Flowers on a One-Way Street

The summer of 1967 sealed the fate for the future of Toronto. The city was on the verge of a revolution that would see the community reclaim the urban landscape to create a Mecca for the bohemians to hang out and relax - free from the toxic exhaust fumes that had smothered the city.

It was the Summer of Love - the height of the hippie movement that pitted a new generation of youngsters against their World War II era fathers – and the city of Toronto was at a crossroads between turning downtown into a network of “thoroughfares” and reclamation of the streets by its citizens.

Toronto’s Haight Ashbury, its Greenwich Village was formed on an uptown street called Yorkville Ave. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people congregated here – spilling off the sidewalk and the roadway.

Motorists drove through Yorkville Ave just to catch a glimpse of the “hippies” – or the zoo – as former mayor Allan Lamport put it.

27-year-old film director – the late Robin Spry followed the “hippies” in his film Flowers on a One-Way Street, in which he begins:

“Out in California, the search for a different way of life is helped by the physical environment. But here in Toronto, the hippie community revolves around a small overcrowded street called Yorkville Avenue”

Tensions and exhaust fumes were building in the Summer of Love, and a local group called the Diggers – led by the cool, calm, charismatic 23-year-old David DePoe - wanted to turn Yorkville Avenue into a car-free zone:

“Exhaust fumes are polluting the atmosphere and people are getting run over. It tends to create an atmosphere that doesn't make it a pleasant place to be”

DePoe staged a 3-day sit-in where the Diggers peacefully occupied Yorkville Avenue to call on city officials to agree to turn it into a car-free zone.

DePoe was completely shocked when the police were ordered to use whatever force necessary to remove the protestors. Kids were dragged by their hair - some beaten – before being thrown into paddywagons and sent to jail.

In response to the force used by the police, Metro Toronto Chairman William Randall Allen responded:

“I offer no criticism whatsoever of the activities or the conduct of the police department. It has to be established and known once and for all that in Metro Toronto when there is mobs and gangs, who seek out as a group to defy law and order then they are going to be treated exactly as the circumstances call for. Our police were required to use force in order to clear a pathway down a street which is a public thoroughfare.”

More than 40 years later, it is obvious who won the battle. Yorkville Avenue lost to gentrification – becoming an upscale shopping mall free of the hippies and musicians who occupied it in droves during the Summer of Love - and automobiles still pass through Yorkville Avenue to this day.

But the summer of 1967 was a time when the citizens of Toronto stood up for what they believed in and fought those in power to improve their community. The hippies were seriously concerned about where North America was headed:

“We're talking about changes in values - and we're not talking about a man being judged by his property. We're talking about him being judged by his personal worth. He’s a member of the community because he is a person. And he has as much right to be a member of that community as anyone else. It's very clear that the structure of the city government is not geared to handling social movements of this kind. Yet these social movements are happening in the city. You know what about that? It's pretty serious” David DePoe

Allan Lamport and David DePoe - Photo courtesy of the York University Archives,Toronto TelegramCollection

Could David DePoe’s social movement happen in 21st century Toronto? Could a group of concerned citizens in 2010 storm City Hall like DePoe did in 1967? Would these concerned citizens be willing to spend time in jail and obtain a criminal record for what they believe in?

Or have Toronto’s citizens simply become complacent?

If not for the likes of David DePoe and Jane Jacobs, we would surely be worse off than we are. But we still have a long way to go and a new generation of advocates are emerging in the form of the Toronto Cyclists Union, the Toronto Pedestrian Committee, Spacing Magazine, and Toronto’s renown volunteer advocate Dave Meslin - just to name a few.

Advocacy in 2010 is different than in 1967 - as we saw last week when we revealed rumours from inside City Hall that Toronto’s bike sharing program may be in jeopardy.

We e-mailed our fellow cycling advocates, we tweeted up a storm, we blogged, we sent letters to our city councillors, the mayor. The mainstream media then followed up – with articles from the National Post and the Toronto Star that confirmed Toronto’s bike sharing scheme is in flux.

This is how advocacy works in 2010. When people give a shit, word spreads.

But would these same advocates be willing to spend several nights camping outside City Hall in protest? Would they be willing to be dragged by their hair and thrown in the Don Jail for the cause? Hopefully we won’t have to find out.

Yorkville ended up the way the powers that be wanted it to end up – a clean, upscale shopping mall free from the dirty hippies. Has Toronto accepted its fate as a city of automobiles and upscale shopping centres?

