned Renfe until the end of the year. This is in addition to 30% discounts on all public transit, including subways and buses. Tallinn, Estonia, is the first capital city to offer free public transportation to residents, and the idea is catching on in cities in France, Sweden, Bulgaria and the United States.  

Is there a role for ultra-cheap or free transit in Canada? It’s standard in most urban systems in Canada to expect fares to cover 50% of transit costs. Yet some cities are bucking the trend. People ride at no cost in Canmore, Alberta, while Victoria offers youth a free pass. Many systems offer free rides to children – the Toronto Transit Commission adopted this policy for riders under 12 in 2015. On Burlington Transit, children ride for free, as do seniors between 9 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on weekdays. The B.C. government has also made transit free for children under 12. 

Thinking outside the box on how to get more people to ditch their cars for transit can pay big dividends.

The issue is now coming up in Ottawa’s municipal election. Among other measures favouring sustainable transportation, mayoral candidate Catherine Mckenney proposes to attract riders by freezing fares and offering free rides for children under the age of 18. Currently, children under eight years old ride for free, and youth up to 19 are eligible for age-based discounts.  

Young people are leading the charge in places like Regina. In its transit master plan, city administration promised fare-free transit to those 13 and under. Now, youth like Sophia Young and members of the Regina Energy Transition are raising the importance of free transit for those under 18 and collecting signatures to convince the city. A monthly bus pass in Regina costs $64 for youth – a price many can’t afford.  

Transport 2050, Metro Vancouver’s 30-year regional transportation strategy, has some ideas for making transit and transportation costs more equitable and affordable. One is to guarantee everyone a universal basic level of mobility with fares, fees and tolls on any urban transportation service (including transit, shared mobility, parking and driving) to be set at a price that each household can afford and that is linked to each’s ability to pay. 

Getting more people onto transit by lowering fare costs helps us shift from polluting single-occupancy cars, reducing carbon emissions, air pollution and congestion. Lowering fares can also be an important equity measure, especially for those living in unaffordable cities. Municipalities can fund programs with the money saved by not expanding highways. 

The federal government’s emissions-reduction plan released this year speaks to the importance of public transit in reaching climate targets. It’s time for Canadian cities to take Europe’s lead and give people the transit break they need to finally make a shift away from private automobiles.  

The post Should Canada follow Europe’s lead and make transit free? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Canada is committed to spending an unprecedented $85 billion on housing and public transit over the next decade: more than $70 billion to meet critical housing needs through the National Housing Strategy (NHS) and $15 billion for public transit. Together with the $13 billion the federal government has already spent on transit since 2015, this will be the biggest transit investment in Canadian history.

The NHS provides grants, low-cost loans, tools and research to improve housing security and quality for one million Canadians – including building 160,000 new homes. During the election campaign, the Liberals’ Housing Plan called for 1.4 million homes to be built, preserved or repaired, and their proposed $4-billion Housing Policy Accelerator calls for 100,000 new “middle class” homes by 2025. While both the National Housing Strategy and the Liberal Housing Plan note transit-oriented development as a priority, more robust policies and incentives are needed to achieve location efficiency.

And in order to maximize the returns on these investments to address the twin crises of climate change and housing affordability, the federal government must place land use and location at the centre of its housing and carbon-reduction plans. 

All levels of government must also seize this moment for the one-third of Canadians who live in unaffordable dwellings. Improving public and policy-maker understanding of how land use impacts housing affordability and carbon emissions from transportation will be key. 

Housing and transportation account for the vast majority of household carbon emissions. Moves toward net-zero buildings and electric vehicles are essential. But green tech is not enough – we must also drive less. Just as we need deep energy-efficiency retrofits for our buildings, we need to retrofit our cities and suburbs to make them more location efficient. 

Location-efficient, “15-minute” neighbourhoods are designed for pedestrians and include a mix of land uses so that people can safely and conveniently walk to jobs, stores, services and parks. “Smart growth” policies focus new development in 15-minute neighbourhoods and link them together along regional transit corridors and bike networks. People drive half as much in compact, transit-oriented areas because destinations are closer together. Car trips are shorter, more trips are practical on foot, by bike or on public transit – cutting carbon emissions in half.

