pointing out the obvious

I realize that I have become a bit of a ‘public transit’ pusher. Everywhere I go, I want to take transit over taxis, or driving. While the TTC has it’s own set of problems, I believe it to be the better way. Maybe not the nicest way, but the better way all things considered.

So much so, that I might invest in a TTC Metropass at full price (I used to get a discount) to make it that much easier.

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Premier Dalton McGuinty announced the MoveOntario 2020 plan last week.  You can find the real details of this plan outlined by Steve Munro here.  It’s an ambitious plan, but a great move for southwestern ontario.  I still can’t believe the announcement, and really hope it happens.

This is a great move to reduce congestion on our highways, take a stab at pollution and help our cities grow.  While it’ll take time to implement, and it will take time to get people out of the ‘car’ mindset, it’s a great start.  If this happens, this is going to be a historic period in toronto’s transit history.

completely awesome.

While driving up Hwy 10 through Shelburne last weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in the middle of a wind farm. If you have ever driven through or past a wind farm, you understand that it can be an awe inspiring experience. This setup was the Melancthon Wind Plant by Canadian Hydro, which boasted 45 turbines and was completed in March 2006. It’s nice to actually see a plant at work in Ontario.

I’ve had the opportunity to drive through the wind plants in California, they are an experience to say the least. If you ever get a chance, you have to see them in person to understand. There must have been thousands of turbines setup on the mountains, all turning in the wind - somewhat hypnotizing. It was akin to my Newfoundland experience - when the ferry pulled in to Port aux Basques NF from Sydney NS and you first saw the terrain, you felt as if you had landed on another planet. Unbelievable.

Before anyone comments on the fact that I’ve done a few roadtrips, remember that driving is more responsible than flying. I also have a fairly economical car with a 1.8L engine, that gets 600km per tank in the city without hypermiling. I posted some 700+km tanks during my roadtrip before even knowing what hypermiling was. If I did the same trips now, I’m sure I would post 800km tanks.

I have successfully rented, driven and returned a ZipCar twice, from two different locations and here’s what I thought…

The reservation process is pretty slick online - easy, intuitive, quick. I managed to rent with about 30 minutes notice without a problem, then rented a few days in advance without a problem. Awesome.

Searching for cars was a little buggy - if you select or unselect ’show me cars that are unavailable’ it doesn’t behave the way you would think. Someone needs to look at that, it’s not consistent. In my case, I wanted to find out when a truck was available, so not being able to see all trucks in the area that were booked or not booked was a little frustrating. But I figured out a way to make it work.

The cars are great. I rented a pickup on both occasions, so I expected it to be a little messy. However, the truck was relatively clean, a few scratches here and there, but it’s meant for moving things, so I was not surprised.

Upon returning a truck on Saturday morning to the Church and Wood St location, I found myself without my ZipCard. I likely lost it at the hardware store loading lumber and cement into the back. So this presented an interesting situation - I wasn’t able to lock the truck to complete my reservation at the lot.

Luckily, it was booked immediately after my drop-off time, so the other ZipCar member was there, ready to drive it away. I asked for the ZipCar number, and promptly called to remedy the situation. However, in order to get through the automated system and speak to a living person, I needed my ZipCard number. But I lost it, so I didn’t have it. I tried the normal ‘0′, or ‘*’ to get a living person, but it kept me away. It was very frustrating.

Eventually, I got the member waiting for the truck to call for me. Thankfully, she spoke to a ZipCar rep and cleared up the situation. But, if she had not been there, I would have been screwed.

Ultimately, the experience was a positive one. Having a truck available is EXTREMELY handy. AutoShare only seems to offer vans, which would have worked, but hauling bags of cement or lumber would have made a mess. With the pickup, I just swept the back out after my reservation and it was ready to return.

I’m hoping I find my ZipCard some day.  I’d like to rent again, it was a positive experience.  If I don’t find it, I’ll have to suck it up and pay $15 to have one reissued.

Incandescent bulbs are on their way out - in Canada and Australia anyways. Fluorescent are the new cool way to make a difference. HomeDepot, Rona, Canadian Tire, Home Hardware and others now have so many bulbs to select from that you could lose an hour trying to find a ’standard’ bulb.

