Sink Or Ride

April 18, 2013

If we were only permitted to travel around this city on modes of transport paid in full, upfront by each of us on a fee-for-service basis, we’d all be walking everywhere we went. hackingthroughthejungleThere’s probably an argument to be made about bicycle use as well. Its impact on infrastructure a fraction of its costs.

For every other way we get from point A to point B? Subsidized to the hilt. Roads for vehicular traffic are not fully paid for through gas taxes and registration fees. While transit users in Toronto pay an unusually high percentage of the system’s annual operating costs, a good chunk of it comes from other revenue sources. And we haven’t even got to the matter of capital costs.

So if our car, bus, streetcar, subway travel all is subsidized to varying degrees, why do we expect the public bike sharing system, Bixi, to pay its own way?

In normal circumstances that would be purely a rhetorical question. You’d think mobility was mobility regardless of the number of wheels under your ass. This, however, is Toronto 2014. subsidizeCycling is nothing more than a sport or a jaunty ride about town, to and fro places of latte-sipping.

Reports of Bixi’s financial duress emerged on Tuesday. The Montreal based company is looking to sell off its franchises including the one in Toronto. A couple years back, the city signed on as a loan guarantor to help get the operation up and going. Now it’s on the hook for about $3.9 million.

Unsurprisingly, Mayor Ford is uninterested in helping out. The chair of the city’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, is not any more enthusiastic about the idea. He’d prefer to off-load it onto the private sector.

“Government, fundamentally, isn’t the first place where you look to run a business,” the councillor said. “The private sector is better at making a dollar because it is their dollar. tossoverboardI’m a firm believer that if it can be in the Yellow Pages, it shouldn’t be in the Blue Pages.”

*sigh*

On Tuesday, I wanted to hug Councillor Minnan-Wong to my bosom for having the courage of his convictions in speaking out and voting against a casino. I’d always questioned his courage and believed his only conviction was reducing local government to a heaping rubble. But by later that day, he’d returned to form.

Only the firmest set of anti-cycling minds saw the bike sharing program as some blue chip business venture. bixiAccording to the National Post’s Megan O’Toole, in a report going to the Executive Committee next week, Toronto’s GM of Transportation Services suggests BIXI has become “’an important part of the transportation mix’ in the city and a key component of the Pan Am Games transportation plan.” ‘An important part of the transportation mix’, you say? Well, let’s just hand that over to the private sector to maximize profits why don’t we.

BIXI was never intended to individually cover great distances. It’s all about short hauls. Think timed transfers we’d like to have on the TTC – hop on-hop off privileges – but on a bike.

Set up to actually succeed, BIXI could immediately begin paying back any investment in it from the city by helping to alleviate the stress along certain transit routes. Right now, I’m thinking the downtown streetcar lines, especially King Street. fieldofdreamsReduce the ridership there in order to re-allocate TTC resources in other parts of the city.

Of course, it’s not as easy as simply putting up more stands filled with more bikes. Biking infrastructure also has to be improved to further entice reticent but interested would-be riders to casually start using the system as part of their transit routine. All part of the concept of induced demand. Build it (and maintain it properly) and they will come.

As part of the city’s overall transportation outlay, coming to the rescue of BIXI would be a modest outlay. For a fraction of the amount we’re looking to shell out keeping the Gardiner in the pink, we could triple the number of BIXI bikes and broaden its reach from High Park to Broadview and Dupont Street to the lake. Hardly the ‘drain on the city’s finances’ the Public Works chair pretends to fret about. eraseA concern particularly rich coming from the man who cost the city a couple hundred thousand dollars reverting the Jarvis bike lanes back to a 5th lane for cars and another $19.4 million trying to bury the Gardiner Expressway Environmental Assessment without council consent.

But we all know this isn’t about sound policy or good governance. It never is with this administration. BIXI’s financial problems offer up yet another golden opportunity to kill off a David Miller initiative. That’s really the only kind of agenda they have left.

– sharingly submitted by Cityslikr

10 Comments | Bike lanes, Biking, Budget, City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Is This A David Simon Project?

October 4, 2012

The Rob Ford Story was starting to play out like a classic Hollywood narrative.

