Why building more roads has environmental effects and won't ease gridlock in the long run

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This week:

• Why building more roads has environmental effects and won't ease gridlock in the long run
• What we talk about when we talk about winter weather
• What is the N.W.T. doing to protect its 'globally significant' peatlands?

Why building more roads has environmental effects and won't ease gridlock in the long run

What On Earth27:00Building for sprawl: The climate impact of that next highway

New highways can relieve traffic temporarily, but at what cost? With a decision coming soon on Highway 413 near Toronto, we take a close look at the debate, and what it tells us about urban sprawl, green spaces and human health.

There's controversy over a plan to build a new four-to-six lane highway in the Greater Toronto Area.

The government says the proposed Highway 413 (or GTA West Corridor) will ease congestion, while environmental groups estimate that by 2050, it will boost vehicle emissions by 700,000 tonnes a year and will have generated a total of $1.4 billion in health impacts and ecological damage from air pollution. It will also have paved over carbon-sequestering protected areas.

To be sure, congestion has lots of negative impacts including environmental ones. Time spent in traffic translates into lost productivity, more collisions and vehicle-related deaths, more greenhouse gas emissions and more air pollutants that cause negative health impacts, such as respiratory problems and cancer, said Fanny Tremblay-Racicot, an assistant professor who researches sustainable development at cole nationale d'administration publique (the University of Public Administration) in Quebec.

Tremblay-Racicot also noted that people who live closer to highways are at greater risk of environmental fallout and tend to be disadvantaged populations. "So from an inequity standpoint, you have issues also."

Michael Manville, an associate professor of urban planning at the University of California Los Angeles, said an even bigger negative social impact of congestion is it makes residents and politicians reluctant to build more housing in big cities such as L.A. or Toronto for fear of worsening traffic problems, making housing scarce and unaffordable.

But does building more highways actually ease congestion and reduce these negative impacts?

Yes, briefly, Tremblay-Racicot said, "but it increases [congestion] in the medium or long run."

That can happen in as few as three to five years, she said, because of a well-documented phenomenon known as induced demand, where traffic quickly increases to fill up the extra capacity because of behavioural changes such as people driving more or changing routes.

Manville acknowledges that's not intuitive if the road is full, it seems obvious we need more road. But he said that apparent solution ignores "that key insight from economics 101 that says supply and demand are mediated by price."

He said the reason we have a shortage of road space but not a shortage of other things we need to drive such as cars or fuel is because roads are free to use.

"If the goal is to make it so that the driving experience is better and less congested, widening the lane isn't going to help," he said. "The only thing that helps is pricing."

Evidence from places that have road tolls or congestion pricing such as Singapore and London or even Ontario, home to Highway 407 shows that it works in reducing traffic levels and delays.

But what about things like improving transit?

Manville said providing other options, such as subways, wider sidewalks and bike lanes, can allow individual people to avoid sitting in congestion themselves. But it doesn't reduce congestion overall.

So if congestion is so bad, and road pricing is the only thing that seems to solve it, why are road tolls so uncommon?

Manville said one reason is that roads have always been free and people are reluctant to pay for a service they perceive to be of low quality because of congestion.

"It's hard to make that leap," he said, "but actually, the reason the service is terrible is that it's free." And making drivers pay can improve the driving experience.

Recently, the taboo against road tolls seems to be breaking down. Many more cities have considered them, including Vancouver and Toronto. New York is implementing them to fund transit.

"The primary purpose of congestion pricing is not to raise revenue," Manville said. "But it will raise a lot of revenue, and the revenue ends up being politically appealing."

Emily Chung

Reader feedback

Last week's story on the carbon emissions saved through Indigenous protests of oil and gas pipelines elicited a lot of mail. A number of readers wondered how the report we cited, produced by the Indigenous Environmental Network, calculated the avoided emissions. Their methodology can be found here. IEN partnered on the report with the advocacy group Oil Change International, whose detailed methodology on tallying emissions from natural gas pipelines can be found here.

Robert Worthingham: "I read your recent story about how aboriginal protests are keeping carbon in the ground. The studies on the benefits were perhaps overly optimistic and needed to look more broadly in their scope. On a bigger picture of things, the oil that would have flowed through the KXL pipeline will still be moved via trains and debottlenecking of existing pipelines. Coastal GasLink will be selling gas to Asia and provide a lower-carbon fuel option to existing coal-fired facilities.

"Both projects would provide jobs and income for residents along the pipelines, including Indigenous businesses and workers, helping to lift people out of poverty. The projects would also provide badly needed income to all levels of government to help pay for social programs and settlements."

Al Buffone: "Listening to multiple reports regarding the efforts to stop pipeline and oil extraction, I am wondering whether the efforts are not directed in the wrong direction. I can see that those efforts are making more of us aware of the evils of oil, but the market for that oil has not gone away. And that's where I see the problem. Those users may not end up using the oil that those protests are stopping from hitting the market, but they are still using oil. Oil that is readily available from other sources.

"So, would it not be much more fruitful to push governments at all levels to promote in all ways that governments have at their disposal non-oil energies and the increased production of non-oil energies? Pipelines may be built, but if eventually the demand for that product shrinks, then isn't that more effective at keeping oil from being used?"

