Dear John*

August 15, 2016

Look, it’s not you. It’s me. Something’s just not clicking right now, and trying to get that spark back is so tiring and too much effort.

I thought spending a few months apart, earlier this year, putting some distance between us might give me a healthier perspective. dearjohnAbsence making the heart grow fonder and all that. Things wouldn’t look so dim and depressing with the long winter gone.

Summer’s only exacerbated the troubles, however. Made me more lethargic during the times when I wasn’t just full on angry. Angrily lethargic. That’s no way to live.

No. There’s no one else. This is only about you and me. Yes, I’ve been to other places, taken in the sights, rode other people’s public transit. You and I have never been that exclusive.

The thing is, I used to go away and return energized, full of appreciation for what we had here and excited about the possibilities of how we could make things even better. Fresh ideas. Different approaches. A new way of seeing things.

But that didn’t seem to hold much interest for you. “This isn’t there,” you’d respond whenever I made any sort of suggestion for trying something new or to improve on something that wasn’t working. We’re different. We’ve always done that this way. Change is hard. What we don’t know might be worse than what we already know.

I understand that.

It isn’t like everything’s terrible. That’s not what I’m saying. There’s lots to be happy about, plenty of examples to point to and say, Yeah, we’re doing that right. Maybe I’m just too demanding or dearjohn1(Maybe I’m just like my father too bold… HaHa. We’ll always have Prince. Oh, wait. No, we won’t.)

I just don’t think wanting to do things better should be seen as a challenge, viewed with such suspicion. We can learn from others. We need to learn from others. I’m not perfect. Are you?

I know you don’t think that you are. It’s just, you seem awfully satisfied living inside this bubble we’ve created together. The future you foresee now is exactly like the future you imagined in the past. This makes any deviation from that impossible for you to conceive.

This kind of resistant view, an unwillingness to adapt when evolving circumstances warrant, only succeeds in digging a deeper rut. You exhibit a tenacity of suspicion toward anything that does not conform to your prevailing view, demand a vigorous examination or assessment to look at all angles, consider every option. What you already believe to be true? Well, that’s just a given, and given an uncritical pass. As it was, so shall it be.

But you’ve also heard that bit about putting new wine into old wineskins, yes? Something’s got to give, is how I think Jesus put it. What once seemed to be fixes have turned out to be the source of many of our problems. Finding solutions is never easy. Realizing we need to do so should be pretty obvious.

Stop me if you’ve heard all of this before. HaHa! Zzzzzzzzzzz… Of course you have. No doubt you’re as tired of hearing me say these words as I am saying them. What we have here, I fear, is a failure to communicate. You’re not listening and I’m not explaining myself clearly enough.

In the end, that’s all on me. If I’m the unhappy one in this relationship, it is up to me to explain why that is and what we can do to try and patch things up. writingaloneI have not been able to do that over the course of our 6 and-a-half years together. My tone has become hectoring, annoyed badgering, counter-productive. It’s doing neither of us any good, contributing little, impacting even less. It is difficult to imagine anything positive coming from continuing on this way. Bitterness doesn’t become either of us. That’s just not how I want to see this story end.

(* a literary trop, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental albeit highly appropriate in this case)

— sadly but clear-eyedly submitted by Cityslikr

3 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by cityslikr

Wine (Myth) Making

August 5, 2016

(A little change of pace today, for all you oenophiles out there who thought the California wine industry started with Ernest and Julio Gallo. From our Los Angeles correspondent, Ned Teitelbaum, Executive Director of Plant The Vine, an urban landscape history and public memory project intending to create a greater awareness of L.A.’s wine-making past through the establishment of small community vineyards. Viticulture?! Everybody knows L.A. has no culture.)

* * *

guestcommentary

 

I had been researching a public-history project about Los Angeles’ first truly dominant industry, that of winegrowing and winemaking, when I realized that I’d been running across quite a lot of what I can only describe as an open and obvious bias against Los Angeles terroir. This bias, which I’ve encountered in conversation as well as in what I’ve read, appears to come from what I’ll call, with a shout-out to Norman Klein (The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory), a Northern California wine imaginary that views Los Angeles, it’s past as well as its present, through the smoggy lens of its post-war, car-first history. According to this imaginary – you could also call it a construct or myth — the wine industry left Los Angeles, where it had been ensconced since the days of the Spanish missions, because it had found superior terroir in Sonoma and Napa Valley.