In the Greater Toronto Area, 81% of home buyers would prefer to live in walkable, transit-friendly neighbourhoods but can’t afford to. Households in location-efficient neighbourhoods can meet their daily needs with one car instead of two, saving $8,000 to $15,000 annually. 

Carbon and household cost savings are among the many economic, community and environmental benefits of smart growth policies – including better health, a higher quality of life, more customers for neighbourhood businesses and protection of habitat and farmland.

This is a win for municipal governments, as well. Smart growth costs billions of dollars less in infrastructure than sprawl because it allows for more people to be served by fewer roads, tracks, pipes and wires. Developers don’t pay for the full costs of the offsite infrastructure required to support new suburban development, and municipal tax coffers are responsible for covering significant operating, maintenance and replacement costs. On the other hand, compact development can produce significantly higher municipal tax revenues. 

Smart growth costs billions of dollars less in infrastructure than sprawl because it allows for more people to be served by fewer roads, tracks, pipes and wires.

For the past 75 years, government policies have incentivized car-oriented, single-family neighbourhoods. Traditional neighbourhoods with bustling sidewalks and active main streets have become expensive because today’s market under-supplies walkability. As this pent-up demand grows, location-efficient housing commands higher prices – and that dynamic drives gentrification of established neighbourhoods that displaces or further disrupts the lives of Black, Indigenous, racialized and low-income communities.

The urgent and obvious solution is to increase the supply of affordable housing in accessible locations, providing a range of “missing middle” multifamily housing to meet diverse economic and social needs. From duplexes and triplexes to mid-rise apartments and secondary suites, this new supply must be affordable to lower-income and middle-income renters and homeowners.

We need to build and retrofit more “15-minute neighbourhoods” where people can access almost everything they need on foot, by bike or by transit. We do that by adding in missing components to existing neighbourhoods – be they sidewalks, shops, housing or parks, and planning new neighbourhoods around transit stations and designing them for pedestrians.

We should also consider ownership and sharing models that save money, cut carbon and improve quality of life. Shared walls in multifamily buildings reduce heating demand, car and bike “sharing” reduce total kilometres driven, and common rooms in apartments and co-housing cut costs and strengthen community.

Here are three steps the next federal government can take to increase the supply of affordable, location-efficient housing:

1. Federal policies must be part of the solution and not the problem. A key step will be for the federal government to apply transportation affordability and location-efficiency lenses to housing and public transit programs to identify conflicts and opportunities for better alignment between the two. This should be supported by increased research funding on location efficiency, such as through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Housing Supply Challenge.

2. Provide technical and financial support to increase municipal capacity to plan, implement and evaluate location-efficient solutions – in coordination with provincial authorities. To do this, the federal government should enhance programs run by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) that support land-use planning, active transportation, public transit and sustainable and affordable housing (and FCM should better align them to generate efficiencies and multiple benefits).

The government should also develop planning and evaluation tools to assess the full costs and benefits of different urban development futures, including a Canadian version of the U.S. Housing + Transportation Affordability Index. This calculates total costs of housing plus transportation for specific locations, illuminating the affordability benefits of efficient locations. We must support the development of affordable housing on underutilized public land near transit hubs, develop best-practice guidance on channelling revenues from commercial development to support affordable housing and enhance public space, and develop guidance on how to integrate secondary suites and laneway housing into residential retrofit programs to generate income to support deep efficiency and affordability.

3. Provide financial incentives and establish performance criteria for federally funded projects to deliver transportation and housing affordability and carbon reduction. For example, municipalities that receive federal transit funding should be rewarded for enhancing 15-minute neighbourhoods and for increasing affordable housing. Performance incentives could also be incorporated into infrastructure funding agreements with provincial governments. In early years, municipalities could receive technical support to plan for transit-oriented development, active transport, and affordable housing and be rewarded for performance. Over time, these practices would evolve into the new normal.

