Wider Roads Touted as 'Green'
In Campbell's new era, projects promoted as good for planet can surprise.
Community Services Minister Ida Chong: 'Sustainable.'
The provincial and federal governments have found a novel way to help Nanaimo fight global warming: spend money on roads.
"The City of Nanaimo will reduce greenhouse gases and vehicle congestion by improving a busy stretch of road," promises a Jan. 22 announcement. "New traffic lights, widened traffic lanes and improved access to the Swy-a-lana Lagoon Park... will improve traffic flow and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from idling vehicles."
The federal and provincial governments are spending $790,000 on the project, out of a fund dedicated to helping communities become "healthier, greener and more sustainable places to live."
So, just how many tonnes of greenhouse gases will the project eliminate?
A spokesperson for Western Economic Diversification Canada was not able to provide an answer, nor was the province's community services ministry spokesperson, who did say the City of Nanaimo will be studying how the construction affects emissions. At Nanaimo city hall, no one was available to answer the question Monday afternoon.
Unorthodox response
Expanding roads and encouraging traffic are normally seen as major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, not as part of the solution.
"It's a really unorthodox response," says Jamie Biggar, a researcher and co-founder of Common Energy, a group that has a member on the premier's Climate Action Team. "In general, I'd much rather see money going to public transportation than road expansion."
Biggar says he's not familiar with the details of the Nanaimo project, but adds, "Almost all the time, more money to public transportation means less greenhouse gas emissions, and more money to road expansion means more."
As more and more is done in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he says, there are two ways to test the claims. The first is whether a project is an efficient use of funds. When you look at the amount of greenhouse gas emissions reduced per dollar spent, how does that compare to other projects? The second is whether it puts infrastructure in place that will lead to future reductions, he says.
The province's transportation plan, for instance, will not result in large reductions immediately, he says. But it builds a system that will make huge reductions possible in the future.
'Silly' logic: scientist
The Nanaimo announcement comes at a time when Premier Gordon Campbell is making headlines for leading Canada's premiers in the fight against global warming, but many are still watching for substantial progress.
University of Victoria earth and ocean sciences professor Andrew Weaver says the Nanaimo announcement is "silly," but should not be taken as a sign of the province's direction on climate change. Weaver, a lead author on one of the International Panel on Climate Change's reports last year, sits on the premier's Climate Action Team.
"It's a sign of the times, isn't it?" The announcement may be a misstep, he says, but it does show the officials think reducing greenhouse gas emissions is important. "Good on them for at least wanting to, but you've got to do more, folks."
The assertion improving roads will help is silly, he says, but it's ultimately harmless. "You want to get people off the roads, not make more roads," he says. "It is silly pegging it to greenhouse gasses. It's silly, but not in a mean way.... This is a harmless announcement."
'Everything becomes green'
Echoing the green claims of other federal and provincial politicians quoted in the Jan. 22 press release, B.C.'s Community Services Minister Ida Chong applauded the City of Nanaimo "for taking steps to ensure their community is more sustainable and vibrant."
But Central Saanich councillor Zeb King says proposals like the Nanaimo one need closer scrutiny. "How many tonnes of greenhouse gases are they proposing to reduce?" he asks in an e-mail. "If we don't hear figures, then this appears to simply be greenwashing, and we can't afford that when the consequences of not taking serious action are so grave."
In a December interview, King told The Tyee he's seeing a lot of fairly brown projects getting wrapped in green. At the time, Central Saanich was considering a proposal from daffodil farmer Ian Vantreight to use part of his land for a housing development. Vantreight promised the project, which would have required changes to the official community plan and the regional growth strategy, would be done to high environmental standards and would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"I see these stretches," says King. "We'll find a way to use the language that will satisfy people for the green angle.... It's fairly dangerous if we think of the predicament we're in, if they don't understand the seriousness and they're just using green talk."
When a developer has a pitch like this, and Vantreight for instance was working with some very good environmental consultants, it can be pretty confusing, King says. "It's like Alice in Wonderland, this stuff."
Officials and the public need to be looking for the substance in these pitches, he says. There needs to be real numbers that prove the claims are rational, not just spin.
"Everything becomes green. The big thing is to scrutinize this. That's what's lacking," King says. "If you don't have people asking tough questions and people just accept it, then we've got trouble."
Related Tyee stories:
- Help the Planet, Buy a Car?
