On March 13, the Manitoba Climate Action Team (MCAT) will host Get Moving On Climate! A Transportation Event at the Dakota Community Centre/Jonathan Toews Sportsplex at 1188 Dakota St.

MCAT is a coalition made up of five environmental organizations: the Green Action Centre, Climate Change Connection, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Wilderness Committee and the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition.

Curt Hull, project director for Climate Change Connection, says that when MCAT hosted the Climate Jam, a “forum exploring the urgency of climate change,’’ in February 2019, “it just solidified how well (the organizations) worked together and how well-aligned (they) are, so we decided to make that alignment more formal.”

Hull says that MCAT, supported by the Winnipeg Foundation, would like to “collectively make more Manito- bans more aware of climate change and more deeply aware of solutions, and also develop a comprehensive climate action plan that would be appropriate to the science of climate change with respect to Manitoba.”

MCAT is putting on a series of events based on the key topic areas from the Global Warming of 1.5 Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their first event, The Future of Feasting, took place in November 2019. Hull says Get Moving on Climate! will focus on “the challenge of how we move people and goods without gasoline or diesel.”

The event will feature a keynote – which Hull says is currently titled “The Dirt on Oil Dependence” – followed by two opportunities to participate in one of six workshops on climate prob- lems and solutions in different sectors of transportation: public transit; elec- tric vehicles; active transportation; ride sharing, ride hailing and car sharing; inter-urban transportation; rural solu- tions; and goods transportation.

Nicole Roach, the sustainable transportation project coordinator for the Green Action Centre, will lead the session on ride sharing, ride hailing and car sharing.

“We really want to educate the public on the difference between ride sharing and ride hailing and encourage use of car-sharing programs, and also let people know that we do have a ride-sharing app that allows people to match with others that are going to the same destination, called the Go Manitoba app,” she says.

“In Winnipeg, currently we have TappCar, and Uber and Lyft are trying to get into the market, so we want to educate people so they know all the information when deciding what is the best way forward for our sustainable transit of the future,” she says.

“The main difference between ride sharing and ride hailing is that ride shar- ing takes two rides and turns them into one, reducing the number of vehicles on the road,” Roach says. “Ride hailing is essentially a taxi service through an app and does not reduce the number of vehicles on the road. It has been proven to increase vehicle registration and miles driven, and it primarily displaces trips that would have been taken by walking, cycling or taking public transit.”

Roach says that when leading the sessions, she is excited to hear feedback from Go Manitoba users, tell others about the service and raise awareness of the differences between ride sharing, ride hailing and car sharing.

Get Moving on Climate! takes place Fri- day, March 13 at Dakota Community Centre (1188 Dakota St.). Doors open at 5 p.m., and the event runs from 6 to 9 p.m. Registration is available through Eventbrite.

Published in Volume 74, Number 21 of The Uniter (March 12, 2020)