But if the terroir – a French term coming from the word ‘terre’, meaning earth, but more inclusive of climate conditions – was of such inferior quality, how then could Los Angeles have become the center of wine production in California for much of the 19th Century? Yes, the padres at the missions certainly had the benefit of lots of “free” Native American labor. But this wasn’t unique to Los Angeles. The padres in San Francisco had peons too. But no matter how many they had, they still couldn’t get the grapes to mature around the chilly, fog-bound mission by the bay.

In fact, and contrary to the myth, what made Los Angeles a wine-growing Mecca was that it had the perfect terroir for the heat-seeking Spanish varieties brought by the padres from home. firstcitysealOne can imagine how filled with hope these early settlers must have been when they first came upon the hot, dry growing conditions of Los Angeles, so similar to those of places like La Mancha, home of the drought-tolerant Airen grape, which is used for Brandy de Jerez (a version of which was made in copious quantities at L.A. missions); or the sherry-producing areas of Montilla-Moriles, which grows the Pedro Ximenez grape; Xeres, where Palomino Fino thrives, and Malaga, whose Muscat of Alexandria grows to this day at the San Gabriel Mission near the L.A. suburb of Alhambra.

No, there was no problem growing grapes in Los Angeles, and of the finest quality, from what we read in accounts of the time. And yet the myth of inferior terroir persists. Why? One possible explanation is that it is part of a larger story, one that goes back centuries, to the struggle for empire and cultural supremacy between Spain and England. In her book, Empire of Vines: Wine Culture in America, Erica Hannickel points out that viticulture has always been a means of establishing cultural as well as political hegemony over populations and over place. Contemporary examples of this abound. A walk through the vineyards of Sicily reveals a succession of differing viticultural inclinations, each of them tied to a different period of foreign rule. LAseal In the former Soviet-Bloc countries, Russian grapes are now being replaced with indigenous varieties. And in drought-plagued areas of California, including L.A. County and Napa and Sonoma, thought is now being given as to the culturally driven wisdom of having planted the thirsty varieties of Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhine, when the drought-resistant varieties of southern Spain would certainly have been a more sustainable choice.

So, if it wasn’t the inferiority of the growing conditions that caused the wine industry to abandon Los Angeles, then what was it? A related myth suggests it was because of vineyard blights such as philloxera or Pierce’s disease. But these afflicted Sonoma and Napa as much as any other part of the state. No, the main reason the industry left L.A. was quite simply the city’s growing hunger for land. With the expansion of its port at San Pedro and the arrival of the intercontinental railroad in 1874, Los Angeles was increasingly integrated into the global economy. The vineyards, which occupied choice real estate between the river and the center of town, were sold off for housing and industrial subdivisions. donquixoteBut In the process, a centuries-old, site-specific Spanish viticulture, one that had flourished along the L.A. River for over a hundred years, was destroyed. With the strategic use of the Northern California wine imaginary, it did not take long for it to be erased from memory as well.

The other day, I was down by the river, participating in one of the frequent clean-ups organized by FoLAR (Friends of the Los Angeles River). As we pulled plastic bottles and other detritus from the caked mud and plant life, a refreshing breeze from the San Gabriel Mountains kicked up, passing through the Glendale Narrows and brushing by us on the way to the sea. I sat down under a willow, took off my hat and wiped the sweat from the back of my neck. A red-winged blackbird called out from a nearby cottonwood, and as I tried to decipher its song, the sound of passing cars faded into the background. I looked down-river, toward the city, and let the heat ripples play with my imagination. I thought of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, that unlikely duo of La Mancha, and became convinced that if they had happened upon Los Angeles in the late 1700s, they might well have felt right at home, pitching their tienda along the river bank and drinking the local version of Brandy de Jerez.

— connoisseurly submitted by Ned Teitelbaum

4 Comments | City Building, On The Road, To Live And Write in L.A. | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Day Walker

How About A Selfless-Driving Car?

August 3, 2016

About 100 years ago, when interests in the new-fangled motor coaches began pushing for their proper place on the roads and streets of cities, one line of argument they used was the future, modernity. beholdthefutureYou can’t fight progress, you horse-and-buggy rubes. Get out of the way (literally), a new world is dawning! Only cavemen wouldn’t want to be behind the wheel of this shiny new mode of transport, the automobile!!

