The Surrey Leader had a fascinating letter from an Annieville resident pointing out the value of the South Fraser Perimeter Road:
After all the recent criticism of the South Fraser Perimeter Road and Deltaport expansion I feel that my support of said project must be voiced.
I am a lifelong resident of North Delta/Annieville and have worked at Deltaport and am currently employed at Fraser Surrey Docks.
Firstly, the issue of diesel exhaust pollution at present is caused not by truck volume alone but by the designated truck route along River Road that they are forced to take.
Diesel engines, by their design, are meant to run at high revolutions where they pollute the least.
The current situation has trucks idling and repeatedly gearing up and down in stop and go traffic, the worst possible situation for diesel particulate pollution.
In addition when you consider that the average truck loads are 60,000 to 95,000 pounds, the physics of accelerating this mass from a dead stop, uphill, in heavy traffic, burns a huge amount of diesel fuel.
The SFPR being built at level grade will allow trucks to travel with optimum fuel efficiency and speed thereby reducing pollution and particulate.
6 Comments:
Jordan,
You will have seen an email by now, from me on the facts sheet. But I wanted to Adress the statement heading this article: "SFPR will reduce pollution" specifically.
I have heard this many times, yet I cannot find a single scrap of supporting scientific evidence to substantiate the claim.
I see two logic errors in the statement, but logic gives way to physics, so If you can post real evidence I will correct my position. However here is the Logic errors I see:
1. Cars consume more fuel moving at higher speeds. While River Road does back up, it rarely stops for long periods due to congestion (stops of note are caused by accidents) As I use river road frequently and at all different times of the day, I can say that I rarely sit idle for long periods (minutes at worst). Therefore, given cars are moving, albeit slowly and perhaps not operating at best efficiency, they are also not buring fuel at as high a rate as if they were running at 50km/h or 70km/hr which is more typical when the road is clear. Since fuel is cosumed based on energy required, which is related directly to distance travelled at speed (that's why we have to press the gas pedal so hard to go fast) - logic dictates that slower traffic consumes less fuel and therfore produces fewr emissions (I can provide the chemical mass balances & energy equations to support this argument)
2. The assumption here is that a wider road will indefinitely solve the problem of congestion, and cars will ever-more continue to operate at higher speeds, getting them off the road sooner. Unfortunately, all evidence to the contrary - bigger roads merely evolve into bigger parking lots. So in fact by increasing the capacity of a road, its congestions so increases the number of cars polluting the air. For example, River Road at Nordel was widened to 2 lanes for about 200m each side of the intersection. Now, in the case of stoppage, two cars, side by side are idling rather than 1. The back-up line extends only to about Tim Hortons at River way, whereas it used to queue around to the Nordel Overpass. The nice thing about the longer queue, was that drivers, on seeing it, still had an opportunity to turn, and drive round the south side of the Bog or try to rat-run the local hoods. Now they are trapped in the queue idling.
Please - direct me to the statistical evidence that fast cars are less polluting. I'd like to see how they explain why mileage indicators in new cars show increased fuel consumption at high speeds is able to reduce pollution. After all I am still going the same seven kilometers to and from destinations.
The recent criticism of the South Fraser Perimeter Road and the Expansion of DeltaPort is not because people don't understand the economics behind the proposals, its because the government is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars doing things the wrong way. The SFPR will not be "built at level grade" as Chris Burry's letter suggests, it is designed like a roller coaster with 6% grades, 'S' curves, and traffic lights. It will not prevent congestion nor the pollution because the container trucks, which are estimated to double in number, will still be stop and go with the 60% increase in commuter traffic on a highway of poor design. The Hoover/Naas proposal is a faster, straighter, more level route that will increase the efficient movement of goods and greatly improve the traffic on highway 17 and through the George Massey tunnel, while saving 200 acres of our best agriculture land, 120 acres of industrial property 75 North Delta homes from expropriation, and prevent serious damage to Burns Bog.
As for the expansion of DeltaPort, it is already capable of receiving 1 million containers a year and combined with Vanterm, Fraser Surrey Docks, and the new port being built in Prince Rupert, the capacity of BC ports will be over 11 million containers a year which is well over the 8 million container need that is forecasted past the year 2021.