Underdog outsider, derided by all the cool kids, defies the odds and becomes student council president mayor of Toronto. The heady heights go straight to his ego, hubris rising, he nearly throws it all away, forgetting where it was he came from and alienating all those who believed in him when nobody else did. He wallows in self-pity, mistakes piling on mistakes, looking very much like he’ll fall back into the little man obscurity he’d just escaped.

That part where Rocky, having achieved international fame after the heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed, has tapped him to be his next an opponent, slacks off, distracted by adoring fans and all the temptations of celebrity. Burgess Meredith is always yelling at him and makes him chase a chicken. I think that’s in Rocky, right? Maybe Rocky II. I just know it’s not the one with the Russian robot.

Redemption awaits.

Or as former campaign director and chief of staff, now unofficial Fordian gadfly, Nick Kouvalis exclaimed: Rob 2.0 He gets his shit together, bounds up the set of stairs and dances/shadow boxes triumphantly. Flying high now! Flying high now!

At the fall city council meeting, the first after his summer of deep discontent, Mayor Ford promises and delivers to beat back those angling to keep the Jarvis bike lanes, one of his early shows of power in Act One. “It’s what the people want,” the mayor pronounced, embracing the populism that got him elected. The foul weather now behind him, it was playing out like a blockbuster storybook tale. Eye of the Tiger and all that.

Except that there seemed to be some genre busting going on. It wasn’t really the mayor who trumped his adversaries on the bike lane issue but, instead, his diabolical evil henchman, Public Works and Infrastructure chair, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong. He seemed to do all the heavy lifting while Mayor Ford basked in the accolades.

And then there was the addition of a mystery element.

Three middle of the road councillors inexplicably flip-flopped and swung the vote in the mayor’s favour. Why? As Matt Elliott pointed out yesterday, councillors Ana Bailão, Michelle Berardinetti and Josh Colle had all expressed their intention to keep the Jarvis bike lanes and had they all voted that way the result wouldn’t have been a 24-19 win for the mayor but a 22-21 loss. What happened?

Probably some horse trading. One of the amendments was to pay for the removal of the bike lanes not from the biking infrastructure budget as has been floated earlier. Some good ol’ tit for tat. But there was little other glaringly obvious swapping in evidence.

Surely none of these shifty three were still intimidated by the mayor or the power he didn’t really yield. Maybe back in the day when his power was absolute and they were greenhorn rookies. Not now. They were in control, the decision in their hands. Such capitulation seemed more than a bit baffling.

We had now entered Sidney Lumet territory.

Everybody but Mayor Ford, that is.

He continued on his rag-to-riches-to rags-to riches arc. With victory secured, redemption was now at hand. Reaching out to his enemies as represented by the downtown elitists at CBC, the mayor would admit to his own failings, how he’d learned from them and would now rise above the fray to secure his rightful place as the mayor of all people. Everyone hugs (or in the Bollywood DVD only version for increased global sales, dance and sing together), credits roll, The End.

But again, Mayor Ford went off script.

As John McGrath beautifully detailed at the Torontoist this feel good ending did not come to pass. The mayor blustered, made up facts and figures, disputed staff numbers, spouted platitudes and empty rhetoric. Basically reverted back to his desultory Act Two behaviour.

This is what happens when your script is written by committee.

Mayor Ford returned to council to slay the dragon of the much hated plastic bag ban but there was no deus ex machine in sight, the cavalry did not ride in over the hill. The mayor did not have the 30 votes needed to re-open the ban debate. It ended just like that. A whimper. Wait, what? It’s over? Where’s the twist? The surprise plan B that snatches victory from the jaws of defeat?

Worse still for Mayor Ford, he faded into the background, became a bit player. Yesterday’s news was not about him, not about his ignominious defeat but about the Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti-Gord Perks face off. City Hall Brawl, the Toronto Sun screamed.

Earlier in the day, before the plastic bag ban showdown, Councillor Mammoliti rose in chambers and harrumphed something about the Ombudsman’s Report that was to be debated later in the meeting being ‘politically motivated’. Chastised by council and told by Speaker Frances Nunziata to retract his statement and apologize. He refused, stomping from the council floor before being forced out, and up to the media gallery, the councillor continued his tirade in front of the cameras.

Enter our shaggy anti-hero, Councillor Perks. He gets all up in his colleagues face, demanding he apologize or leave the chambers. Back off, out my face. Get out. Stand back. Get out.