(Peter Norton’s Fighting Traffic is a fantastic primer in how hearts and minds were won over to the car’s cause by expert p.r. and lobbying).

Now, pretty much a century later, a similar line of argument is being made hailing the imminent arrival of autonomous vehicles, the self-driving car. They are the future, and only stick in the mud luddites would fight the future. Because of this, because autonomous vehicles will transform the way we get around our urban environment, will cure the ills that the previous automobile age inflicted upon us, who in their right mind could possibly object? Resistance is futile. fightingtrafficJust sit back, load up Netflix on your laptop, and let the computer drive you to where you need to go.

There’s no question autonomous vehicles will improve certain aspects of urban transportation. By eliminating driver error, misjudgement, distraction, it’s conceivable that traffic flow will improve, fatalities will drop significantly. That’s all to the good, no argument from me there.

What autonomous vehicles won’t solve is the sticky point of induced demand. We do know for a fact, after decades and decades of observation, that whenever we endeavour to make driving easier or more attractive – like increasing road space – more people take advantage of it and rush out to fill up that space. Congestion is never alleviated, at least not for very long. Self-driving may make being stuck in traffic less unpleasant but they will not solve what is essentially a ‘geometry’ problem, as Jarrett Walker wrote ten days ago in Human Transit.

An equally intriguing aspect of the self-driving car among us is what’s being called the moral or ethical algorithm behind its programming. squarepeg1While autonomous vehicles will certainly reduce our current road carnage, there’s no reason to believe collisions will be eliminated entirely. If not, what should our expectations be in terms of outcomes?

The ‘utilitarian’ autonomous vehicle, as it’s being called, might be programmed for the greater good. That is, when faced with a situation where a collision is inevitable, an autonomous vehicle responds by inflicting the least damage possible including ‘sacrificing’, let’s call it, its own passengers if that keeps the harm inflicted to a minimum. Essentially, if forced to choose between the prospect of swerving into a crowd of 10 pedestrians standing on the sidewalk to avoid an object straight ahead of it or crashing into that object, the utilitarian autonomous vehicle will crash into the obstacle, endangering the lives of the <10 passengers inside of it.

If it happens, of course, and if proponents of self-driving cars are to be believed, it won’t happen very often if at all, because, you know, technology rarely comes with bugs or glitches, but if collisions do occur, as infrequently as they might, we can rest easy in the knowledge that the greater good will be served. Done, and done. prisonersdilemmaWe’re good here, right?

Apparently, it’s not going to be as clear cut and simple as all that. The future, when it comes, seldom is.

In a study published in the journal Science back in June, Our driverless dilemma, researchers found in a series of online surveys conducted, most people were all for the ‘utilitarian’ approach to self-driving cars, the greater, collective good, in theory. But when it came to driving one themselves? Public safety for others, self-preservation for me. This double standard hardened even further when questions of driving with family members arose. My child or some stranger standing on a street corner? I’ll take Ridiculous Questions for $500, Alex.

This should hardly come as a surprise. Traffic is other people, right? After the freedom of the open road with the wind blowing back your hair angle that car manufacturers use to advertise their product, the 2nd approach is always about safety, especially safety for the children riding, buckled up in the backseat. Bigger, bulkier vehicles not only promise to deliver an elevated status on their owners but also bestow a sense of security on all those riding within. trafficcongestion1Damage control on the inside with a big, fat fuck you to everything and everyone on the outside.

Rather than some theoretical undergrad philosophy exam question, this presents a much fuzzier future for self-driving cars. As the study’s researchers suggest, if people will be less inclined to buy or ride in autonomous vehicles that don’t put their safety first, who’s going to manufacture them? Will governments then bend to the will of those who’ve invested mightily in a driverless future, and maintain the status quo of acceptable losses on our roads, fingers crossed that they will be radically less than the numbers we’ve learned to live with? Is that the kind of future we should be building toward, Just like now, only less?