The time has come to build the homes of tomorrow in a smarter and more equitable way by making location efficiency a top policy and spending priority of the federal government when it comes to climate, housing, transportation and infrastructure. 

Carbon down. Community up.

Steve Winkelman is executive director of the Ottawa Climate Action Fund.

The post Location, location, location: Three ways land use can tackle both the climate and housing crisis appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In an online roundtable Wednesday, a chorus of policy experts urged the federal government to undertake a 10-year, multibillion-dollar effort to electrify the transport sector as part of its effort to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases.

Transportation – including passenger vehicles, commercial trucks, planes and trains – accounts for 25% of Canada’s emissions. Emissions from the sector have grown by 53% since 1990.

“We have to tackle this sector if you’re going to get to the net-zero target,” moderator Diana Fox Carney said at a session hosted by Corporate Knights magazine as part of its seven-part Building Back Better event series. “Canada is perhaps lagging some other countries in this regard,” with lower penetration of electric vehicles, the lack of manufacturing of EVs and a lack of forward thinking on mass transit, she noted.

Other analysts, including the International Energy Agency, have noted that Canada’s passenger fleet has one of the worst fuel-efficiency ratings because of lower gasoline prices, long distances and a preference for gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups.

The federal government has pledged to pursue a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 ­– a target that requires a massive effort to virtually eliminate the use of fossil fuels in industry, transportation and heating buildings. (Any remaining emissions from continued fossil-fuel use would be offset through natural and technological means of removing carbon from the atmosphere.)

To rev up progress toward the net-zero goal, Corporate Knights is encouraging the Liberal government to launch a massive clean-energy stimulus program as it looks to revive an economy that has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several environmental organizations have also echoed the advice of the International Energy Agency that governments should concentrate stimulus spending on clean-energy initiatives to speed up the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Governments need to introduce policies that expand the demand for and the supply of electric cars, but also electric and hydrogen-powered freight vehicles, which account for 42% of transportation emissions, said Carolyn Kim, Ontario regional director for the Pembina Institute.

A table-setting white paper prepared by Ralph Torrie of Torrie Smith Associations and Céline Bak of Analytica Advisors said that a $24 billion clean-transportation investment over 10 years would save drivers $57 billion at the gas pump while generating the equivalent of 17,700 full-time jobs a year and slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 96 million tonnes over the decade.

Included in the proposal is a one-year, $6-billion plan to provide free transit ridership. The program would encourage commuters to return to mass transit after the practice of social-distancing ends. It would also target poorer Canadians who rely on public systems.

“With COVID-19, there is a risk that people who have used transit will revert to cars,” Bak said in an email after the webinar. Underwriting those systems “ensures that public transit authorities are not weakened by COVID-19 and that the GHG impact of COVID-19 is minimized while putting money directly into the pockets of many people,” she added.

The plan also proposes to “electrify” the Trans-Canada Highway with a network of fast-charging stations that can recharge a vehicle battery in five minutes. And it urges Ottawa to help finance the purchase of electric vehicles, especially for fleet owners who currently face higher financing charges for EVs than they do for traditional gas- or diesel-fuelled vehicles.

While there are incentives and policies designed to encourage people to purchase EVs, governments must also act to ensure Canada capitalizes on the opportunities that arise from the transition, said Amarjeet Sohi, a former Liberal cabinet minister. That includes areas such as supplying the metals and minerals required for batteries and wires, expanding the country’s existing presence in the manufacturing of low-carbon trucks and buses, and attracting investment from the global auto sector for the new electric models and their parts.

Decisions on where to locate EV assembly plants are being made outside Canada, and that leaves this country at a disadvantage, said Jerry Dias, president of the Unifor union. Unifor represents thousands of manufacturing workers, mainly in the auto industry that is based in Southern Ontario.

As global automakers expand their offerings of EVs and hybrids, only a small handful of those models are earmarked for Canadian plants, Dias noted. Parts manufacturers are at risk because EVs have far fewer components – no transmissions, radiators or exhaust systems. “We need to move and we need to move quickly” on an industrial strategy, Dias said. “I’m concerned we’ve been slow at getting into the game and we have a lot of ground to make up.”