Conflict. The key ingredient of any good drama.

In what then appears as a reversal of fortune, Councillor Perks is forced to apologize for his outburst at council while Councillor Mammoliti issues a typical non-apology apology. The mayor’s foes have over-stepped and succeeded only in embarrassing themselves. They hand him the public opinion victory he could not secure himself.

Except the story’s not done yet.

It could be seen that our seemingly reckless anti-hero, Councillor Perks, tactically fell on his sword. In making his confrontation today’s headline, it left people wondering what the two councillors fighting about. What indeed? The Ombudsman’s Report damning the mayor’s office’s involvement in the civic appointments process.

As I sit writing this, I’m listening to city council’s debate over the report. No good can come of this for the mayor. It’s bad news about bad conduct and that’s what everyone’s going to be talking about. This council meeting, the first of what was supposed to be his comeback, will be remembered only for a report highlighting his failure of governance as mayor.

Hardly the Hollywood ending he needed. In fact, this isn’t a movie at all with its interminable requisite sequels. It’s a sprawling miniseries saga that continues to defy expectations. A cautionary tale where the hero does not triumph.

– cinematically submitted by Cityslikr

3 Comments | Bike lanes, City Building, City Council, Elections 2010, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Toronto Sun | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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A Modest Proposal

September 18, 2012

With yesterday’s news that the province would brush aside requests for any new environmental assessment ahead of the planned Jarvis bike lane removal and reversion to a 5th lane of car traffic, Public Works and Infrastructure chair, Denzil Minnan-Wong hailed the decision. “… Jarvis [Street] is an important road for motorists,” he proclaimed. In that quick sentiment, the councillor revealed himself to be both car-centric, a valiant defender of the automobile in the ongoing War on the Car, as well as wholly ignorant of late 20th/early 21st-century theories on optimal traffic flow.

For all those of you out there who believe in their heart of hearts, gut of guts, that more roads will decrease congestion, I defy you to Google some variation of ‘more roads less congestion’ and find much proof to back your belief. In fact, you’ll probably find the exact opposite to be true. Counterintuitively, studies seem to show that more roads (at least, more ‘free’ roads) inexorably lead to more traffic while, inversely, fewer roads can, if managed properly, actually help reduce congestion.

There are a few caveats to all that, of course; a major one being adequate alternatives to car travel. Which makes Councillor Minnan-Wong’s extolling the fact that they’re constructing a separated bike lane a few blocks over on Sherbourne Street so empty. It’s merely a replacement not an addition. One of the surest ways to reduce congestion is to get more people out of their cars. Like roads attracting motorists, bike lanes attract cyclists. The more there are, the more there are. More cyclists would help translate into fewer car drivers.

The irony of such willful disregard of reality on the part of pro-car types should not be overlooked. The Jarvis bike lane battle has never been about anything other than satisfying and mollifying the wishes of the city’s car drivers and their misguided sense of entitlement that yes, as a matter of fact, they do own the roads. Own them, pay for them and, ultimately, should decide who to share them with.

That only the last part of that sentiment is actually true says almost all there needs to be said about transit planning around these parts. Car drivers and their advocates are still – ahem, ahem – behind the wheel when we talk transportation issues. The narrative is almost always framed as how best to accommodate motorists and their needs. Separated and/or off road bike lanes. Subways rather than at grade, dedicated ROW LRTs. Road, roads and more roads.

None of these, in and of their own, will be the magic bullet that slays this region’s growing transit woes. Opening up more space for cars like Councillor Minnan-Wong is bound and determined to do with Jarvis Street is surely going to exacerbate congestion. (Don’t believe me? Think I’m just some bike riding pinko? Bring it up with Scientific American.) It’s a boneheaded, spite-based decision propped up purely by rhetoric. When the reversible 5th lane fails to alleviate drive times, they’ll just be another false bogey man trotted out as an excuse. This time it’s bike lanes. Next time.. ? Hey, you kids! Get off the sidewalk! That’s where I park my car!

If the chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure really wanted to help out drivers on Jarvis and insisted on bringing back the extra lane, he’d be bold and introduce a motion to toll it. Get the ball rolling on raising revenue to improve transit. Start primitive, using photo radar cameras located at undisclosed locations along the route to snap the license plates of anyone in the middle lane. Let’s start at, I don’t know, $10 a pop. First pay off the 250 K+ it’ll cost the city to re-install the car lane and whatever new tolling equipment needed. After that, dedicate it all to public transit. A down payment on an actual downtown relief line perhaps?