“Before we can put our values into machines,” Joshua Greene writes in Science, “we have to figure out how to make our values clear and consistent.”

mansbestfriendWhen it comes to prioritizing transportation choices, our values have been very clear and consistent. The safety, comfort, convenience of car drivers has been the number one value for the better part of a century now. That’s the reason for the sprawling, congested mess cities currently find themselves in. If we don’t take the opportunity this new technology offers us to challenge and change that single-minded approach to urban mobility, it will hardly matter who or what is behind the wheel. The future on our roads won’t look a whole lot different than the present.

— skeptically submitted by Cityslikr

1 Comment | Academic Studies, City Building, Killer Cars | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by cityslikr

What I’m Not Doing On My Summer Vacation

July 12, 2016

This is me…

2016-07-11 18.57.30

I’m…

2016-07-11 11.35.20

to…

2016-07-11 19.04.04

… debate public transit, bike licensing, police pride and a horror of other inane, retrograde items. You can’t make me.

To those who will be doing so, wear plenty of protective gear. Lots of bullshit will be flung around.

— summery submitted by Cityslikr

2 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by cityslikr

Toronto Sun-shiny Ways

July 8, 2016

No place reflects the petty, small-minded, tight-fisted, stadlerandwaldorfpublic ill-will slice of Toronto thinking more than the editorial and commentary pages of the Toronto Sun. And I’m not even going to be talking about the newspaper’s hypocritical Pride and Black Lives Matter coverage here! If you want to see the birthplace of Ford Nation, this is ground zero, the temple mount, the gravy crèche.

Last weekend, before falling into its lip-smacking Pride tizzy, we were gifted with a blasé editorial about City Hall money matters. Trimming city budget by 2.6% should be routine, the Sun “informed” its readers. Because, well, that just goes without saying.

It’s pretty much standard right wing, a priori reasoning based on the simple assumption that all government spending is too much spending, so the less of it, the better. There’s some straw man arguments thrown into the mix, quoting opponents, ‘the left’, with words no one has said, arguments no one’s made in order to sound reasonable or, at least, less stridently ideological. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t even have read the tired mess except for a subsequent tweet that came across my time line.texaschainsawmassacre

An earlier Sun article by Daniel McKenzie reported that 20-25% of the subway cars on the Bloor-Danforth line would be without working air-conditioning this summer. The paper’s “Editor Emeritus”, whatever that is, an old horse unwilling to be put out to pasture? (surely you mean the glue factory – ed.), Lorrie Goldstein, was  presented with the consequences of the unrelenting demand for low taxes. Making do without those nice-to-haves like subway car air-conditioning. Mr. Goldstein’s retort? As classy and gracious as one might expect from the “Editor Emeritus” of the Toronto Sun.

Sorry, this is too stupid to even respond to. They have the money to fix them. They just haven’t been fixing them.

“Sorry, this is too stupid to even respond to,” yet Mr. Goldstein proceeds to respond, firmly establishing the Sun’s style page, as it were, for its stable of editorial and commentary writers. Two successive thoughts need not be connected. tinfoilhatJust type out words as they spring into your head. The angrier and more irrational the better.

As for the actual response?

On the level of quackery equal to those who tell us doctors and scientists have the cure to cancer but they’re keeping it to themselves because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

Mr. Goldstein is suggesting that the TTC has the money to fix the air-conditioning in its subway cars but is simply choosing not to. Why? He only had 140 characters to work with, so deeper conspiracy theories are more difficult to fully flesh out on the Twitter platform. Besides, he didn’t really want to respond at all in the first place. Such rank stupidity only deserves so much inane rambling.

(Here’s a better explanation for the lack of subway air-conditioning from Ben Spurr in the Toronto Star. IT’S STARVED FOR CASH! Uncomfortable commuters are down the list of TTC priorities right now.)

bloodfromastoneThat the “Editor Emeritus” of the Toronto Sun, a newspaper that’s part of a bigger media conglomeration mired in as dire financial straits as Postmedia is, still has a platform from which to pronounce on anything to do with fiscal fitness seems somehow apropos, I guess. A tired, disproven economic orthodoxy, clinging desperately to relevance as the ship slowly sinks. Unfortunately, you can still here echoes of the exhausted arguments in the words of some of our local decision makers.

That debate [new revenue tools] is coming and our position will be that any new taxes imposed by the city must be earmarked for specific projects, not just sent down the black hole of general revenues.