I like fluorescent bulbs, don’t notice any flicker or difference in colour. However, the mercury thing has always bothered me a little. I know it’s better than incandescent, but now everyone has a little piece of mercury in their homes. What is the likelihood of those people recycling the mercury? For those who aren’t aware, you drop them off at one of the local drop-off depots, or environment day.

Why aren’t LED lights more popular? Why didn’t they catch on? They seem to exist for cars, flashlights, outdoor lights, and other applications - but not household bulbs? I suppose they haven’t tackled the directional light problems yet, but you figure someone would be working on that.

Until ‘depot, crappy tire, rona, home hardware start carrying LEDs to the masses, we can watch and hope that EcoLEDs make some quick progress and become more affordable. Apparently they last about 20 years, have no toxic components and use less power.

I’ve got my fingers crossed.

My ZipCar application (single driver) was approved on May 16th at 4:02pm, having applied on May 8th at 1:15pm according to the confirmation emails sent. This is about 7 business days… or 6 business days, 4 hours and 47 minutes to be exact (who’s counting). I was a little worried that I was going to be rejected given the website suggested an approval generally takes 2-3 business days, but the approval came through.

A day or two after applying, I dropped by the ZipCar office at Spadina and Richmond during my lunch break, picked up my card and information package from a friendly, young woman. The office was nice, bright and open. After returning to my desk I proceeded to simulate a denial of service attack on the application status page until I was approved - every 5 minutes or so for a week.

The very next day, a co-worker in the office told me that he applied to AutoShare and was approved within 48hrs. Hmm.. I figure I got lucky with the ZipCar promotion and owe the system some money so I filled out a joint application (which included my partner), using the “Smart Living St. Lawrence” promotion at 11:45am this morning. To my surprise I received a confirmation email at 5:25pm, TODAY. This is about 5 hours and 40 minutes according to my watch. Wow. That was fast.

So, I check the website for office hours and I have time to pickup my welcome package, keys and related information on my way home. Perfect. I get there about 15 minutes later, am greeted at the door by a nice young lady who confirms that I am in fact a fast walker - she just sent me the email! Awesome, they do the processing right in this office and know exactly who I am. I take my time looking around the office because it’s an old one on Mercer St, just across the street from the old Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women - which is now Rain (fire your web designer) and Schmooze. If I ever start a company, I’m getting an office like this - it’s nice and cozy. Anyways, she explains the welcome package, asks if I have a gold card (which I do) and asks me to fill out the $0 deductible form. I am out of there in 10 minutes.

The fact that AutoShare uses BullFrog Power does not go unnoticed. For those who are choosing car sharing for green reasons, it seems AutoShare is serious about it. AutoShare +1.

Points not mentioned so far: ZipCar +1 for the free application and credit on my account. AutoShare +1 for being so damn fast and organized.

Oh, and when I got home, the nice woman at AutoShare who processed my welcome package informed me that they overcharged my card by $27, but promptly reversed the transaction so I shouldn’t be alarmed if I see it on my statement. -2 for incorrectly charging my card, but +2 for identifying, correcting the situation and informing me immediately, so it’s even.

While we’re talking about incorrect charges, ZipCar forgot to credit my account with the full promotional amount. I emailed them and they corrected it right away. -2 for missing it, +1 for correcting it as soon as I pointed it out - sorry, only 1 point because I had to ask about it.

I had some trouble logging into the AutoShare website - it wasn’t clear for what my username or password was. Through some bumbling around, I figured out the username is my autoshare member number, and forced a reset of my password by attempting to login incorrectly. Either I missed something in the information package, or it was just missing. -1 for Autoshare.. the ZipCar site was far more usable.

So, if did the math right, it’s fairly even out of the gate: ZipCar 1, AutoShare 2.

Don’t worry, ZipCar will catch up in the ‘coolness’ factor with their fancy technology. I’ll keep you posted.

We all use paper. Some of us use wood. If you look hard enough, there are wood and paper products that are harvested in a sustainable fashion. For wood, you can look for the FSC (forest stewardship council) label on the lumber itself. For paper, there are usually crests on the packaging, but I really don’t purchase much paper so I’m not as familiar with the labeling.