Can the city retain the Kensington Markets of modern day Toronto? Or will Kensington become what Yorkville has become through gentrification?

It is up to us to see a better future for Toronto. A city where our streets are a pleasant place to be - not a city where we are merely rushed along.

E-mail your councillor and tell them that you support liveable streets that embrace community over traffic flow. Tell a business owner that you showed up by bike or by foot, and that car-free communities can attract more customers.

Tell them to visit Prince Arthur street in Montreal if they don’t believe you - or almost any city in Europe.

Vote for politicians who support initiatives that provide alternatives to driving cars.

In 1965, Jane Jacobs said:

"Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities."

James D. Schwartz is the editor of The Urban Country. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com.

Related Articles:

• Ignoring the Real Problem on Our Streets (Nov 2009)
• Pragmatism Eludes Politicians (Feb 2010)
• Netherlands Road Design (Nov 2005)

CONTINUE READING Flowers on a One-Way Street

Toronto Set to Axe Bike Sharing?

Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country 

In November, The Urban Country broke news that Toronto’s upcoming bike share system would run year-round when it arrives in 2010. In that article, we asked whether Toronto was ready for BIXI, Montreal’s bike sharing system that has since signed contracts with Boston, London, Minneapolis and Melbourne.

We have recently been informed by our friend Herb over at iBikeTO.ca that two separate inside sources at City Hall are saying the city may axe bike sharing this year.

Bike sharing useless and a waste of money?

Sources are telling us that someone in the City Manager’s office feels bike sharing is useless and a waste of money, and may block the deal with Montreal-based Public Bike System Company – a deal that we were told in mid-January would be released in a report “in a couple weeks” by the Manager of Cycling Infrastructure, Daniel Egan.

If true, this news would be extremely disappointing in a city that is thirsty for bike sharing. City engineers responsible for bike infrastructure had already begun preparing for the bike sharing system by planning for an expansion of bike infrastructure in the downtown core – the same area where BIXI was to be launched.

BIXI installed at no cost to the City

It would be unfortunate to pass on such a great opportunity for this city since BIXI requires very little investment from the city and the taxpayers. The Public Bike System Company would foot the bill to install the bike rental stations and provide the bicycles, so it seems odd that the city would axe these plans for fiscal reasons alone.

I was told the city would only be responsible for identifying the preferred locations of the mobile bike sharing stations, and - unlike Montreal -Toronto wasn’t planning on removing parking spaces to make room for the bike stations. Rather, they would be installed on existing sidewalks and other public spaces.

Is it possible that the city struggled to find space for the BIXI stations? Would parking spaces need to be removed? Was there turmoil between the city’s parking authority and City Hall? Does BIXI require an investment from the City that they weren’t willing to put up?

Hopefully these are just rumours and speculations that turn out to be untrue.

Do your part to save bike sharing in Toronto

As citizens of this city, it is our duty to support what we know is right. I urge you all to email your local councillors to tell them you support a bike sharing program in Toronto – even if you aren’t planning to use it, but you know it’s the right thing to do.

Here is a template you can use to send to your councillor, the Mayor, the City Manager, and anyone else who could support our cause (see below for specific contacts): 

Dear Councillors and Mayor Miller,

It has come to my attention that the City of Toronto may be putting a halt on its deal with the Public Bike System Company (BIXI) to bring a public bicycle sharing program to Toronto later this year.

This would be an extremely disappointing and unfortunate outcome. Traffic congestion, pollution and climate change are major issues that we need to deal with right now as the City of Toronto’s population is expected to rise by more than 500,000 people by 2031.

Bike sharing is important for our city because it provides an alternate means of transportation for short trips while helping people stay healthy and reducing congestion. A bike sharing system would complement public transit very well and I had every intention on using this system on a regular basis.

Bike sharing has worked in other cities around the world, so please do everything in your power to ensure the city makes the right choice for its citizens and proceeds with signing a deal to bring BIXI to Toronto in 2010.

Sincerely,

 

James D. Schwartz

City Hall Contacts:

• Joe Pennachetti – City Manager
  • jpennac@toronto.ca
• Mayor David Miller
  • mayor_miller@toronto.ca
• Adrien Heaps – Councillor Ward 35 + Cycling Committee Chair
  • councillor_heaps@toronto.ca
• Daniel Egan – Manager, Cycling Infrastructure
  • degan@toronto.ca
• Adam Giambrone – Councillor Ward 18
  • councillor_giambrone@toronto.ca
• Gord Perks – Councillor Ward 14
  • councillor_perks@toronto.ca
• Joe Pantalone – Councillor Ward 19
  • councillor_pantalone@toronto.ca
• Joe Mihevc – Councillor Ward 21
  • councillor_mihevc@toronto.ca
• Glenn De Baeremaeker – Councillor Ward 38
  • councillor_debaeremaeker@toronto.ca
• Pam McConnell – Councillor Ward 28
  • councillor_mcconnell@toronto.ca

Please do your part to help save bike sharing for a better future for Toronto.