That's what BC's auto dealers say. The fine print on their green sell. - Campbell Promises to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions -- Later
Port Mann Bridge, Site C dam top premier's sparse agenda - BC's Deep Emissions Cuts: How?
What it will take to make good on premier's global warming promise.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
alive
29-01-2008
yeah but
There is less pollution when traffic can move freely, and the best way to get traffic moving is to upgrade the speedlimits!
We are stuck with laws that are based on the kind of vehicles we were driving in the fifties.
When a driver is allowed to move at a decent speed, it requires his concentration, that itself is much safer than coasting along being bored and doing other things while driving.
Certainly some sections of road are in need of widening as the cities expand, but basically we need a new attitude where driving requires that you pay attention!
DVD players and Ipods are not the answer!
southdeltawalker
29-01-2008
more roads=more cars
All i can say is-
"more roads fuel climate change!"
BillMelater
29-01-2008
Gov't Greenwash
"...but it does show the officials think reducing greenhouse gas emissions is important."
Do they really think its important, or do they think that what's really important is making a good show of it, while its really business as usual?
Why do we continue to build cities to make our cars happy?
The answer is not to increase speed limits, or build more roads and useless bridges, but to start addressing our relationship to automobile culture. It is an abundantly selfish relationship. It's had its day. The sooner we can wean the children off the oil teat, the better off the future will be.
All greenwashing is so insidious because it easily suckers people who just want to do the right thing (albeit with no personal discomfort or deprivation), but who can't be bothered to find out what's behind the government and corporate lies.
NicS
29-01-2008
Greenwashing is Acknowledgement!
Just the fact that we are talking about greenwashing is a huge improvement over a year ago. It wasn't that long ago that most people had never even heard of the term. Now many of us are condemming the "greenwashers" as unethical and bringing to light the facts that most of these so called green initiatives do nothing but self promote whatever needs greenwashing.
Thanks again Tyee for staying on top of the issues and helping us all to stay truly green.
Budd Campbell
29-01-2008
ABUSE OF LANGUAGE HARDLY ONE-SIDED
The notion that the abuse of language, including environmental rhetoric, is the peculiar habit of only one side in a debate is too silly for words.
Vancouver property owners have resisted freeways and meaningful rapid transit for forty years, because they didn't want suburban municipalities to provide lower priced residential properties, or to compete for the industrial and commercial tax base. Did they declare this colonialist and mercantilist intention openly? Of course not. They wrapped their objections to public spending that would primarily benefit their suburban rivals, people they regard as distinctly second class citizens, in various urban and now green rhetoric.
No matter what Prof Weaver has to say, for a given traffic volume a road that moves traffic more expeditiously will result in lower emissions. If Weaver thinks otherwise, let him say so. If he wants to do the "induced demand" thing, fine. What's his estimate of the induced demand effect? He isn't going to produce one because he's intelligent enough to know that there is such a wide variety of elasticity estimates that he and other anti-highways activists will not be able to point with scientific credibility to any figure high enough to justify their position.
G West
29-01-2008
Budd
I don't think so - your prejudice against Vancouver and Burnaby is showing again.
If you think that building freeways 40 years ago would have done anything but make the congestion and the attenuation of settlement and the alienation of farmland worse than it is already then you haven't been to Los Angeles or Toronto (among other places).
The total emissions under your regime would have been, in my view, far worse than what obtains today and expanding the highway network - either linearly or in terms of more lanes now - will - with absolutely no question - just make the situation worse.
There is only one effective way to address this problem and that is mass transit.
Moreover, there is no substitute for rational district-wide planning.
If the current provincial government weren't so enamored with piecemeal efforts designed as much to appease their enablers in the business and construction industry (the road builders and the new car dealers particularly - shades of Doug Wall) this might have occurred to them too.
Moat
29-01-2008
Freeways are like Communism - Inefficient!
Gwest wrote:
You are right G West. I have driven in the majority of major North American cities, and I can say that freeways do not work in practice. In theory they are great.
People who think freeways work are over simplifying traffic concepts. Yes, obviously vehicles moving at a constant speed will produce less greenhouse gases than those tied up in traffic.
But freeways are full of construction, accidents, stalls, and other potential blockages.