Write us atwhatonearth@cbc.ca.

Old issues of What on Earth? are right here.

There's also a radio show and podcast!As Canadians gear up for the holidays, What On Earth host Laura Lynch finds out if reimagining our relationship to our stuff could help fight climate change.What On EarthairsSunday at 12:30 p.m., 1 p.m. in Newfoundland. Subscribe on your favourite podcast app or hear it on demand at CBC Listen.

The Big Picture: Winter weather

One of the most enduring Canadian traditions is acting surprised when the weather turns colder at least in the southern part of the country. Naturally, discussions about the weather happen year-round, but there is a distinct ritual in November and December, when many people seem dumbfounded by sub-zero temperatures and snow. Similarly, there is jubilation whenever the temperature rises above seasonal averages. We at What on Earth? thought Alaska-based climatologist Brian Brettschneider put the feeling in perspective this week with the pithy tweet below. To add a bit of context to it: The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that nine of the continent's 10 warmest years have occurred since 2001, and that 2020 marked the 24th consecutive year of above-average temperatures (dating back to 1910).

Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web

• Many popular U.S. podcasts, including The Daily from The New York Times and some created by NPR, contain ads from oil producers such as ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute. The Guardian explains why this medium is being targeted, and why some ads are allowed in spite of misleading content.

• You've heard of reforestation on land, but another way to capture carbon is "seaforestation" in the ocean, something we've touched on in the past. In an opinion piece, Lasse Gustavsson of the Ocean Wise Conservation Society explains why he thinks we should do more to embrace this nature-based climate solution.

• Geothermal makes up only 0.3 per cent of energy generation worldwide, even though there's lots of heat available inside the Earth. Recently, the U.S. government set aside money for four enhanced geothermal demonstration plants, and researchers say that could give the technology a big boost.

• The Shetland Islands in Scotland prospered for years from offshore oil. Now, in the transition away from fossil fuels, wind farms are transforming the archipelago. Here's why the reaction from residents has been mixed.

What is the N.W.T. doing to protect its 'globally significant' peatlands?

Peatlands in the Northwest Territories store immense amounts of carbon, and experts have said it's important to keep that carbon in the ground to curb further climate change.

But they're hardly mentioned in the territory's climate change policies. In fact, the 2030 N.W.T. Climate Change Strategic Framework only mentions peat twice.

Peatlands are ecosystems that cover swaths of temperate, boreal and subarctic regions. They are filled with organic matter that's collected over thousands of years, and they are considered to be carbon sinks because of their capacity to store carbon as that organic matter decays.

They can be bogs, they can be forests and they can also be permanently frozen.

The strategic framework acknowledges peatland plateaus expanses of peat above a peatland surface with ice in between are impacted by thawing permafrost, which transforms them into wetlands or fens. It also says understanding carbon storage in peat, vegetation, soil and wetlands is a "knowledge gap."

So what is the territory doing to address that gap?

Lorna Harris, a postdoctoral fellow and ecosystem scientist at the University of Alberta, said there are 24 billion tonnes of carbon stored in the N.W.T.'s peatlands alone. More broadly, Ducks Unlimited Canada says the territory contains about 55 billion tonnes of soil carbon.

Tom Lakusta, manager of forest resources for the N.W.T.'s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR), said the territory is working with scientists to map permafrost and develop in-ground and above-ground carbon estimates of its own.

"It's important that what we work from as a government, in regards to forest management, is a stable base, one that [has] some certainty, has accuracy and can be replicated in the future," he said.

Lakusta said the department expects to release data on how much carbon is stored below ground, in soil, peat and permafrost, next year, and to have data on how much carbon is stored above ground, in trees and vegetation, earlier than that.

Carbon stored below ground, he noted, is "many times greater" than what's stored in vegetation.

Lakusta said ENR is also continuing to research the effect wildfires have on legacy carbon in the ground. He noted some studies suggest wildfires don't burn soil carbon, but others suggest that intense wildfires do.

Natural Resources Canada said the 2014 wildfire season the worst one on record in N.W.T. burned 34,000 square kilometres of forest and released roughly 94.5 megatonnes of carbon into the air.

For context, the entire territory produced 1.4 megatonnes of greenhouse gases in 2019.

"Once that carbon is gone, it takes thousands of years to replace," said Lakusta. "As we find out more about the wildfire effect on ground carbon, and where the ground carbon is the deepest then we can start putting into place policies that will better protect all the resource values in the N.W.T. forests."

Steven Nitah, a lead negotiator in the establishment of the Thaidene Nn Indigenous Protected Area, has said N.W.T.'s peatlands are "globally significant" and provide a "nature service" that's needed in the face of climate change.

Harris, meanwhile, has identified wildfires, permafrost thaw and human activity such as mining and oil exploration as some of the biggest threats to carbon stored in the world's northern peatlands.

Lakusta said the biodiversity of peatlands and permafrost is unique from other landscapes, making it "really important" to protect those areas.

"These are some of the hardest places for a plant to grow, and that's where you find some of the rare plants because nothing else will grow there."

Liny Lamberink

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