About
Reverse Zone, weblog on urban planning, sustainability, and technology.
Martin Laplante
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Recent posts
- Canada and US Driving No Longer Dropping
- This Year Ontario No Longer Needs Coal
- Shaping the Public Realm
- The Days of Sprawl Are Officially Over
- The Telescope is Backward
- Stop The Earth
- Amazon CloudFront New Pricing, Cheap At A Million Dollars
- Canada Spends Billions in Energy INefficiency
- Density as Persons Plus Jobs Per Unit Area
- Now is the Time for New Transit Investments
- UNFCCC Confuses Journalists on Direction of Greenhouse Gases
- Canadian Business Prefers Carbon Tax
- Streets To Home: Down With Continuum of Care!
- Close Roads to Reduce Congestion
- Science and Economics of Climate Change
- Canada and US Driving Continue To Drop
- Alberta Overtakes Ontario in Coal-Fired Generation
- Everyone Not Living In The Suburbs Is Fooling Themselves
- Canada Almost Studies the Possibility of Eventual Road Pricing
- Rogers Messing with DNS
- Will Canada Reach Kyoto Targets With New GHG Inventory Figures?
- The Delicate Balancing Act of Downtowns and the Death of Griffintown
- Internet Identity Keystone Kops
- LA Transit Plan Aims to Save 725 Metric Tons of GHG Annually by 2030
- New York City's Congestion Pricing Plan Dies Yet Again
- New York Discovers Existing Direct Democracy Zoning Rule
- Driving is Going Down in the US
- The Commuting Turnaround in Canada
- Vancouver Churches Get a Licence to Break the Law
- Carbon Capture and Storage For Canada
2008
2007
2006
2005
Complete List of Posts
Top Posts
- Close Roads to Reduce Congestion
- The Delicate Balancing Act of Downtowns and the Death of Griffintown
- Places to Grow - Pictures Tell the Story
- Why We Still Need Separation of Uses
- Dense Condos Do Not Revitalize
- Hot Air - How to Beat Climate Change By Burning More Coal
- What's Best for Renewables, Merton Rule or Feed-In Tariff?
- LEED for Neighborhood Development Pilot Rating System
- Main Arterial Woonerf
- More on Which is Greener, Houses or Apartments?
- Which is Greener, Houses or Apartments?
- Zoning Exceptions and the Failure of Planning
- 18th Century Planning is Still the State of the Art
- Ontario Municipal Board Says City Can't Plan for Mix or Density of Mixed Use
- Brownfield Brutalism - Urban Planning for Sale
- The Causes of Sprawl
- Energy Star Sprawl
- Is High Density the Cure for Transportation?
- Why not Build Medieval Towns Here?
- Vancouver has it right - Ecodensity
- Ontario has it wrong - Places to Grow
- Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and Barry Wellman
- Review of This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America
- New York's Downzoning Uprising
- Community Planning - are citizens powerless?
- Paris riots and urban planning
- Minimize Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Reverse Zoning
- Social Sciences: So Much Left Undone
Canada and US Driving Continue To Drop
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The 25-year upward trend in the US slowed down in 2005 when gas prices spiked to $3 a gallon, and then plummeted in December 2007, when gasoline went up over $3 a gallon and stayed there.
In Canada the trend is very odd. Driving stayed pretty well constant for many years until 2006, then went up and up and up until the middle of 2007 and been going down since then. The downward trend started a little sooner in Canada, but it is decreasing much more slowly than in the U.S.
So why the sharp increase in Canada starting in 2006? There were major changes in federal government transportation programs that were widely panned by experts but that can't be it. That would affect the type of vehicles purchased, not the number of kilometres driven.
There was new program that was to increase transit ridership by 5%. Latest statistics show that this did not happen. Transit ridership kept on growing at the same rate as before, then dropped for 6 months, then continued growing as before.
Tags: Transportation Vehicles USA Canada