Leiden University, Netherlands
In Friday's Star, Christopher Hume looks "beyond gridlock" as a sort of finale to their series on commuting in cities around the world.
We so often hear that we need to have better public transit and better bicycle infrastructure before people will be convinced to park their cars. Hume's take is that improving non-car transport will never be as effective in changing people's mindsets as increasing the costs of car transport. He says it well, and it's worth a read.
Hume gives us a solution, but there's a certain incompleteness to it that he acknowledges. He points out that no current politicians would implement what we need to do: taxing cars and tolling roads. We won't make progress until the majority of the population is reading and being convinced by people like Hume. As one cyclist said to me a few weeks ago, "People want to be sustainable, but they have absolutely no idea what sustainable is."
We have scientific and economic solutions to our problems, but we still don't have the political one. Since all our solutions need some type of high level coordination, a political solution is key. Even the bicycle's popularity in Scandinavia, Hume attributes to a high car tax that would be considered sacrilege here.
I tend to think that there are a few simple things that can be done to make bicycle commuting accessible to many more people. Things like safer highway crossings, and some high priority bicycle corridors would go a long way to open options up for people. The city could include bicycle paths and bike lanes in the snow clearing programs. Still, people have to vote for these changes that might somehow slow down their car commute.
Attitudes are changing in parts of Toronto, and awareness is growing, but there is still a long way to go. Maybe we need a really good movie by a well respected person that entertains while explaining everything. Hmmm. I'm open to ideas.
Comments
Aidan
Bike Path Snow Clearing
Sun, 12/16/2007 - 19:57God knows the city isn’t going to do it. Could be good publicity, since even if the city tried to prosecute someone, they’d only be publicising their negligence. What would it take? Somebody with a snowplough blade on a light truck or ATV, and a little recon to get on and off the path. No one would even stop it, as they’d think it was official.
Count me in if you are interested. I’ve got a hate-on for the cities of Toronto and Mississauga, since my path between Port Credit and Parkdale is ice-covered, and there’s no way I’m going to ride on Lakeshore!
Mikeonabike (not verified)
Plough the Martin Goodman!
Sun, 12/16/2007 - 22:30A couple of years back I emailed my city councillor (Sylvia Watson at the time) asking them to maintain the martin goodman trail, at least to the same standard as the footpaths in High Park. The High Park paved trails are ploughed and usually salted within hours of a snowfall. If it snows overnight by 7am half the park is already ploughed. It's great.
I never received an answer to my request, not even an acknowledgement. All it would take is someone with a Bobcat and a couple of hours and the Martin Goodman trail would be useable year round for cycling, walking and running. With the current snowstorm it is effectively out of commission until spring. What a waste.
A friend made the comment recently that the Martin Goodman is to commuting cyclists what the Gardner is to motorists. Imagine if they didn't plough the Gardner all winter. Hmm, actually might not be a bad idea.
Mike
Aidan
Anyone have a Bobcat?
Sun, 12/16/2007 - 23:05I'm serious. If anyone has a Bobcat, I'll join up with a shovel to clear between the bollards. It's so clear that this should be done, and not only on the Martin Goodman, that there has to be serious institutional resistance at city hall and the works dept. Probably do not want to start a slippery slope to, good heavens, clearing all of the paths.
One Bobcat, a few volunteers, and notify the press once it's done to the city's negligence and the small effort it required to fix it. The Star and CBC are good on this issue, not to mention Eye and Now.
The EnigManiac
Other Main Bike Lanes
Mon, 12/17/2007 - 00:08A few years ago I was riding year-round, particularly on the Davenport bike lane and contacted Cesar Palacio several times that the lanes was the bike lane seemed to be the depository area of the ploughs, leaving me forced to ride in the middle of the road. If I was a fast rider maybe that wouldn't have ben a problem, but I'm not and I felt really very vulnerable to speeding vehicles that could not manage the snowy, icy conditions as tey raced up behind me. He told me the city had purchased special ice-melting trucks especially for bike lanes. I have NEVER seen them used as such. In fact, I have never seen them on the roads at all.
I have seen ploughs pay better attention to the bike lanes on Davenport, but the folks that park adjacent to the bike lanes dump all their snow off their vehicles and from their driveways, sidewalks and laneways directly into the bike lanes making them,essentially,unusable.
We cannot expect proper maintenance until we adopt a Copenhagen or Amsterdam approach to cycling, where cyclists are given equal or superior preference in regard to importance and expediency. But there's no harm in inundating your city council member with DEMANDS that they give us equal consideration.
Aidan
Rem non spem
Mon, 12/17/2007 - 00:45I almost failed Latin in university, but I live by that moto: "Deeds, not promises". Neither the promises of city staff, nor our entreaties are going to get our paths cleared. Take a page from O.U.R.S.: do it, get publicity, then get an official response.
