All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Letting Go The Wheel

Posted on July 4, 2016 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I spent the better part of 5 hours this holiday weekend behind the wheel of a Dodge Journey, apparently the auto aficionado’s choice of SUV or… minivan or whatever thing this thing is called. How would I know the vehicle’s desirability? As soon as I returned it to the rental counter, it was summoned away to be washed and sent back out immediately upon request from another customer.

I did not sign up for a Dodge Journey, nor any other SUV or minivan. With just the 3 of us heading out of town for a couple days, figured a 4-door intermediate sized car would do the trick. But when I arrived at the rental place, there wasn’t a car on the lot. Just everything on steroids. My request for the smallest one they had delivered up the Journey. Yeah, the Journey. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to park it in our tiny garage. (Spoiler alert: Mission Accomplished, with room to spare.)

Once out on the highway, the Dodge Journey drove like in a car commercial. If you closed your eyes and pretended all those other cars weren’t there. Only, not for too long. That’s kind of dangerous driving.

Seats as comfortable as any in my living room. Sound system better than mine at home. A/C keeping us cool on demand. Plenty of room for all the stuff we’ve packed in to make a summer long weekend complete.

Eventually, when traffic did thin out, after a couple hours, the Dodge Journey hit 140, 145 without me even really noticing. This, as the ad man’s copy reads, was a smooth ride. Enjoyable even, to a man who, at the best of times, hates being in a car.

It all got me to thinking about the not-too-distant future when we’d be handing over the task of driving fully to computers. Autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars and the like.

The visuals we’re presented, Jetson’s style, are tiny pods, moving us around efficiently, not careening here and there, zipping back and forth, but almost assembly line like. Everyone travelling in orderly fashion at the same speed, a speed conducive, one would assume, to street life. So, not at crazy breakneck speeds.

Even out on the highways where the private automobile and trucking of goods rule, at what speed will our self-driving cars be allowed to haul it? Around these parts with a posted speed limit of 100 km/h but in practice, more like 120 before anyone really starts to notice, how fast will be deemed too fast? Eliminating driver error through computer control would, presumably, notch it up somewhat. What number will be practical, feasible or desirable?

A bigger question might be: will drivers who are used to determining their driving speed for themselves, within the constraints of using our streets with fellow travellers, of course, be willing to hand over the controls to the machine? Are we really going to be content to stick with the posted limits along with everyone else? Isn’t the appeal (at least theoretically) of driving yourself the individualism to it? We’ve known almost since the private vehicle made its first appearance that speed kills yet we’ve proven ourselves unwilling to regulate their speed in any short of resolute way outside of road sign limits. Why are we still allowing cars on our streets and roads that are capable of going well over 300km/h, and building the infrastructure to accommodate such speeds?

Are we really to believe that with the advent of autonomous vehicles, we’re simply going to take our collective foot off the gas? Not to mention, give up the luxury something like the Dodge Journey offers up now for the confined space of the prototypical self-driving car that we’re seeing on the news reels. I have my doubts. Being in traffic is being in traffic whether you’re driving or not. It’s hard to imagine giving up all the mod cons that we’ve become accustomed to if we’re still spending an inordinate amount of time in our cars in return for someonething else assuming control of the wheel.

Our relationship with our cars has never been that kind of rational. You could argue that car dependence and the building of our environment for the primacy of private automobile use is the very definition of irrational. Yet the assumption now seems to be technology will bring a sense of order, logic and reason to our road use. The machines will save us!

Only if they rewire our thinking about how we move around our cities and places, changing our priorities, will they. Because if the easiest, most reliable and comfortable way to get to where you want to go is still from inside a car, nothing much is going to change. Fewer collisions and fatalities, which is not to be sniffed at, but cars first, cars foremost.

Unless, of course there are none remaining in the lot. Then we’ll all be moving around in Dodge Journeys. Riding in extreme comfort but still stuck in traffic despite the machine’s best efforts.

— semi-autonomously submitted by Cityslikr

You Can’t Take What’s Already Given

Posted on June 30, 2016 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

In less than a month’s time, on July 25^th, there’ll be a by-election in Ward 2 Etobicoke North to pick the successor to the late Rob Ford.

I know, right? Pretty much slipped my mind too. What with all the other news going on. Transit madness. Budget talk. The official start of summer, lazy, hazy days. Who’s got the time or inclination to wrap their head around a by-election right now?

Besides, the general consensus seems to be, Michael Ford, nephew of the last two Ward 2 city councillors, will take this in a cakewalk. Name recognition. A brand loyalty from voters. It’s a summer by-election. So low voter turnout will compound the advantage of an established candidate. Why waste resources fighting a no-win battle?

Why indeed.

I am hopelessly naïve on many aspects of politics, never more so than campaign politics.

I would’ve thought this to be a perfect opportunity to plant a non-Ford flag in Ward 2. It’s the only council election going (as opposed to the general municipal campaign where there are 44 wards and a mayor’s race to contend with). Marshall the forces. Get behind a candidate. Challenge these Ford dynastic aspirations.

Sure, you might not win. In fact, you probably won’t. Although, this notion of invincibility doesn’t entirely jibe with the 2014 election results that saw a former mayor and 4 time Ward 2 councillor enter the race, under the sympathetic shadow of illness, and only pull in 58% of the popular vote. That meant 42% of Ward 2 voters didn’t vote for Rob Ford last time out. Seems like a base that could be worked with this time around.

But Michael Ford’s a nice kid, I hear. He’s expressed nice sentiments to a community his uncle actively disliked and maligned. Give him a chance to prove he’s better than either of his uncles.