I have seen the LA freeway at its best - eight lanes moving in the same direction in harmony. The amount of volume and speed is amazing. However, have a minor accident in one of those eight lanes, and watch the other seven slow to a crawl. Anyone who works in Aurora and has to travel to Toronto can picture this.
I am still waiting for someone to prove where the freeway system has lived up to its billing.
Put the money into Skytrain, lightrail, heavyrail... who cares... just give us realistic options besides the car.
Grumpy
30-01-2008
Oh yes, let's build highways..............
..........to solve global warming!
Certainly Ida Chong, one of Campbell's less than stellar ministers, would support the plan - she was told to!
If one remembers, Nanaimo is built on a hillside and I would wager, climbing steep hills, would create more pollution.
More roads attracts more cars, but this what the simpleton Campbell wants, he doesn't understand the problem; unless it is another multi billion subway for his beloved Vancouver.
In Victoria commuter rail's operating cost has just been put at $2 million a year (Times Colonist Tuesday Jan, 29). By using O-Train (Diesel LRT) on existing railway railway tracks! Nanaimo has a North/South Railway Corridor, plus a line that goes directly downtown. Here we could have an example of efficient rail transit, if only Campbell and Falcon could look beyond 2 minutes beyond the 'asphalt jungle'.
Rather cheap rail transit would alleviate traffic congestion and pollution, using existing narrow rail corridors. Just a reminder, SkyTrain is subsidized by over $200 million annually.
BC is so far behind with 21st transit planning philosophy that one would think the 'Luddites' were in charge. But Campbell and Falcon are anti rail and anti transit, unless it's a SkyTrain subway for Vancouver.
cboo44
30-01-2008
Wider Roads an Anti-Enviro Plot?
Just like ignoring increasing POPULATION, and FOREIGN TRADE and associated private and COMMERCIAL traffic over the past 30 years has been somehow GOOD for the environment? Wider(NOT new)roads will address existing traffic jams. Neighbourhoods from Arbutus to Chilliwack DO NOT want more trains, no matter whether they are carrying containers to alleviate commercial traffic or passengers to reduce (or even keep up) with private passenger vehicles.
HOV Lanes are a joke, little or no ENFORCEMENT and people ignore the multi-passenger restriction on a constant basis.
Build more bike lanes? Yeah sure, let's expend millions for vehicles that serve a minority of single passenger vehicles. This ISN'T Europe! Our population travels many, many times further to where they are going and ignoring or dreaming up a different scenario ISN'T going to change a thing. Oh yeah, Europeans had NO input as to where infrastructure was built, it was just built. People who didn't like it moved HERE, remember?
doggone
30-01-2008
Good discussion
As a local user of the particular area slated for upgrade my reaction was: "what are they going to do with $790,000?
Paint new lane lines and do an environmental assessment of that?"
Nanaimo has a place worldwide in Town Planning training courses: an example of how NOT to do it.
The poorest (functioning) country I have lived in, Albania, has better public transit and much worse roads) in a town the size of Nanaimo.
Admittedly some of the (non functioning) countries, Liberia, Cambodia and Republic of South Africa, I have visited have worse congestion in a town this size.
I am guessing here but it would seem to me that:
Planning Nanaimo traffic is based on how to get the Grey Haired Lexus with the blue plates from the subdivision to Costco.
Luke Skywalker
30-01-2008
No matter what Prof Weaver
No matter what Prof Weaver has to say, for a given traffic volume a road that moves traffic more expeditiously will result in lower emissions. If Weaver thinks otherwise, let him say so. If he wants to do the "induced demand" thing, fine. What's his estimate of the induced demand effect? He isn't going to produce one because he's intelligent enough to know that there is such a wide variety of elasticity estimates that he and other anti-highways activists will not be able to point with scientific credibility to any figure high enough to justify their position.
Well, we have a transportation infrastructure deficit in Metro Vancouver and elsewhere in terms of modern highway standards, capacity, as well as transit.
Kudos to Calgary and Edmonton as well as the province of Alberta for both their
long-term free-flow highway and transit initiatives... and making sure they get done instead of languishing around on the shelf for decades... makes BC almost look country bumpkinish.
Metro Vancouver has 12% transit ridership, which will hopefully top 20% with the recent transit initiative.
We have an NRG group poll confirming Burnaby residents approve of the Port Mann Bridge twinning, extra Hwy 1 safety initiatives in terms of collector lanes, interchange upgrades, lengthening of merge lanes, plus a one lane expansion in each direction... WOW one lane each way!