One area in which Canada has carved out a niche is the development of electric buses, run on either plug-in batteries or hydrogen fuel cells that power an electric engine.

Investments in charging infrastructure will support further expansion of battery- and hydrogen-powered buses, trucks and trains, said Josipa Petrunic, president of the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium.

Shawn McCarthy writes on sustainable finance and climate for Corporate Knights. He is also senior counsel for Sussex Strategy Group.

The post Roundtable: Canada needs to ramp up EV strategy – and make transit free appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Corporate Knights has put some of the data recently released by Sivak into two handy spreadsheets you can use to rank cities on each indicator from highest to lowest.

City	Population	Median Earnings $	% Workers w/o Vehicles	% Who Work At Home	% Who Drive Alone to Work	% Who Carpool	% Who Take Transit to Work	% Who Walk to Work	% Who Bicycle to Work	Mean Travel to Work (Min)
Austin, TX	885400	33,304	4.2	7.1	73.7	9.9	4.2	2.4	1.4	23.5
Baltimore, MD	622104	35,706	15.9	2.5	61.3	9.2	18.8	6.4	0.7	30.5
Boston, MA	645966	37,674	21.9	3.4	40.6	5.4	33	14.5	1.9	29.5
Charlotte, NC	792862	31,979	4.5	5.8	75.5	10.7	4	2.2	0.3	24.1
Chicago, IL	2718782	34,518	16.4	4.4	49.7	8.5	27.8	6.7	1.4	33.7
Columbus, OH	822553	31,774	3.6	3.6	79.3	9.2	3.3	2.8	1	21.4
Dallas, TX	1257676	30,208	4.3	4.4	75.8	11.8	3.8	1.9	0.3	25.8
Denver, CO	649495	35,831	4.3	7	69.8	8.3	7.4	4.5	2	24.8
Detroit, MI	688701	22,888	11.5	3.8	70.1	11.9	8.1	3.5	0.6	26.8
El Paso, TX	674433	25,021	2	3.1	79.5	11.4	1.7	1.6	0.1	22.1
Fort Worth, TX	792727	31,815	1.8	3.7	80.9	11.1	0.8	1.2	0.2	26.5
Houston, TX	2195914	30,252	4.6	3.7	75.3	12.2	4.2	2.2	0.8	26.3
Indianapolis, IN	843393	30,372	3.7	3	81.2	10.2	2.3	1.9	0.4	22.6
Jacksonville, FL	842583	31,715	3.2	4.4	81.4	9.1	1.6	1.4	0.4	24.3
Las Vegas, NV	603488	30,411	4.1	2.9	76.7	12	4.5	1.8	0.4	24.9
Los Angeles, CA	3884307	27,550	6.8	5.4	67.1	9.9	10.8	3.6	1.2	29.9
Louisville, KY	609893	31,466	4.9	2.4	82.9	8.2	2.7	2.1	0.5	21.6
Memphis, TN	653450	28,373	4.9	2.1	79.5	12.4	2.2	2.2	0.4	21.9
Nashville, TN	634464	31,371	2.8	4.9	81.1	8.5	1.9	2.3	0.3	23.3
New York, NY	8405837	37,333	46	4.1	21.4	4.9	56.7	10	1.2	39.7
Oklahoma City, OK	610613	30,667	2.5	3	82.6	11.3	0.7	1.3	0.3	20.7
Philadelphia, PA	1553165	31,852	18.9	2.9	49.9	8.5	27.2	8.1	2.3	32
Phoenix, AZ	1513367	31,002	4	4.6	74.7	12	4	1.8	0.6	24.7
Portland, OR	609456	35,903	7.1	7.1	57.4	9.9	11.9	6.1	5.9	25.3
San Antonio, TX	1409019	27,500	4.1	3.2	78.9	11.1	3.6	1.7	0.3	23.4
San Diego, CA	1355896	37,280	3.2	6.2	74.9	8.7	4.2	3.7	0.8	23.3
San Francisco, CA	837442	51,329	18.6	6.8	36.4	6.8	32.7	10.9	3.8	31.5
San Jose, CA	998537	42,022	1.8	3.9	75.8	11.8	4.5	1.7	1	27.3
Seattle, WA	652405	46,125	8.5	6.7	50.5	8	20.9	9.1	3.5	26.2
Washington, DC	646449	52,310	27.7	4.4	32.3	5.3	38.5	13.6	4.5	29.9

