Make it easier for walking, cycling, transit

Re: “Saanich in bind on interchange,” editorial, and “Saanich fails to put brakes on McKenzie cloverleaf,” May 11.

The editorial says the project would be beneficial to the environment, a claim that Transportation Minister Todd Stone also makes. The rationale seems to be that by reducing the idling from congestion, you will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

However, it is simply not true that adding more road capacity designed to allow free-flow automobile traffic leads to reduced emissions. If it were true, then you would expect that cities that build more freeways and expand road capacity would have lower emissions than cities with more limited accommodation for cars, when in fact the exact opposite is true. This is because when you build more roads, it encourages even more people to drive more often, leading to an increase in emissions, not a decrease.

In 2014, the state of California stopped using “level of service” — an engineering term that is essentially a measure of how free-flowing the traffic is — when evaluating major projects. They did this because they found that a “better” level of service was often counter to the state’s other goals, particularly that of reducing greenhouse gases and other emissions.

Perhaps it’s time for B.C. to follow California’s lead. The only way we will be able to reduce our emissions and truly help the environment is if we stop accommodating ever more cars and start making it easier for more people to walk, cycle or use transit instead. Rob Maxwell Victoria