BTW Burnaby residents approve that initiative by a 71% to 21% margin yet their mayor seems to be negative about everything... the Canada Line, Hwy 1 expansion...
Ya just ain't goin' to move ahead in life with that attitude. It's simply time to get things done.
superjudge
30-01-2008
War = Peace
Reminds me of 1984 and a quote from a paper or book I once read. "Adding more roads to alleviate congestion is like loosening your belt to go on a diet."
VanIsle Guy
30-01-2008
Nanaimo traffic
Nanaimo doesn't have that big of a traffic problem. Even at that particular intersection there is rarely a wait of more than one series of green lights before you are through.
Nanaimo has a horrible public transit system and no room for bikes on the main streets. How about starting there?
Also, there is a "bypass" around Nanaimo that has several stop lights. Traffic idles, accidents occur at these intersections. There should be overpasses and no lights!
alda
30-01-2008
"tranist initiatives?"
Skywalker, you wrote:
"Kudos to Calgary and Edmonton as well as the province of Alberta for both their
long-term free-flow highway and transit initiatives... and making sure they get done instead of languishing around on the shelf for decades... makes BC almost look country bumpkinish."
Although we might make BC look bad on certain highways, you can rest assured that Alberta's transit scheme is run by car-obsessed planners, here, too.
Calgary's L-Train is an unmitigated DISASTER, which is why ridership isn't a quarter of what it should be. The LR trains are dirty, crowded like sardines, and increasingly dangerous. I know women who won't ride it in broad daylight, let alone at night.
If you look at the Light Rail Train line grid (and planned grid) in Calgary (which at one time was the second largest land based city per population on the continent next to L.A, don't know if that's still true), you'll see it doesn't come close to reaching the four quarters of the city, and was never planned that way from the start. It's just one crooked line up the middle (and a smaller leg in the NE)- foolish urban planning - this city has always had some of the worst of it in the Western world.
When something like $350 MILLION is being spent this coming year in Calgary on recreational facilities alone, you know EXACTLY where the priorities of this phony green municipal administration lie. With the DEVELOPERS and the leisure class - that's where - and not with sustainability and the working classes as they should be.
Canadians continue to allow themselves to be cheated out of desperately needed public services by socially-ignorant and environmentally-illiterate political leaders because they have NO vision for the future, themselves.
anarcho
30-01-2008
We are like Europe!
Choo44, who claims "we aren't Europe." Ahem, we are talking about the Lower Mainland not the sparsely populated interior. Consider also the vast majority of car trips are short distance. The Lower Mainland is what, 50 km wide and 110 km long (roughly) which is 5500 sq. km, in which you have about[i] 2 million people. This is 365 people per sq km. Belgium has 350 people per sq. km. So the trains and other forms of auto-limiting public transit would do quite well.
tresfun
30-01-2008
More roads attract more cars
The only way this would be a "green project" is if all the roads and cars were painted that colour.
Budd Campbell
30-01-2008
Debating in emotive, silly-bugger, junior high school terms
G West
"Moreover, there is no substitute for rational district-wide planning."
On this one point ,and this one point alone G West, you’re absolutely right. The BC Govt needs to forcibly amalgamate the entire GVRD into a single, fully-integrated municipality, and a single health and education district, with one set of wards for electing both trustees and councilors, and a single region-wide direct election for Mayor. Simply put, BC needs a Premier who will have the balls to do what Premier Mike Harris did in Toronto.
Moat
“I have seen the LA freeway at its best - eight lanes moving in the same direction in harmony. The amount of volume and speed is amazing. However, have a minor accident in one of those eight lanes, and watch the other seven slow to a crawl. Anyone who works in Aurora and has to travel to Toronto can picture this.
I am still waiting for someone to prove where the freeway system has lived up to its billing.”
You just did, Moat, Toronto and Los Angeles. I keep hearing people say the traffic doesn’t move in American cities like Los Angeles and Seattle. They forget that one can now check webcams!
And have you ever noticed how this debate is always put in emotive, silly-bugger, junior high school terms? If you want to browbeat the audience you invoke Los Angeles or Dalls/Ft Worth as the bogey man. You don’t say to people, “You don’t want Vancouver to become like San Francisco, do you?” And you don’t threaten them with Boston, or Portland, or even New York either, even though all those cities have freeways too. The audience might not react on queue if the wrong exemplar is used.