Tone (not verified)
Longer commutes -- nah!
Mon, 12/17/2007 - 11:57Where I think this whole issue might start to gain momentum is when people realize that the city cannot scale for more car traffic. There just isn't really a lot of room to build more roads ... I think we are getting pretty close to the peak carrying capacity for cars within the city, at least at rush hour.
So, efforts to discourage auto use in the city -- particularly for commuting -- would ideally have the effect of reducing congestion, making even auto commutes fast (for the folks who have the money or the need to continue to drive downtown).
For everyone else, multi-modal model (day -- ride a bike a few miles to a GO station, ride into Toronto, and rent a commuter bike for the day at Union) would probably be as fast or faster than driving in .. and a fair bit less stressful.
The missing components:
-- toll roads and greater property taxes on parking lots to reduce the demand ot peak auto use.
-- greatly improved transit, including GO (which is getting better, but is difficult to quickly scale up to meet need)
-- an emphasis on multimodal options (accomodating folding bikes on rush-hour transit, or a large bike rental capability in the city with good (safe) bike parking at transit stops).
Add those three together and I think you could get more people in and out of the city faster than you do today.
Luke (not verified)
Hume's column rightly states
Sun, 01/06/2008 - 23:43Hume's column rightly states that the solution to car dependence and its ills must be comprehensive: refuting personal misconceptions, redefining zoning standards, and the implementation of taxes and tolls -- this last aspect could be more accurately described as withdrawing subsidies.
The fact is that the extensive infrastructure allowing the proliferation of private autos is underwritten by general tax revenue. The cost of constructing, maintaining, servicing (plowing) and policing dwarfs the revenue realized through gas taxes, auto licensing and registration fees. The difference, courtesy of Joe Sixpack, whether or not he owns or drives an auto, amounts to a subsidy to motorists. And this is apart from the detrimental environmental effects of our car culture.
It's Economics 101: subsidies skew the market, artificially creating demand. Motorists for too long have been getting a free ride, they -- indeed, we all -- should not be isolated from the true costs of our activities. If railways or mass transit benefitted by proportionate disbursements of public funds as motorists we'd see a radically different urban culture than presently.
Our resistance to gas tax hikes/highway user (toll) fees will only contribute to irrational decisions concerning transportation policy. It's a mystery to me: public policy that, at onerous cost to the general taxpayer -- disproportionately those of lower incomes -- underwrites a transportation system that largely limits its clients to those who can bear the cost of owning and operating private autos. It's neither wise nor efficient. And now it's no longer sustainable.
A good first step to overthrowing the domination of our auto-cracy :-), is assigning to motorists the real costs of their inclinations. It's a dead end street they're driving down; the sooner they realize that its going to cost them more to build it, maintain it and drive down it, the sooner they'll head down a different road altogether.
Svend
They put tolls on our planet and others pay
Mon, 01/07/2008 - 15:02I agree, the real cost of cars and the tolls THEY TAKE on our cities and environment should be be met by drivers.
Same goes for air traffic, why is it so cheap to fly anywhere and not be accountable for your damage?
hamish (not verified)
they promised better plowing...
Tue, 01/08/2008 - 01:15There is a great gap between deeds and action, which speaking personally is always a challenge. However, the City said they'd try hard about clearing bike lanes and in the absolute core maybe they have. In the off-core east of Sherbourne it's been pathetic and dangerous, and the condition belies the claims made by deBaeremaeker etc.in the Nov. 20 star that cutbacks in budgets will still keep the roads safe - but they didn't mention bikes.
At least the warm weather has done more for us than the city! Gaia likes bikes!
The EnigManiac
Plowing
Tue, 01/08/2008 - 08:20For years they have promised better plowing. I was constantly in contact with Councillors Palacio and Mihevc regarding Davenport and the fact that the motor-traffic lanes were cleared promptly, but all the snow was dumped into the bike lane. I was advised...and keep in mind this was 2005...that they bought ice-melters and would be using them on bike lanes. Here it is 2008 and I have yet to see one. I even suggested they move bike lanes on some routes to the middle of the road (a concept that has been in pilot-project mode elsewhere in North America).
The city, for all their lip-service to cyclists, endangers cyclists by not clearing bike lanes and considering how many cyclists I have seen out this winter, even with all the snow we have had, they are risking being liable for injury or death should an unfortunate tragedy occur. It should not be too difficult to prove neglect.
If we have to wait for mother nature to do the city's job, perhaps we shouldn't be paying so much for property taxes. I mean, think about it. There's damn little in the way of bike infrastructure. There's no clean-up or ice/snow removal of bike lanes. What the heck are we paying for?
As I suggested to Councillor Giambrone the other day regarding the TTC, I do not pay MORE for a poorer and poorer product. Why are taxes any different? Sorry, they can't have more of my money and give me less.