City	Population	Median Earnings $	% Workers w/o Vehicles	% Who Work At Home	% Who Drive Alone to Work	% Who Carpool	% Who Take Transit to Work	% Who Walk to Work	% Who Bicycle to Work	Mean Travel to Work (Min)
Austin, TX	885400	33,304	4.2	7.1	73.7	9.9	4.2	2.4	1.4	23.5
Baltimore, MD	622104	35,706	15.9	2.5	61.3	9.2	18.8	6.4	0.7	30.5
Boston, MA	645966	37,674	21.9	3.4	40.6	5.4	33	14.5	1.9	29.5
Charlotte, NC	792862	31,979	4.5	5.8	75.5	10.7	4	2.2	0.3	24.1
Chicago, IL	2718782	34,518	16.4	4.4	49.7	8.5	27.8	6.7	1.4	33.7
Columbus, OH	822553	31,774	3.6	3.6	79.3	9.2	3.3	2.8	1	21.4
Dallas, TX	1257676	30,208	4.3	4.4	75.8	11.8	3.8	1.9	0.3	25.8
Denver, CO	649495	35,831	4.3	7	69.8	8.3	7.4	4.5	2	24.8
Detroit, MI	688701	22,888	11.5	3.8	70.1	11.9	8.1	3.5	0.6	26.8
El Paso, TX	674433	25,021	2	3.1	79.5	11.4	1.7	1.6	0.1	22.1
Fort Worth, TX	792727	31,815	1.8	3.7	80.9	11.1	0.8	1.2	0.2	26.5
Houston, TX	2195914	30,252	4.6	3.7	75.3	12.2	4.2	2.2	0.8	26.3
Indianapolis, IN	843393	30,372	3.7	3	81.2	10.2	2.3	1.9	0.4	22.6
Jacksonville, FL	842583	31,715	3.2	4.4	81.4	9.1	1.6	1.4	0.4	24.3
Las Vegas, NV	603488	30,411	4.1	2.9	76.7	12	4.5	1.8	0.4	24.9
Los Angeles, CA	3884307	27,550	6.8	5.4	67.1	9.9	10.8	3.6	1.2	29.9
Louisville, KY	609893	31,466	4.9	2.4	82.9	8.2	2.7	2.1	0.5	21.6
Memphis, TN	653450	28,373	4.9	2.1	79.5	12.4	2.2	2.2	0.4	21.9
Nashville, TN	634464	31,371	2.8	4.9	81.1	8.5	1.9	2.3	0.3	23.3
New York, NY	8405837	37,333	46	4.1	21.4	4.9	56.7	10	1.2	39.7
Oklahoma City, OK	610613	30,667	2.5	3	82.6	11.3	0.7	1.3	0.3	20.7
Philadelphia, PA	1553165	31,852	18.9	2.9	49.9	8.5	27.2	8.1	2.3	32
Phoenix, AZ	1513367	31,002	4	4.6	74.7	12	4	1.8	0.6	24.7
Portland, OR	609456	35,903	7.1	7.1	57.4	9.9	11.9	6.1	5.9	25.3
San Antonio, TX	1409019	27,500	4.1	3.2	78.9	11.1	3.6	1.7	0.3	23.4
San Diego, CA	1355896	37,280	3.2	6.2	74.9	8.7	4.2	3.7	0.8	23.3
San Francisco, CA	837442	51,329	18.6	6.8	36.4	6.8	32.7	10.9	3.8	31.5
San Jose, CA	998537	42,022	1.8	3.9	75.8	11.8	4.5	1.7	1	27.3
Seattle, WA	652405	46,125	8.5	6.7	50.5	8	20.9	9.1	3.5	26.2
Washington, DC	646449	52,310	27.7	4.4	32.3	5.3	38.5	13.6	4.5	29.9