By the “black hole of general revenue”, the Sun must mean the operating budget. The one that paves our streets, pays for our emergency services, subsidizes public transit, maintains our public library and public health, etc., etc. That black hole. beancounterSo, the editors of the Sun can be persuaded to consider new taxes as long as they’re dedicated to building things but not actually running them.

Mayor John Tory has expressed similar sentiments. He’s made it perfectly clear this week to both the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star that he’s ready and willing to talk turkey about new revenue tools but they must be dedicated to infrastructure needs. As for the day-to-day operations of the city? They can do perfectly well with less. (See: Tales from the TTC, above).

Of course, for the Toronto Sun, the mayor and the mayor’s council allies, any serious talk of additional revenues can be had only under one condition:

… the idea council would consider imposing any new taxes, levies and fees beyond its existing revenue streams, without first insuring the city budget is being run as efficiently as possible, is fiscally irresponsible and reckless.

Who measures that, ‘as efficiently as possible’? Back in 2012, the audit firm KPMG concluded that, all things considered, the city was pretty tightly run. isaacnewtonTwo successive city managers, neither considered to be part of the lunatic left the Sun loves to lash out at, have said similar things. Yes, there are ways to continue containing costs, even decreasing them in some cases. But nowhere near enough to build and pay for the things a growing city needs.

That’s the argument, not some concocted fairy tale of self-serving left wingers making claims about absolute efficiency at City Hall. It’s just that the Sun and Mayor Tory and every other penny-pinching fiscal “conservative” member of council wants you to believe that if there’s any example of waste they can find, then there’s no need for any new revenue. And, in an organization as big and complex as the city of Toronto, there will always examples of inefficiency. The notion of a perfectly running system died with Isaac Newton.

Too bad for us equally as dated ideas and beliefs haven’t been similarly discarded. But I guess the Toronto Sun isn’t in the business of discarding dated ideas and beliefs. In fact, since 1971, it’s been championing them, tub thumping for them, stubborn1bearing the standard for them. Because too many of us have been listening to their anti-government screeds for too long, we find ourselves in the state we’re currently in. Loudly demanding easy answers to complicated problems, and feeling put upon to fully contribute to the public good, convinced we’re getting less from it than we’re giving.

A constantly outraged sense of grievance, our strength. The Toronto Sun way.

— brightly submitted by Cityslikr

1 Comment | Budget, City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Sun, Toronto Star, TTC | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by cityslikr

Road Rage

July 6, 2016

I know most of you reading these digital pages on a regular basis imagine that I always write angry. To be sure, I do often write angry. elevenOften but not always.

Today, indeed, I am angry, really angry, like white fucking hot angry. Pissed was a spot way back there on the angry spectrum, just passed annoyed and miffed. I am 11 on the angry dial.

I live just a block or so from the intersection of Bathurst and College which is currently undergoing streetcar track and stop reconstruction. Since being closed to vehicular traffic a couple weeks ago, our side street has seen a stream of detoured car traffic making its way around the road work. When they’re not speeding crazily through the residential neighbourhood, they’re backed up at times for almost the entire block, annoyed, honking at garbage trucks that are in their way and whatever else they perceive to be blocking their forward motion. Walking down the line of cars, it’s always interesting to note just how many of them are on their hand-held devices. Hey. We’re stopped, aren’t we? Where’s the harm?

The alleys running between streets and behind the houses in the neighbourhood have also seen an uptick in traffic trying to find alternative ways around the slow down. carseverywhereThis has led to standoffs were cars meet, heading in opposite directions on what is decidedly a one lane right of way. You back up. No, you back up. No, you. Cue blaring of horns.

Traffic further south along Dundas Street, a big block south of the construction, heavy under normal driving conditions, is pretty much snarled now especially during what constitutes rush hours. On my regular runs… OK, not so much runs as grinds, like a first time marathoner slogging out those last couple miles… traversing Dundas at a couple points, I regularly encounter bad, egregiously bad, driving behaviour. Rolling stops, throwing out the anchors up on sidewalks and in bike lanes, reckless speeding past parks and schoolyards, the requisite reading phone while driving.

You know, your everyday, run of the mill driver entitlement. As a matter of fact, I do own the road, and the alley, and the sidewalks. caronsidewalkInconvenienced in any way whatsoever, and this sense of sole proprietorship grows even stronger.

