Canadian Government Scraps Long-Form Census

An appalling decision from the Canadian federal government today, reported by the Globe & Mail here: “Tories scrap mandatory long-form census”
The census is a vital data source for all sorts of transportation and land use planning.  A voluntary census is nearly useless, since the sample will suffer from voluntary response bias.  This will do nothing [...]

Bryant and Road Rage

The judicial verdict is in on the sensational case of Michael Bryant. It sounds like a tragic case of a driver whose car’s stop/stall/roll action accidentally provoked an unstable bicycle courier, with tragic and ultimately fatal consequences. The driver appears to have behaved completely reasonably under the circumstances. The cyclist had a long history [...]

Winter cycling, Dutch style

Growing up in Toronto, I was a six-month cyclist and six-month pedestrian/transit rider. Since moving back a few years ago, I’ve been shifting to closer to ten months of cycling. I realized that I feel much better when I get that daily exercise and sunshine, and it’s considerably faster for getting around, chaining trips and [...]

Subcultures & cycling

The Copenhagenize blog has some interesting thoughts on cycling and subcultures: do the various cycling subcultures (racers, couriers, mountain bikers) in North America get in the way of making cycling appealing to normal citizens? The subcultures define themselves by gear or attitude – and I think this is quite offputting for normal people. It’s like a [...]

Joe Romm discusses a plausible worst case scenario for climate change. The UK’s Hadley Centre model was used to look at the effects of continued growth in fossil fuel use, including carbon feedbacks – and the results aren’t pretty. In 10% of the model runs, very high temperatures are seen as soon as 2060, and [...]

Google Map updates

Several years ago, I put together some Google Maps for the Vancouver and Toronto transit systems. In light of the expected opening of the Canada Line in Vancouver on August 17th, I took a shot at updating the maps.
In the interim, though, Google has made some big advances in its handling of transit. They have [...]

Transportation Research Board template for LaTeX

Last summer, I submitted my first paper to the Transportation Research Board (TRB) conference (ultimately accepted, and presented in January 2009). They have recently started accepting papers in PDF form instead of requiring a Word file—and this meant that I could write my paper in LaTeX, my preferred document processing system.
However, TRB doesn’t provide any [...]

Joe Romm on Climate

I’ve finally found the climate change book that I can recommend widely: Hell and High Water by Joseph Romm, 2006. I urge you to read it, as soon as you can.
Why do I recommend this particular book?

Clear and accessible. A wide audience can appreciate this book: the language is simple, the opening sections are organized [...]

Thesis: Synthesizing Agents and Relationships for Land Use / Transportation Modelling

I finished my M.A.Sc. degree at the University of Toronto in August. In a past post, I discussed some of the coursework that made up the first year of the degree, but I haven’t really discussed the core research here before. I did win an award for some interim results presented at a local conference, [...]

Backcasting: From Climate to Transportation

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about Monbiot’s book on climate change. In that post, I stated that I was interested in long-term emissions targets because they will probably constrain transportation planning over the course of my career. Now that I’m looking at the issue more closely, I’ve found some relevant research: a [...]