Impractical, you say? I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions.

But it has to be better than simply reverting back to something we absolutely know ahead of time won’t offer any solution to our congestion problems. It’s nothing more than a sop to those who insist on putting their self-interest ahead of everyone else’s. And that is the surest way to making matters worse on our roads.

– helpfully submitted by Cityslikr

8 Comments | Bike lanes, City Building, City Council, Killer Cars, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Toronto Sun | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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Bike Lane Crazy

June 25, 2012

This isn’t just about bike lanes although it might seem that way.

If you’re going to build bike lanes, you don’t simply build bike lanes. You build a bike lane network. Off-road doesn’t mean out of sight. It’s all well and good to dedicate hydro corridors to a safe and leisurely Sunday meander but if it leads only in circles, going nowhere in particular, it won’t serve as a needed form of transit.

And that’s why we build bike lanes. We’re not merely slapping in a lane here and another there, wherever we can find space that least inconveniences the non-bike riders amongst us, to score empty political points. As responsible city builders rather than hell bent ideologues, we’re all looking for ways to help alleviate traffic congestion.

At least, that’s what cities that take alleviating traffic congestion seriously do. (No, not just in Europe. Look what’s happening in New York City.)

Rather than view cyclists as irritants, determined only to inflict the maximum amount of aggravation on already put upon vehicle drivers out of nothing more than smug, self-righteous spite, there are places that accommodate bikes as viable transit alternatives. Modes that help ease traffic flow not impede it. Infrastructure gets built enthusiastically with the expectation of removing cars from the roads. Yes, there’s an ecological element to it — fewer cars mean less pollution — but each additional commuter on a bike, well, you do the math.

Over the course of 3 days last week in the Netherlands, I rode some 160 kilometres from small seaside towns through country sides, across protected dunes and into cities. In my best estimation maybe 10 but probably closer to 5 kilometres of that distance was on shared roads without some sort of designated lane, and truthfully, some of that happened due to errors in my navigation. There were segments entirely segregated from everything but other bikes. Some shared with only pedestrians. Protected on road lanes and those demarcated only by painted lines.

No one size fits all solution. Just an accepted notion that cycling was an integral part of any rational transit system and should be accorded appropriate space and value. Biking as more than some left wing conspiracy seeking to bring about the downfall of capitalism. People wanting to go about their business on 2 wheels.

It really is that easy. There just has to be the will. The will comes from understanding this isn’t a zero sum equation. Cars and bicycles can exist together in something resembling harmony. Places as cold and wet as ours is sometimes; places as seemingly inhospitable to a culture of cycling as ours can be in, say, mid-February. Places that weren’t always the bike friendly havens they appear to be today.

Failure to accept this possibility is nothing more than a failure of imagination and nerve. A basic inability to move past the status quo.

That’s why this is more than just bike lanes.

– cyclingly submitted by Cityslikr

2 Comments | Bike lanes, Biking, City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, On The Road | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Raging At Road Rage

May 15, 2012

News just broke that the police have charged a driver with manslaughter in the vehicular death of a skateboarder yesterday.

To use the rather indelicate language of my colleague, Cityslikr, have we lost our fucking minds?!

What situation could possibly arise, what confrontation so dramatic that anyone could justify, rationalize using their automobile as a weapon?

And this is not some isolated incident, some lone sociopath behind the wheel of a car, meting out a little frontier justice at some perceived slight.

Let me back up here. [Hopefully no one’s behind you. Did you check your rear view mirror first? – ed.]

I’ll try not to convict the alleged manslaughterer in my own court of public opinion. He’s simply been charged. Perhaps a judge and/or jury will look at all the evidence and decide that the situation was nothing more than an unfortunate accident. But it seems witness accounts of the incident along with some video footage that caught a portion of it [Unlike, say, the video catching a Toronto Star reporter red handed in the act of spying on Mayor Ford’s kids. – ed.] is compelling enough for the police to proceed with the charge.

