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”

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

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.

Read more »