In Vancouver the anti-freeway gospel that first took root during the 1960s when Point Grey Liberal hack Walter Hardwick wanted to protect his wealthy Westside neighbours from being taxed to pay for a freeway system that would be primarily of benefit to people in East Vancouver and in the suburbs of Burnaby and Coquitlam, has become part of the standard package for a certain group of self-righeous and self-conscious urban poseurs. It’s part of their rejection of too much Americanism. For them, freeways mean Coca-Colonization, memories of Vietnam, the war on drugs, and Iraq and George W. Bush. Well, I guess it’s true the Interstate system was started by Eisenhower, Bush’s fellow Republican, so there probably is some intellectual substance to the argument after all!
Budd Campbell
30-01-2008
A maximum of about 300 people per trip
Grumpy
“In Victoria commuter rail's operating cost has just been put at $2 million a year (Times Colonist Tuesday Jan, 29). By using O-Train (Diesel LRT) on existing railway railway tracks! Nanaimo has a North/South Railway Corridor, plus a line that goes directly downtown.”
I don’t know what that system would carry with just two cars, presumably a maximum of about 300 people per trip at full load, but I have been on the O-train and it wasn’t running very fast. I would prefer a system that used the E&N tracks as far as Nanaimo and ran both ways several times per day. If you want fixed rail to succeed, you need to think higher speeds, longer distances, wherever possible. You need to attract the vehicle driver for whom significant time savings and increased personal safety and reduced stress are serious issues. They’re willing to pay for the service.
Stump
30-01-2008
not so
Cars aren't a safer or less stressful way to travel. There are very strong arguments that point out the time savings are also illusory and simply scavenged from other parts of our life, ie - working to pay for the car and its upkeep. Further, drivers are already subsidized, so one can debate just how willing they are to pay for the service.
So many problems... from childhood obesity to the high costs of running cities can be effectively fought with a national commitment to self-propulsion as a primary means of personal mobility. Failing a groundswell of altruism from the general public, we need a multi-faceted approach to evolving past the personal automobile dependence we've fostered.
Stump
30-01-2008
sorry. Meant to conclude by
sorry. Meant to conclude by saying that roads are clearly not one of those facets.
Grumpy
30-01-2008
Comments
Contrary to what CHOO said, the Europeans have had a long and wonderful debate about transit, that's why they are getting it right!
Alda - The Calgary C-Train has been such a unmitigated disaster that it's carrying over 250,000 passengers a day. The problem with the C-train is the the pro highway Klein government starved Calgary of the funds to build more LRT to cater to the demand! I guess by your standard of unmitigated disaster, SkyTrain must top the C-Train, because it cost three times as much to build, yet carries less ridership!
Budd - Capacity is a function of headway, a two car O-Train would carry about 500 persons; thus capacity is said to be 500 persons per hour per direction. More trains operating per hour the higher the capacity.
If the O-train ran just 12 hours a day, capacity would be 6,000 persons per hour per direction, per day. Operating 4 trains would double this.
$14 million investment, plus under $2 million annual subsidy, sounds much better than over $5 billion investment and over $200 million annual subsidy for SkyTrain!
Actually, the famous Hass-Klau international transit study, Bus or Light Rail, Making the Right Choice, found that the ambiance of the system is a better attractor for new ridership than speed. Speed is important, but came in fourth after ease of ticketing; lack of transfer; etc. were more important than speed.
G West
30-01-2008
Sorry Budd - I don't think so
Your long-term snit at Walter Hardwick notwithstanding, you might want to recall that Alan Artibise was also pretty influential in planning at UBC and he was no Liberal or Socred. He’s an old friend of mine and he’s far from the only fella who showed thumbs down on freeways – including the residents of Strathcona. I think your memory’s slipping.
http://www.sfu.ca/dialog/cities/bio.htm
Moreover, if you know much about him, you'll recognize he's still promoting integrated multi-modal transit and NOT freeways.
Oh, one other thing, all those freeway plagued cities you're so proud of. Have a look at their actual air quality results - compared with Federal standards [see link below].
So, maybe go back to the drawing board – as Jimmy notes above – we’ve heard – and critiqued it all before. Furthermore, what might work for transit and neighbourhood planning won't necessarily work for health care. In fact, there are many indications that smaller may well be better in that department.