But I don’t think it too wildly off the mark to suggest that road rage has become endemic. How many days do any of us experience, whether driving, cycling, walking, skateboarding, free of shouted profanities or flicking off of others either between drivers or across transportation modes? How many blocks do you go before experiencing the grating sound of an aggressive horn announcing that somebody’s pissed off with something somebody else is doing?

Hey, jag off! The light turned green a nanosecond ago! I’m very important and have very important places to go!!

All leading to the inevitable, unsurprising yet still totally shocking outcome that occurred yesterday.

Where does such anger come from?

I’d argue that, at least in part, it comes from a deep well of entitlement. What’s that bumper sticker read? As a matter of fact, I do own the road. Watch then councillor Rob Ford’s speech on bike lanes from a few years back. “What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks. Sooner or later, you’re going to get bitten.” [Or have your head smashed open on a curb. – ed.] “Every year we have dozens of people hit by cars or trucks. Well, no wonder. Roads are built for buses, cars and trucks. Not for people on bikes. And my heart bleeds for them when I hear someone gets killed but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”

This is not to pin blame for the skateboarder’s death directly on the mayor. [Absolutely not. He didn’t specifically say skateboarders don’t belong on the roads. – ed.] But his laissez-faire attitude toward non-drivers’ fate if they dare hazard road travel more than reinforces the privileged sense of entitlement many behind the wheel carry with them. So no, it’s not a case of counselling murder [Although the odd dust-up or casual contact on your way to work can be a source of grins and chuckles to the mayor and his councillor brother. – ed.] so much as it is absolving motorists of any responsibility for their actions.

“And my hearts bleed for them when I hear someone gets killed but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”

Tagging along with Cityslikr on his Scandanavian fact-finding mission last week, I was struck by how a civilized, non-car first society deals with, ummmm, living in the 21-st century. Pedestrians, cyclists and cars share the roads equally and, seemingly, in that order. Might doesn’t make right. In 1997, Sweden undertook a traffic safety initiative called Vision Zero. It’s goal? “No loss of life is acceptable.” The exact opposite sentiment to one that includes ‘well, at the end of the day…’ as we wipe our hands clean.

“In every situation, a person might fail. The road system should not.”

While lifting responsibility off of individuals as the primary cause of traffic accidents, Vision Zero looks to design traffic systems that minimize the damage done when accidents happen. Speed Kills, Safety First and all those other touchie-feelie, kooky, left wing European sensibilities. So along with promoting safer car design, for example, there’s much talk of ‘traffic calming’ and ‘pedestrian zones’ and the kind of thinking that doesn’t simply put ease of mobility before personal safety.

At the end of the day, really, the fault for injuries and fatalities resulting from traffic accidents lies at the feet of those who view transit through the single lens of speed first and the primacy of the private automobile above all other forms of personal transport. To shrug off the death of a cyclist under the wheels of a motorized vehicle or a pedestrian struck down in the middle of the road with a, well, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place or they should’ve looked both ways simply lays the groundwork for the more homicidal tendencies of a small percentage of drivers who become temporarily unhinged behind the wheel. The roads are built for cars, goddammit! Get the fuck out of my way!!

If a cyclist or pedestrian or skateboarder or rollerblader isn’t supposed to be on the road then they can be viewed as trespassers when the are. Indulged or tolerated at best, the situation can be made dicier if they don’t exhibit the proper amount of deference. And occasionally when they push back hard enough and exert their right to use the roads, they take their lives into their own hands, swimming with the sharks as they are. It’s an easy escalation.

An acceptance of accidents (fatal or not) as just a part of doing business normalizes death on our roads. Shit happens. What are you going to do? Don’t want to get hurt? Travel around in this biggest, meanest vehicle you can find. [Hey! That gives me a great promotional angle to sell cars. Note to self: target soccer moms. – ed.] The more of us who do that, the more traffic there is, the more confrontation. Road rage just comes with the territory. Don’t want to get hurt? Show some respect and let me have my way.

These aren’t rules of the road. It’s a guide to survival of the fittest. As a matter of fact, I do own the road. You’ve been warned. Use it at your own risk.

[And as we go to post, news of a cyclist struck by car earlier today. – ed.]

– subduedly submitted by Urban Sophisticat

2 Comments | Bike lanes, Biking, City Building, City Council, Killer Cars, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Toronto Sun, Toronto Star | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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