Shipping companies will not send goods bound for the U.S. and Canadian midwest or eastern seaboards through the lower Mainland when they can get there 2 days faster via Prince Rupert. DeltaPort is already large enough for our needs and with the Fraser Surrey dock's potential as a short-sea shipping and Barge terminal, we will still be able to receive more than enough cheap Asian goods, without further impact to the Fraser Estuary and the many threatened and endangered species that live there.
The opposition to these projects is growing because the more people learn about them, the more they realize there are less expensive and better alternatives that will not have such a severe impact on our livability.
Jordan, et.al,
Well I have to pull my foot out of my mouth. I finally tracked down some statistics of fuel consumption rates for vehicles travelling at different speeds. The source I found tells me that Cars (only) have the best mileage between 40km/hr and 80 km/h, and unfortunate to my first point in my last Blog - going faster than congestion speed is in fact better. I have not been able to confirm the data with any secondary source.
On the other Hand - I finally stayed awake through reading of the Environmental Assessment for the SFPR Air Quality Discussion Paper. In no less than three places, does the paper say: Comparison between With-SFPR and Without-SFPR simulations results show no noticable difference in regional air quality impact. So Min. Falcon and you Making the claim that SFPR will reduce pollution is Completely Incorrect. I certainly hope that that is a miscommunication from Gateway to MoT, rather than something more insidious.
What the discussion paper also points out is that all improvements to air quality are due to changes beyond the control of Gateway (fuel types, and emmissions standards on cars etc.)
What is puzzling, is that there is a projection of 60% more traffic for that corridor, which also resulted in negligable regional impact - the argument being that it is relocation of traffic that would otherwise be travelling on other roads.
The woefully missing data is the localized impacts - however a report produced by Levelton engineering models the local impacts with project traffic flow. But the Discussion paper reports that local impacts for situations where traffic being congested could not be simulated due to the lack of information.
So all the engineering simulations assume that traffic will NEVER recongest. Find me one example in the entire world where a big road for a growing city didn't recongest. Our own Alex Fraser Brige didn't even manage that trick for 6 months.
On the other hand - a Tunnel in North Delta, allows Gateway to put in place Filtration that proactively removes pollution! That would be the ONLY way SFPR is reducing pollution.
Cheers,
Paul
While conventional vehicles get worse gas mileage in stop and go driving at slower speeds than highway speeds (< 80km/h), most hybrids get better gas mileage in stop and go traffic than highway speeds. Also at highway speeds, hybrids are really not much better than conventional vehicles. By the time Gateway Projects are built, hopefully there will be a lot of hybrids which means the higher speeds on the projects will result in more emissions than if the projects were not built.
Looks like again, the BC Liberals have not bothered to see how their various plans fit together.
Interesting comment, Paul. It does seem that the reducing pollution issue does not seem to apply to the SFPR.
If the issue really is shipping goods from the port, then why all the focus on roads? It seems to make much more sense to me to focus on rail.
Get the goods on a freight car, ship it to some large train depot outside the GVRD and then put them on trucks, which can then ship the goods all over the country (or better yet, keep them on trains).
Most of the gateway project seems to me to be throwing lots of money at projects that will not perform as promised.
For Jordan, I would be interested in knowing your response to the issues brought up by the commenters.
thank you.
Jodan,
Regarding the information you found in the Surrey Leader as presented by a North Delta resident. I would have to say my studies agree with his comments. The big engines do in fact need to be running at high speed to get better mileage (Exactly as I found with Cars in one of the previous posts).
I think it is important to point out to the fellow who wrote that letter, that the SFPR as proposed in the Environmental assessment application documents is anything but level grade roadway. In fact, the SFPR manages to change elevation over its length in many places as required to avoid rail crossings, interchanges and topography which changes radically, particularly in the North Delta segment.
Unfortunately, looking at historical evidence about road projects, (say the 401 in Toronto - a 10 Lane super-highway by Canadian Standards) It doen't take any time to fill that road up with stopped, idling trucks laboring up 6% grades and winding around blind corners into interchanges with lights that will undoubtedly have frequent collisions further exacerbating the congestion.
Moving vehicles are better, but nothing propoesed proves that the vehicles will stay moving.
On the other Hand - moving or not, a Tunnel in North Delta as suggested by Sunbury Neighborhood Association runs near grade and curves only slightly over it's 4km Length, provides an opportunity to capture the diesil exhaust and filter it, protecting local residents and environment, while still providing all of Gateway's Program requirements.
its a great plan!
Cheers,
Paul
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