A pathway to reach zero emissions by 2050
After years of having their own vehicles, Curtis Hull and his wife decided to go down to one. As part of Climate Change Connection, the couple wanted to ‘walk the walk,’ and went even further by selling their only vehicle in 2008. They haven’t looked back since.
Spending his entire career in industry as an engineer, Hull’s life was changed after seeing Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Eight months later, he was working full-time on climate change. His general concern for his children and grandchildren now became focused on climate change. In Hull’s view, “It is the future that we are responsible for as adults but they’re inheriting.”
As lead author of ‘Manitoba’s Road to Resilience, Climate Action Team’s Community Climate Action Plan’, Hull and the Climate Action Team developed a pathway to reach zero emissions by 2050. One path is using public and active transportation.
“An important part of the transit masterplan is the development of a frequent service network,” says Hull. “Frequency and span are important to shift people’s mindset towards eco-commuting”.
“Frequency is how long will it be before the next bus arrives. Span is how many hours a week will it be available.” Hull notes, “The more infrastructure we get, the more people use it. And the more they use it, the more they want the service and the safer they feel.”
Although the pandemic played a large part in the decline of ridership, Winnipeg transit reported steady declines prior. For many, safety has been and continues to be a contributing factor.
Hull notes, “The reason people are reluctant to take buses these days, besides COVID, is they don’t feel safe on the bus. They hear stories of assaults and bad behaviour and think that’s the culture of buses. But if you have many people on the bus from all walks of life, the culture is more complete. There is more of a spectrum of people that are on the bus and there’s safety in numbers.”
To learn more about Manitoba’s Climate Action Team, visit climateactionmb.ca
