This is the third in a five-part editorial series (under the “Environmental Riposte” tag) commenting on Kevin Liblin’s recent series for the National Post (and syndicated in the Vancouver Sun). This third entry is in response to Rethinking Green: Save the environment: Don’t take transit: The Next Subtitle.

When the Toronto Transit Commission announced in November it would hike fares a 25¢ in the new year — a roughly 10% increase — it blamed the usual suspects: rising costs of fuel and wages.

[snip]

Consistently, the analysis found, TTC fares had risen faster than inflation, and far faster than the price of gas. Between 1980 and 2010, the cash fare, adjusted for inflation, soared more than 80% and token prices are up 50%. The price of a litre of unleaded gas? Up about 30%, without inflation. As for wage increases, Statistics Canada reported last year that the median full-time, full-year salary of average Canadians has hardly increased at all since 1980.

I don’t think the average wage of Canadians is what the TTC was talking about when it said fares were higher because wages were higher. They meant the wages of their own employees, and that’s due to union contracts. Of course, none of this has to do with the environmental benefits of transit.

As other major systems across the continent strain in similar circumstances, the strategy of public transit system boosters has been to promote the service as an environmental necessity. In the name of Mother Nature, North American transit systems have received billions in subsidies in recent years — even though they were never developed for environmental purposes in the first place.

If we restricted technologies to their original intent then the Internet would still be military-only.

“Subsidized transit is not sustainable by definition,” says Wendell Cox, a transport policy consultant in St. Louis, and former L.A. County Transportation commissioner. “The potential of public transit has been so overblown it’s almost scandalous.”

Is this article about subsidies or environmentalism? Anything subsidized isn’t economically sustainable, by definition, however subsidies have no bearing on environmental impact.

Last year, policy analyst Randal O’Toole ran the numbers for the CATO Institute, where he is a senior fellow, comparing mass transit vehicles to private vehicles, ranking each based on how much energy they consume and how much CO2 they emit. The average motorized city bus, he reports, burns 27% more energy per mile than a private car and emits 31% more pounds of CO2. The U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics confirms that the average city bus requires 20% more energy per passenger than the average car.

I’d use the modifier “only” on those figures. The average bus — so, one that hasn’t been environmentally retrofitted as they’re doing in Vancouver — only burns 20-27% more energy and only produces 31% more pounds of CO₂ than a car, all while carrying far and away more than 1,000% more passengers. In fact, as long as two people are riding the bus who would otherwise drive their own cars, these numbers make environmental sense.

Without buses to carry them from their neighbourhood to the train stations, even fewer citizens would ride the trains, making trains, in turn, less efficient per passenger. Already, when trains, subways and streetcars are combined, the average public transit system is still no more efficient that private cars, according to the CATO study. All transit together does emit less CO2 than passenger cars carrying the same number of people the same distance (about 13% less) but even that gap is disappearing — fast.

I accept your surrender!

The environmental case for public transit is falling just as fast, now that hybrid cars are achieving mass market status, with 65 models set to hit North American roads next year, Chevrolet planning to launch its electric Volt by 2011 and manufacturers rolling out super-high efficiency vehicles. In the next few years especially, the average energy consumption of passenger vehicles, and their emission levels, will only improve, with projections by the International Council on Clean Transportation showing the average auto could beat all public transit modes for efficiency and CO2 within the next five years.

Great! In five years we’ll re-evaluate and see if the car manufacturers have delivered. GM already scuttled the Volt a decade ago — fool me once, etc.

At this point Kevin’s argument becomes surreal to me: other green technologies are better for the environment than transit, so we should scuttle transit and use those. Again, it seems that he’s more out to attack funding for public transit than help the environment, but I actually agree with that assessment: if giving everyone a Prius is better than running a transit system then let the giveaway commence!

When the federal government, the B.C. government and BC Transit revealed plans to run 20 hydrogen-powered buses in Whistler, B.C., in February for the Olympics, even the hard-green David Suzuki Foundation balked at the preposterous $2-million-per-bus price tag — four times the price of a standard diesel — arguing that the money would have been better spent on traditional transit initiatives, which “are on life support as far as the financial needs go,” Ian Bruce, the group’s climate-change campaigner, said.

He’s surely right about the pointlessness of what will amount to a four-year, $90-million showpiece of technology not even remotely realistic for actual, financially strapped public transit systems.

Wait, so now Kevin’s arguing against using more efficient busses — because they cost more — and for giving that money to the traditional systems he thinks are polluting and inefficient? Weird. That idea sounds like a combination of bad faith, a disbelief in economies of scale in manufacturing, and a willful ignorance of government’s role in investing towards Canada’s leadership of green technology industries.

Ridesharing applications for smart phones — users enter their location and desired destination and a cost-conscious carpooler responds — are already in wide use, Mr. Rubin says. Self-sustaining, small-scale private jitney systems have successfully operated for years in Atlantic City and Puerto Rico (all North America’s early public transit systems were privately operated until they were nationalized).

Oh, here we get to the point: let’s privatize transit! I’d rather not trust my scheduling to an adhocracy, and if private entities could compete on price why aren’t they doing so already? I know of at least two companies that are trying. It’s exceptionally difficult. Private companies will also free-ride on environmental externalities with absolutely zero incentive to invest in green technologies — because it’s cheaper (more shareholder-efficient).

But again, none of this has a direct bearing on environmental sustainability. It’s clear that Kevin is talking about financial, which doesn’t account for environmental free riding at all.