*Update (Feb 17, 2010 @ 8:20PM): The National Post has confirmed that BIXI wants the city to back the program financially. Read more here.

*Update (Feb 23, 2010 @ 8:57AM): Mayor Miller’s office has sent us an official statement in response to our letters to him. Although it doesn’t provide much reassurance of bike sharing moving forward, it at least indicates that they are looking for other funding options to help pay to bring BIXI to Toronto:

“Until 2006 Toronto was home to the innovative and award-winning Bikeshare community bicycle-lending program. Following its collapse the City began developing a business case for a public bike program.

The City considered launching such a program using the Vienna business model (which is also used in Lyons and Paris) where it is provided free to the City and affordable to users because it is supported by revenue from billboards on the bike stations. After much deliberation it was decided not to increase the number of billboards on the street and launched a competitive process to find a company to provide a non-ad-supported version.

A public tender was issued and City Council gave staff authority to negotiate with BIXI, which is owned by the Montreal municipal parking authority, to develop a detailed business plan for launching and operating a Toronto public bicycle system at no cost to the City. Unfortunately, the outcome of these negotiations did not guarantee that there was no risk of costs being incurred.

A public bike program in Toronto is not being abandoned. It remains an integral part of our sustainable transportation plan. The Mayor has instructed City Staff to review the viability of this type of program with other funding options.”

Mayor Miller’s Office, Feb 23, 2010

James D. Schwartz is the editor of The Urban Country. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com.

Related Posts:

• BIXI is ready for Toronto, is Toronto ready for BIXI? (Nov 2009)
• BIXI: Montreal's Bicycle Sharing System (July 2009)
• Bike Sharing in Car Capital of the World? (Jan 2010)

CONTINUE READING Toronto Set to Axe Bike Sharing?

Pragmatism Eludes Politicians

Photo courtesy of Dylan Passmore 

Toronto Star urban affairs columnist Christopher Hume writes yesterday:

“the fact remains we don’t have a choice; if we want Toronto and environs to prosper, there’s no alternative but transit”.

Sorry Mr. Hume, but there is another alternative. A very viable alternative that most in the media and government choose to ignore – it’s called cycling.

Mr. Hume ends that same paragraph with a statement that illustrates how foolish it is to rely on transit as the only alternative to driving:

“you can be sure that the cost of bringing us into the 21st century will exceed $50 billion over the next few decades”.

To suggest that a city needs to spend $50 billion dollars to solve its transportation problems when that same city can’t even afford the operating costs of the existing transit system is even more foolish.

Don’t get me wrong, transit is important - but Toronto needs a more sustainable solution to funding its current transit system before it would be prudent to spend billions and billions of more dollars to build more transit that it can hardly afford to operate.

With the Mayoral race coming up in October, Toronto needs a leader who can look beyond expensive transit and the impractical automobile to solve big-city issues. Pragmatism should be the new “progress” of the 21st century.

Photo courtesy of Commodore Gandalf Cunningham 

The bicycle is a great tool to commute in the city and can compliment those who ride transit. But city planners need to make cycling convenient and safe.

Building an inter-connected network of cycling infrastructure in the city and getting more people on their bicycles will help offset the operating costs of transit and address the issue of congestion and wear-and-tear that result from automobile use.

In the city’s current state of operations, the more people who take transit, the more indebted the city becomes.

The $3 fare you pay to ride the subway only covers about 70% of the operating costs and doesn’t even begin to cover the billions of dollars of capital funding to build new transit lines or purchase new buses, streetcars, or subway cars.

The city spends about $15-20 million dollars on cycling infrastructure each year compared to about $1.2 billion on transit.

If a million people decided to start cycling to work tomorrow, cycling infrastructure annual costs wouldn’t necessarily need to increase. This is the beautiful thing about cycling – it helps reduce a city’s operating costs, and results in healthier citizens.

If a million more people decided to take transit tomorrow, the existing system wouldn’t be able to handle the volume. The same goes for automobiles – there simply isn’t enough space for another million automobiles.