Also recently released, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has put out its 2015 City Energy Efficiency Scorecard, which ranks Boston as the most efficient city in the United States, followed by New York City and Washington, DC. The least efficient? That title goes to Birmingham, Alabama, though Raleigh, Detroit and New Orleans also landed at the bottom of the pack. The ACEEE report goes into great detail explaining its scoring methodology, which is based on an assessment of five policy areas: local government operations, city-wide initiatives, building policies, performance of energy/water utilities, and transportation policies.

The post Commuting in top U.S. cities a mixed bag of awesome and horrible appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The company is launching an Indiegogo campaign on Monday to try to raise $1 million to help with the initial phases of a project it’s planning for Niagara Falls. It needs an estimated $10 million to reach its goal of launching the operation by 2016.

The SkySMART technology, created by Shweeb-Can Corporation, combines the convenience of owning a car, the health benefits of riding a bike and the efficiency of public transit. When a user arrives at the station, they are presented with a pod suitable for two, five or 12 people. The user can choose to cycle and save money, or sit back and let the battery-powered car take them to where they need to go.

Google gave the technology its stamp of approval in 2010 by awarding Shweeb over $1 million for research and development, selecting it out of over 150,000 applicants.

But while personal rapid transit systems like Shweeb’s may be the bridge between personal vehicles and public transit that we need, they still lack investor support for large-scale deployment, leaving them to languish in small towns, amusement parks and airports.

Getting off the ground

The first Shweeb Bullet Pod system was built in 2007 as part of an ecological amusement park in Rotorua, New Zealand. Shweeb Holdings, the parent company of Shweeb-Can, developed the project.

The business model of initially attaching the technology to an amusement park allows investors to see the system working without too much financial risk on their part, said Stephen Bieda, vice-president of business development and communications at Shweeb-Can. The plan is to build a similar system in Niagara Falls using the same model with the hope that it will eventually expand to urban centres around the world, he said.

A true PRT service should provide 24-hour, on-demand, non-stop service, on a fully connected network. It should also use vehicles that are suited for individuals or small groups and have no need for human drivers, and should operate on tracks that are reserved exclusively for its vehicles. A few examples exist in Morgantown, West Virginia, Suncheon, South Korea, Masdar City, U.A.E., and London Heathrow Airport.

A report released last month by the Mineta Transportation Institute, a U.S. government-funded transportation research centre, found that PRT systems have “excellent levels of service and environmental sustainability if its infrastructure is integrated with solar power collection.”

This sounds like a convenient solution to road congestion, climate change and frustrating morning commutes. But if such a system already exists, why don’t we have one in every major urban centre?

The report explains that the PRT industry is in an early, tentative stage, and currently only has “a handful of credible suppliers who are struggling to find buyers or venture capital.” As such, the report says, no market for PRT currently exists.

Even a report by Frost and Sullivan, a technology consulting firm, which estimates a EURO 30 billion ($43 billion CDN) market for PRT systems by 2020, tempers its optimism by listing the hurdles the technology will have to get over before it can be a viable mass transit alternative. They include lack of funding and commitment from governments, lack of understanding by the general public, constant economic and technological support, the urgent need for operation and maintenance protocols, and the creation of a certification process.

What it really comes down to is that investors are nervous about investing their money in an unproven technology, said Nick Chu, research director of Creative Urban Projects, an urban planning consultancy in Toronto that specializes in cable cars. “No one wants to be first, everyone wants to be second,” he said, adding that nobody wants to put their name on a technology that might fail.

Bieda said Shweeb-Can has interested clients in 23 locations, but they all want to see a working model first. The public transit industry is monolithic, resistant to change and conservative, he said. But Shweeb seems determined to push the boundaries, even if it has to start in an amusement park.

The post Transit can’t move forward without investors appeared first on Corporate Knights.