Check out the air in those 'freeway' cities here:
http://www.aqmd.gov/smog/AQSCR2006/2006_AirQuality.pdf
RickW
30-01-2008
And.....
(just heard it on the news today) the independant building contractors want to ALR rules "loosened up" in order to build more houses, so that (just as adding more roads will bring down pollution) adding more houses will bring down the skyrocketing prices, and make them "affordable".
Yeah....right!
(I wasn't aware that Orwell's Newspeak has become the official language of government and business)
alda
30-01-2008
Grumpy, Yes, you've tempered
Grumpy,
Yes, you've tempered my point a little; yes, of course, it's better than nothing.
What I meant to convey is that while the C-Train (LRT) is a valuable and excellent mode of transit, it SHOULD be twice as efficient given the taxes spent on it and potential ridership. The bungling and ineptness of politicians in recognizing which transportation priorities count most (mass transit above individual transportation) is what's stopped it from being what it should be...and plenty of Calgarians - both those who have to take the train, and those who want to take the train for eco reasons -- are fed up with the delay and neglect of the system, as they have every right to be.
Budd Campbell
30-01-2008
THE BIKING THINGY
"So many problems... from childhood obesity to the high costs of running cities can be effectively fought with a national commitment to self-propulsion as a primary means of personal mobility."
The GVRD likes to peddle this stuff, Stump. At a meeting in Maple Ridge to update the LRSP one of their planner types wanted us all to consider bicycling. I responded that most bicycling is recreational, not for functional trips, and asked her what kinds of distances the GVRD was considering in terms of biking to work. She had no answer, as you would expect, since the whole thing is just a talking point to divert attention from transit and road work.
Moat
31-01-2008
Budd Campbell….where have your driven?
Ok, Budd… I laughed when I read this…
You wrote…
I have driven in most of these places you have mentioned…. the exception being Dallas, but struggling through Houston was a bad enough experience!
But let us look at your other “exemplars”…. Are you suggesting that Boston/New York are good examples of functional freeways? You are joking right? I have driven from Boston to New York on more than one occasion. Traffic is so bad that when I was last there, they actually allow people to drive in the “break down lanes”. They even have signs to outline the rules of such a practice.
New York City itself is ok…but that is because they have a kick-butt subway system and massive parking costs.
So, then let’s check the webcams and traffic reports as you suggest. They are all recorded. I am pretty sure that certain people in the transportation ministry have claimed that the is 14 hours per day of rush hour on Highway 1. We know that this is BS. Listen the the reports on CKNW. Compare "traffic moving" to "gridlocked" and see if the 14 hour rush hour exists. While Highway 1 is ugly, it is not as bad as Falcon and others claim.
What clogs things up are the people making numerous trips to the big box stores… Have a look at Coquitlam Center at rush hour, or that IKEA on Lougheed at closing time. Yuck.
Budd, bottom line is that you have not given me a shining example of a freeway system living up to its billing. I again state that Los Angeles and Toronto are close…. But only in good weather, with no accidents, construction, or police incidents. And where is this going to happen?
We have had over 40 years of this mess – the costly freeway experiment is not working.
VanIsle Guy
31-01-2008
Vancouverites
For a topic about Nanaimo, there sure is a lot of talk about Vancouver, skytrain and the GVRD.
I agree with the poster that mentioned the railway right through Nanaimo. This could (and should) be put to good use. However, the politicians in this townhave no capacity to think beyond their precious (and expensive) convention centre. Sad.
elisasaffle
31-01-2008
Sightline analysis showing that road-widening increases emission
Hi all, you need to check out the study that Sightline did on this very topic. We found, definitively, that widening roads increases total global warming emissions over the long term (making up for some emissions reductions due to congestion relief). Link is here.
And clearly, planning for climate change is all about long-term thinking.
Budd Campbell
31-01-2008
CAN'T BE BOTHERED THIS TIME
"Hi all, you need to check out the study that Sightline did on this very topic."
If you don't mind, elisasaffle, I think I'll pass this time, I just can't be bothered putting up with the extra eyestrain. I looked at this piece of work once before and found it to be an amusing case study in making something look very scholarly when really it's just a set of assumptions carefully chosen to drive the desired result.
BTW, elisa, do you really think people who have passed Grade 8 are dumb enough to fall for this kind of thing?