Outgoing mayor David Miller was primarily focused on transit - advocating for massive investment of billions of dollars - as are many of the contenders vying for the mayor seat.

Copenhagen cycling advocate Mikael Collville-Andersen explains the political phenomenon in this video by Mike Rubbo:

Cycling is too cheap for its own good. You know, a lot of politicians - they want to build a tunnel. You know, I want to build a motorway! It’s just like sort of this large penis complex, right. This is how they think that they’ve done something. See I’ve built a motorway. I’ve built a tunnel through that mountain for cars.

There’s much easier ways to do that, and much more clever ways to impress future generations, and that’s by implementing bicycles on the urban landscape.

Unfortunately politics is not very often about pragmatism. Political leaders are often elected on ambitious platforms of massive spending. There’s nothing glamorous about building bicycle ways and most high-profile politicians are out-of-touch with the needs of the average urban dweller.

The current list of mayoral candidates is far from inspiring.

One candidate is advocating for banning bicycles from main city streets, another is pushing for selling off all city-owned assets.

The closest I have seen to a cycling-friendly candidate is hardly cyclist-friendly as he is the head of the Toronto Transit Commission – and he has since resigned from the mayoral race after living up to his Toronto Sun-given nickname “GIAM-BONER”.

Between now and October I hope to see a candidate who can look beyond the motorways and transit lines to see a glamorous future of urban cycling in our city.

James D. Schwartz is the editor of The Urban Country. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com.

Related Posts:

• Australian Councillor Who Gets It (Jan 2010)
• Leaders Should Learn from Copenhagen (Dec 2009)
• Skymeter to End All-You-Can-Eat Buffet? (Nov 2009)
• BIXI is ready for Toronto, is Toronto ready for BIXI? (Nov 2009)

CONTINUE READING Pragmatism Eludes Politicians

Use Your Brain, Wash Your Spoon

An e-mail forward on plastic cutlery has been floating around for a while - so I thought I would revise it slightly and post it here:

It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it, bring it home, use it, throw it out, ship it to a landfill…

…is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you are done with it.

Plastic cutlery and disposable dishes are about as low as our society can get in terms of laziness, thoughtlessness, and complete disregard for future generations.

Use your brain, wash your spoon.

James D. Schwartz is the editor of The Urban Country. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com.

Related Articles

• Fallen Leaves as Sustainable Food Packaging (May, 2009)
• Second-Hand Secret to Sustainability? (Sept, 2009)
• The Environmental Cost of Tickets (Sept, 2009)
• Trash Talk: Dixie Trash (May, 2008)

Photos courtesy of mikko and rustman / Flickr

CONTINUE READING Use Your Brain, Wash Your Spoon

Sketch It: Taking The Lane

“Taking The Lane” – by George Pechtol / The Urban Country

Sketch it! is a fun section on The Urban Country where we feature random napkin sketches from our resident sketch artist and writer, George Pechtol.

In a tweet this week, I called on fellow Torontonian cyclists to take the whole right lane to discourage drivers from passing closely - while earlier this week I posted the article “Bike Lanes: A Motorist Invention?”.

The best way to push for more bike lanes is to make drivers want more bike lanes.

Bike infrastructure shouldn’t be seen as detracting from driving space. Giving cyclists a little bit of room also helps keep cars moving too.

Disclaimer: The Urban Country does not condone the behaviour portrayed by the cyclist in the above sketch. Drivers and cyclists need to respect each other in order to peacefully co-exist.

James D. Schwartz is the editor of The Urban Country. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com.

CONTINUE READING Sketch It: Taking The Lane

Bike Lanes: A Motorist Invention?

Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country (Beverley St. Toronto)

Imagine this: a cycling advocate who doesn’t support bike infrastructure. I was both surprised and intrigued when I first learned about the phenomenon they call “vehicular cycling”.

Vehicular cycling was coined by John Forester, a Britain-born American cyclist and industrial engineer who has spent most of his life fighting against bicycle infrastructure.

Forester claims that bike lane systems were an invention of motorists because they perceived that cyclists were too dull to adequately share the roads with automobiles. In a 2007 presentation to Google employees, a 77-year-old Forester said:

But there it was, the motorist invented the bike lane system. And they invented it for their own convenience on the excuse that cyclists were too dumb. Did you know that straddling a bicycle destroys your brains, it turns you into children that don’t know how to drive?