To make life easier, you can just purchase Domtar products. Domtar partnered with WWF a little while ago to ensure that all of their forests (8 million hectares in canada) are FSC certified. This is a pretty heavy mandate, but an important step in pushing the forestry industry towards change.

I was convinced to try ZipCar over AutoShare (at least initially) by way of a promotion that eliminated the application fees and gave me a small credit to try out the service. While I still feel as though I’m a better fit for AutoShare because it’s Canadian and has existed in the city for a while, I’m itching to give any car sharing service a spin.

So, I applied to ZipCar on Tuesday, picked up my ZipCard on Thursday and am waiting for the insurance approval step. The website suggests a typical approval takes 2-3 days, and it’s Friday, day 3.5.

I feel like a kid in a candy store. I just can’t deal with this.

I got my first bullfrog bill a few weeks ago, and can now properly compare the charges. To compare apples with apples, I found a recent Toronto Hyrdo bill with EXACTLY the same kWh’s used. Here are the details…

Bullfrog Power: 873kWh’s used in the current bill, with the mystery adjustment (adjusted loss factor) the overall usage is 905.825kWh’s. The total bill is $152.96.

Toronto Hydro: 873kWh’s used, with the adjusted loss factor the overall usage is 905.825kWh’s. The total bill? $123.32.

Remember, much of your hyrdo bill is made up of delivery and administration charges, so let me identify these charges. The Bullfrog admin charges are $62.25. The Toronto Hydro admin charges are $66.21. I’m assuming bullfrog passes the admin charges back to Toronto Hydro to pay for poles and maintenance, so why would bullfrog’s be cheaper? Weird.

Anyways, this leaves us with $49.03 in actual electricity charges for Toronto Hydro, and $82.05 in electricity charges for Bullfrog Power. The power is clearly more expensive, but I don’t see it in my overall bill because the other charges make up half the bill.

So, the power costs 67% more with bullfrog. However, because almost half the bill is made up of infrastructure charges, the actual bill is only 24% more. Not bad eh? A 24% increase (~$29 dollars) in my electricity bill for green power. Awesome. Totally worth it, and completely affordable. Who would miss $29 dollars over a 2-3 month period?

What I love about my bill is that it details the pollutants I pumped into the atmosphere as a result of the power I used. It reminds me that although it’s green power, there is always a price. Cool.

While contemplating a green car recently, it struck me that I am doing exactly what auto makers want me to do - purchase a new car. I want to support green cars, and show that there is interest in producing more sustainable vehicles, however, I also want to curb the consumerism, which is just as much a problem as non-sustainable products.

A comment left by Aleem Kanji got me thinking more about consumerism and how it affects my life. The comment was a little misleading, but it brought thoughts of consumerism front and centre in this discussion. Somehow, I’ve reached a point in my life where purchasing things gives me this small rush of happiness, and I’m not sure how I got here. Case in point - I purchased an Airport Express last week because I thought I needed it. After opening the box, setting it up and playing with it for a few hours, I haven’t touched it. I need to break the connection between purchasing things and gratification, it’s a vicious circle that isn’t helping my bank account or the values that I’m carving out.

With this in mind, I took a different angle to the green car research - car coops. The idea behind car sharing is simple - there is a pool of cars that the car sharing company has at your disposal any time of day or night. Of course the ’share’ part of this idea means this same set of cars is also available to anyone else subscribing to the service, but ultimately, it means there are less cars sitting in driveways, thus less cars produced, and a smaller overall ecological footprint for all of us.

I struggled with the idea for a little while, trying to determine the difference between an auto share and car rental company. The main differences of an auto share are hourly rates, included insurance, included gas, and local availability. The two auto shares that I’ve seen in Toronto are AutoShare and ZipCar. Both offer very similar cars, which are mostly low impact vehicles, a few hybrids and a few vans, both have decent pricing, and both have cars parked in areas close to my house. There is a great article comparing AutoShare with ZipCar written by Torontoist - if you’re serious about the service, you should give it a read.

I’m still in the ‘thinking’ stage of the game, but I’m thinking this might be a great overall solution. I can always try it out for a few months, see how it works, and comment from there.