Why wouldn’t it, though?

Private vehicle use enjoys the favourite child status in our transportation family. We build our networks around it. We subsidize it to a degree only dreamed of if you take a bus, ride a bike or even walk to get to where you’re going. We tremble in fear of getting car drivers mad at us.

The results of such coddling are predictable.

That’s about 5 weeks. 58 cyclists and 67 pedestrians struck by car drivers. Nearly 12 cyclists a week. More than 13 pedestrians a week. 1 dead pedestrian a week.

And the fallout from that?

What’s even less than sweet fuck all?diein

Unless you’re driving drunk and wipe out an entire family or, maybe, behind the wheel going race course speed or take off from the scene after mowing somebody down, chances are there will be no consequences to bad driving causing death or injury. A few demerit points, perhaps. Insurance rate hike. Occasionally, jail time spent over the course of a few months’ weekends because nobody wants to disrupt your life too, too much. Certainly, sometimes, a ban on driving, for sure. A year or two. Lifetime? Are you kidding me?

All extreme examples. Rarely do we see such penalties imposed even if the driver is at fault, and the driver is usually at fault, 67% of the time in collisions between pedestrians and drivers, according to a Toronto Public Health report, pedestrians have the right of way when they’re struck by a driver in a car. Yeah but… were they wearing bright enough clothes? Were the walking distractedly, looking at their phone? Did they signal their intentions to cross the street?

In an overwhelming majority of these situations, where car meets pedestrian, car meets cyclist, car hits pedestrian, car hits cyclist, the presumed assumption is what did the pedestrian do wrong, what law did the cyclist break? Idistracteddrivingn yesterday’s cyclist death (not registered in the above list), it was initially reported that the cyclist had been cut off and slammed into a parked car and the driver left the scene. Then came news that maybe a 2nd car hadn’t been involved. Then stated outright that the cyclist was at fault, and shouldn’t have been riding in between moving and parked cars. Oops. Correction. Cyclist had right of way after all. Investigation still ongoing.

Many jurisdictions have looked at what’s going on in their streets, examining the data and evidence, and come to the only conclusion they possibly could. The private automobile is anathema to 21st-century cities. It is the most expensive, least efficient way to move people around a region. Cars contribute mightily to greenhouse gas emissions and thus climate change, not to mention a sedentary lifestyle. The faster drivers are allowed to go, the more dangerous their cars become.

The spoiled child has grown out of control and has become a certifiable threat to everybody’s well-being. It’s time to roll back its privileges. crashstatisticsTeach it some lessons in sharing and responsibility.

Here in Toronto, though, we’re only grudgingly facing that cold hard truth. Official protestations to the contrary, the last six years we’ve done our upmost to improve the flow of cars not people. Spending on non-driving infrastructure remains infinitesimally low compared to what we shell out for those in cars. In doing so, we’ve only encouraged drivers’ disregard for other road users, inflated their self-importance.

As I write this, 2 more cyclists and a pedestrian have been hit since about 8:30 this morning by somebody driving a vehicle. Just the cost of doing business in a city that places such an emphasis on private automobiles. You want to stay safe on our streets? Get behind the wheel of a car, the bigger the better. Sure, you still might get hurt or killed but at least you’ve giving yourself a fighting chance to emerge from the wreckage alive.

We know the toll this is taking. We know the costs we are incurring. Worse still, we know how to solve this problem. deathrace2000It’s as simple as summoning the political will, screwing on a little courage and showing some leadership.

But I don’t see any of that anywhere in the places it should be. It’s all just steady as she goes, no need to change course now. Sometimes we have to suck it up and live with acceptable losses. Vision Zero? Absolutely. All in good time.

So yeah, I’m fucking angry.

— grrrrringly submitted by Cityslikr

3 Comments | CBC, City Building, Killer Cars, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Toronto Star | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by cityslikr

Letting Go The Wheel

July 4, 2016

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… dodgejourneyminivan 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. dodgejourney1Only, 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.openroad1

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? selfdrivingcarsIsn’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. selfdrivingcars1It’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. selfdrivingcars2Fewer 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

Leave a Comment » | City Building, Killer Cars, On The Road, Philosophical Musings | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by cityslikr

« Previous Entries