Then comes the environmental group – and they believe all this stuff that the motorists have been telling them about being incapable of riding in traffic. And they say oh, these bikeways weren’t invented to shove us aside – keep us out of the way of motorists. They were invented to make cycling safe for beginners.

Here I am, watching Mr. Forester speak, and I can’t help think to myself “If only more motorists would push for more bike infrastructure”. That would save cyclists the hassle of the tireless advocacy that we have had to endure just to give us a couple metres of roadway with some white paint.

Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country 

I wanted to know more about the thought process of a vehicular cyclist, so I interviewed cycling advocate and instructor Mighk Wilson, who runs the website “Bicycling Is Better” out of Orlando, Florida.

I first came across Mighk’s website last October when he wrote the article “Which Cycling Politics: Doom or Possilbity” – an essay that explores the false perception of danger in cycling.

Mighk subscribes to this vehicular cycling theory and teaches the skills of vehicular cycling to his students. In his defence, he does claim that he isn’t against bicycle facilities per say – he just feels that they have been poorly conceived and executed.

Mighk also claims that even the best designed bike facilities will never replace the need for vehicular cycling skills and knowledge – which is true.

My biggest struggle with the theory of vehicular cycling is the fact that in densely populated urban areas, cyclists aren’t able to freely move past gridlocked traffic – there just isn’t enough space.

So I asked Mighk how he expects cyclists to bypass automobile congestion without proper infrastructure.

Surprisingly, Mighk doesn’t support rewarding cyclists by helping them move to the front of the queue.

I used to be in that camp that said "We should reward cyclists (because they're more environmentally and socially responsible) by helping them move to the front of the queue."  No more.  (I am not against queue-jumping per se, if the cyclist A) understands the conflicts to watch out for and B) it will not result in the passed motorists having to pass the cyclist again in a tight roadway.)

A core belief of mine is that the person who does the least damage to the earth should be given the right-of-way whenever possible.

I support bicycle queue jumping in the same way I support HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes, bus lanes, and right-of-way streetcar lanes. This encourages people to get out of their single-occupancy automobiles by carpooling with a friend, taking a bus, or riding a bike.

I asked Mighk whether his end goal is to increase the rate of utility cycling - after all, how can we increase cycling if we don’t give cyclists sufficient space on our urban streets?

Without a doubt, Mighk’s goal is to increase the rate of cycling. But he doesn’t believe bicycle facilities will take us very far down that path (pun intentional). He notes:

The Orlando metro area had about a 0.5% bicycle commute rate in the 1990 census with virtually zero miles of bikeways.  In 2000 it was essentially the same rate, but with about 60 miles of trails and a couple hundred miles of bike lanes and paved shoulders.  I don't expect it to be much over 1% in the 2010 census, in spite of over 90 miles of trails and over 400 miles of bike lanes and paved shoulders.

So in Orlando, bike infrastructure has done very little to improve the rate of cycling. Could this be a deficiency in our North American culture? Or are the bike paths primarily designed for recreation instead of commuting?

Mighk has a simple explanation: Gas prices.

When gasoline prices make their inevitable climb, we will see the increases in cycling.  I imagine the bikeway system we have will help facilitate that somewhat.  But making people comfortable with (and competent on) the existing roadway system is the most cost-effective way to get more people on bikes.

Mighk also pointed out that parking is free in most places around Orlando.

Although Mighk and I may not agree on the the value proposition of bike infrastructure, I have enjoyed our occasional e-mail conversations on the topic of cycling – a topic in which he is well versed.

Our friend John Forester is another story entirely. While speaking to those bicycle-friendly Google employee in 2007, he was asked if there was anything wrong with the network of bikeways in the Netherlands.

Forester’s response included a tray of rubbish with a sprinkle of gibberish (Scroll to 34:26 in the video to watch Forester’s full answer)

He downplayed (or blatantly ignored) whether bike infrastructure had anything to do with the popularity of cycling in the Netherlands, and went on to say that the rural bike paths in the Netherlands are “wonderful for touring, but aren’t used by the people they were designed for”.

Forester also noted that the population density in the Netherlands affords short cycling commutes, but my blogger friend David Hembrow who lives in Assen Netherlands can assure you that it is much more than population density that makes cycling popular in the Netherlands.

James D. Schwartz is the editor of The Urban Country. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com.

Check out these related articles:

• The Bike Path That Almost Was (Jan 2010)
• Barriers to Cycling: Debunking the Myths (Nov 2009)
• Living a Comfortable Life Sans Automobile (Oct 2009)

CONTINUE READING Bike Lanes: A Motorist Invention?