Drive Less, Says Automobile Association

On which web site can you find this text? "With such a dependence on roads and highways, how can we hope to preserve our environment? The answer is to re-examine our approach to mobility." "We can no longer continue to be a country that travels one person in one car at a time. We need alternative forms of fuel that are less harmful to the environment! Let's start sharing our cars, using public transit, and carpooling. Let's start buying vehicles that are less harmful to the environment, and changing our driving behaviour to be more environmentally friendly." Answer: The Canadian Automobile Association.

The CAA, once a bastion of car culture, is recommending to drivers that they drive less and adopt alternative vehicles, to do their part against climate change. It also wants the government to impose emissions standards for both light and heavy-duty vehicles. Their new policies go significantly beyond what even environment-friendly governements have dared do.

Among their policies are the encouragement of multimodal transportation through the addition of park and ride lots and bicycle/walking paths; the addition of high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes for buses, taxis and cars with two or more occupants; improvements to public transit systems, which promote accessibility, reliability and convenience, thereby increasing usage; modern roundabouts should, where appropriate, be the preferred alternative for new construction and as a replacement for collision-prone rightangle intersections; governments, where feasible, should use low and zero-emission vehicles or alternative fuels vehicles in their fleets to prove their viability and encourage consumer demand for such vehicles; the government should implement progressively improved fuel consumption standards, to achieve a 25 percent improvement for cars and light trucks by 2010.

References
http://www.caa.ca/eco%2Dmobility/english/role/policies.html

Tags: Transportation Transportation Planning Greenhouse Gas Climate Change Environment

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