So, in fact, it’s more of a coronation than an election. Michael Ford isn’t forced to do anything but knock on doors and issue press releases like this one about the KPMG’s Revenue Options Study.

Ward 2 residents can’t afford billions of dollars in costly new taxes; I have heard this message loud and clear at the door. While I support investment in the City’s housing and transit infrastructure, additional work must be done to find internal savings and efficiencies, and leverage private investment, before we ask taxpayers for even more of their hard earned money.

Sound familiar? Yeah, to me too. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, issues statements that both his uncles would …

What gets me most about this, by-election or not, is that it represents something of a pattern I noticed going back to the 2014 municipal election. I worked a little on a campaign in Etobicoke, wrote about a number of suburban candidates. These were races that, for the most part, pretty much operated under the radar. No one news organization has the resources to cover 45 races, no matter how long a campaign may be. So these candidates in the wilderness wards are pretty much left to their own devices, left to dangle, making them even more susceptible to being steamrolled by the power of incumbency and other hyper-local forces.

Then we sit back and wonder why all these terrible councillors come down to City Hall from the suburbs. What’s wrong with voters out there? See? This is not our fault. It’s theirs. Just start voting better.

And when the opportunity like this one arises to challenge the status quo in places like Ward 2 – and make no mistake, Michael Ford is the status quo, he represents zero change except perhaps in tone, style – we shrug. What are you going to do? It’s a by-election. It’s summer. Low voter turnout. Name recognition. Why waste resources on fighting a losing battle?

So in waltzes another questionable local representative for the 416 hinterlands, leaving us shaking our heads. There’s a certain self-fulfillment in all that, a self-perpetuation. And the divisions continue.

I’ve heard similar rumblings looking at the mayor’s race in 2018. The mayor’s going to get re-elected. There’s nobody out there to challenge him. We’ll just concentrate on shoring up council support. The mayor is only one vote after all. Why waste our resources on that race?

Freed up of any significant challenger, you’ll have a mayor, all decked out in his inevitability, trying to shape the council even more in his image than it is now. His time and resources spent in wards where he’d really like to see a change of councillor, undermine his opposition. Sure, the mayor is just one vote but he’s made a lot of new council friends now, removed a few thorns in his side.

Maybe this is all too for want of nail from me. It is just a single ward by-election after all. But by constantly ceding ground in areas that you don’t think you can win, it winds up putting you on the defensive, concentrating on maintaining a base that you’re forced to defend rather than attempt to expand, reactive not proactive. Winning campaigns are rarely built like that.

— curiously submitted by Cityslikr

Brood Parasite

Posted on June 29, 2016 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

The cuckoo, it is said, deviously lays its eggs in another bird’s nest to have its young raised and reared by the unsuspecting guest parent. The cuckoo bird either hatches earlier or grows quicker than its host’s offspring, launching its faux-siblings from the nest in an effort to become the sole mouth to feed. A survival of the fittest tactic known as ‘brood parasitism’.

It strikes me as something too sinisterly perfect to be true. More like a child’s fable. No, not the white-washed ones we heard as kids. The grim ones, told by dour Germans or the icky Brits of the 18^th-century, full of impending doom, evil lurking around every corner, stranger danger. The original scared straight, morality tales to keep the children in line. Suspect everyone. Trust no one. Are they really your parents?

In that vein…

The Scarborough subway. A cuckoo’s egg laid by the Ford Administration in the nest of City Hall. In a bid to grow and flourish, it, in turn, lays waste to everything around it, mainly in the form of reputations of those trying to give it life, even with the best of intentions. Here, I’m thinking city staff who know what’s what, a wink’s as good as a nod, but try anyway to make the best of a bad situation. It’s not a beast of their making. They’ve tried, at times, to set the record straight. To no avail, in the end, their attempt to make it all seem legitimate only succeeds in damaging their own credibility.

For those who actually try to claim parentage of this impersonator, the result is even more unbecoming or, in the extreme case, self-immolating. It derails political aspirations. Karen Stintz. It further mocks those already prone to mocking. This is not that subway. It’s a completely different subway. Which, just so happens, to be in Scarborough like that other subway. Councillor Michelle Holland. It makes some say the kookiest things. “The subway is never going to be cheaper than it is today,” said Councillor Ana Bailão.

Nobody’s fooled. Everybody’s embarrassed. Maybe if we can just get past the pretense of it all, we can start having a rational discussion again.

Except that no longer seems possible because no one in any position of real power is willing to step forward and admit mistakes were made, bad decisions pursued for all the wrong reasons. At first we thought this was a good idea. Now we don’t. This was an egg that should never have been allowed to hatch.

Mayor John Tory may be in line to take the biggest hit for trying to maintain this fiction. Whatever claims to sound judgment and a sober approach to governance he may have once made are meaningless now, nothing but empty campaign slogans. With his Toronto Star op-ed on Monday, he jettisoned any semblance of good sense or consensus building. Think that’s just me talking, an avowed and self-proclaimed Tory critic? Or some other left-wing tongue-wagger in Torontoist?

Flip through the pages covering the transportation beat in the Star. Still not satisfied? How about this editorial in the august Globe and Mail? Both newspapers, by the way, that endorsed John Tory for mayor less than two years ago.

Why he’s taking such a risk to nurture somebody else’s terrible, terrible idea is probably both crassly obvious and backroom murky. Your guess is as good as mine. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter to John Tory because he, and every other politician who’s calculated to make this possible, won’t be around to see it to fruition, to have the scorn heaped directly on them.

In the meantime, we all can get a glimpse at the future. That deliberately misplaced egg has hatched and the cuckoo bird has already started to squawk, demanding we feed it, we love it, respect it. The sound, it sounds just like this:

— fosterly submitted by Cityslikr