The Logic of LRT’s vs. Ford’s Subway

QUESTIONS for Mayor Ford:

• Why lose 26 stops to gain 7 Subway stations?
• Why lose connectivity to GoTransit Stouffville line?
• Why connect two rail lines to Scarborough Town Center?
• Where is the additional 3 Billion going to come from to realize this “vision”?
• Where’s the $130+ million coming from repay the Provincial Governments current stake in Transit City
• What will the additional total be for cancellation fees and penalties on all the signed Transit City contracts ?
• Why has Rob Ford made automobile traffic his highest priority?

Source: Transit City Dept. TTC via:Globe&Mail

For a Rundown of “Firsts”
for the new Ford Regime

CLICK HERE

 

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Personal Responsibility

Representatives from The Toronto Police and Traffic Services have had to step up public awareness of basic safety issues after 16 pedestrians have been injured in only 2 days. The most regrettable accidents are the ones that could easily have been avoided, and this particular rash of incidents points to many small factors that are entirely within the control of Pedestrians. So once again, we need to look at a problem from the point of view of personal responsibility, before we can start to fine tune the external factors that would help alleviate traffic and safety issues for everyone…

For Whom the Bike Bell Tolls

Most people are pretty good at thinking on their feet, but nobody’s arguing that we couldn’t use better set protocols to fall back on as well…Especially when trying to avoid dangerous urban traffic snags, or at least unsnarling any incidents with an added measure of basic diplomacy. But how do we optimize the flow, and smooth the social bumps, without conceding our freedom and Autonomy to some vision of greater “efficiency”. Some pre-Orwellian version Central Traffic Control that safely auto-pilots us around within rails and fences like well-tempered livestock…

Deep down, most people might prefer being enabled with better social protocols available to them when it comes to negotiating their way through traffic. Systems that don’t dictate, but rather relate conditions (such as who arrived first at an intersection!) in a more universally effective fashion without needing to rely on systems that need to change the world around us first.

Unfortunately, popularised use of public CB Radio never made it past the 70’s, so the only usable ‘public broadcast’ tools that we have on the road are a handful of visual signals, and our crude but effectively alarming horns and bells. Nevertheless, since Cyclists still have the most safety to lose in any traffic mêlées, let’s pause to consider a communications experiment that involves our existing but oddly underused bike bells…Rather than just ringing them willy-nilly without rhythm or good reason.

Bring the Noise

Anybody who’s been anywhere near a moving electric car has probably been astounded by the stealth of it’s silent approach, but this became a safety concern for some special interest groups, who felt that industry standards were needed for everyone’s greater safety. The question isn’t so much ‘why’, as much as it is ‘how’ this noise will be made, and ‘what’ will it sound like? So, back in 2008, the experts at the Geneva-based United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the body responsible for harmonizing global vehicle regulations, started working on a set of minimum noise standards designed to prevent the uber-quiet Electric Vehicles (EV’s) from becoming a safety risk to Pedestrians – particularly young children and the blind. The results of this initiative are the Vehicle Sound for Pedestrians (VSP) standards, which we can already see (uhm ‘hear’) demonstrated in the new Nissan Leaf.

Relative Mass

After having to delve into the underhanded PR methods that were used to develop and support the temporary Police State that was invoked during Toronto’s G20 Summit, it’s still rather difficult to remind ourselves of the beneficial roles that PR plays in forming and supporting Public Opinion. Rather than rehashing the litany of horrifying physical abuses and civil rights violations from last weekend though, let’s attempt to remind ourselves the role that PR can play in creating an orderly and peaceful society.

Here’s a great little piece of German PR that really helps put a proper perspective on how so many many more people could manage to peacefully use public roadways everyday… if they weren’t taking up so much more space with single-occupancy cars.

In case we’ve forgotten…Here’s what a clear and beneficial PR Message looks like:

Critical Mass

I was recently inspired by a photograph taken of a city street that carried a clear an beneficial message for anybody who saw it…All without any need to explain the self-evident and underlying message.  Unfortunately, rather than delving into the superb PR methods that were used to develop that message (and it’s sense of collective order and civic pride), I’ve instead been overcome by the bitter sense of revulsion created by the PR methods used to support and condone the temporary Police State that was invoked during Toronto’s G20 Summit. A lingering stain which continues to mark both our own city’s badly shaken sense of security, as well as marking out what little true journalism we can actually expect our the Mainstream Media after seeing how blatant violations of civil rights were either upheld or even condoned by some members of the Media as examples of a necessary Social Order. It seemed that only Reporters on the ground amidst the carnage were reporting a clear picture of the events. The CTV are one of the few and notable examples of Media coverage that at least attempted to present a bigger picture to the slanted mainstream coverage…

Protesters vs. Police PR

The Media offered us the standard coverage to statements from the world leadership that recently assembled for the enormously costly and disruptive Toronto G20 Summit proceedings in Toronto.  Sadly, the events surrounding these closed meetings have largely overshadowed the positive spin attached to any such hollow pronouncements, and have actually done far more to damage our social fabric than any amount of new fiscal policy could ever repair.

Even after the fallout from those widely broadcasted and curiously unattended police car fires has settled back to the ground where nothing now remains but the street-stains, it’s become increasingly clear that only certain segments of the mainstream media can be expected to question the status quo, and remark that the Police actually did the most damage to our mild-mannered city not only by failing to keep the peace and apprehending a very conspicuous minority of vandals during their detestably destructive crime spree, but more importantly in visibly perpetrating almost all of the  the actual physical violence against our primarily peaceful assemblies of unarmed and passive Citizenry.  While thugs appeared to have free reign of the streets,

Photo by Michael Talbot, CityNews.ca

Bikes on Buses are a PR Bust

Just recently, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) was glad to announce that 91% of its buses will soon be equipped with bike racks for this Summer, and despite how little they may actually be getting used, during this ongoing and surprisingly slow adoption phase, the TTC remains upbeat on the service. At just over $2 million for the upgrade, most Cyclists and Mass Transit proponents consider this a pretty economical way to encourage new ‘multi-modal’ Ridership for years to come. Yet even the most positive pundits would likely have presumed that this initiative had already shown sufficient feasibility to proceed to this level of service though, so many people are wondering why the TTC has installed these racks right across their entire fleet before showing some early success on key routes.  Most people didn’t even realize that Toronto had bike racks until they started seeing them for themselves. The resulting question then, is why has the adoption rate for this service been so sluggish to during this period? Is this simply a mishandled piece of Public Relations?

Obviously, the hardcore Cycling Commuters aren’t going to trade in their winter tires for metropasses, and all the existing TTC Riders probably won’t suddenly swayed into taking a bike along with them on their regular daily commute just for kicks. Yet surely there are all sorts of new possibilities and benefits that this service opens up for consideration, even though we’re left to find these for ourselves. At the very least, these Bike Racks would appear to be a simple and (relatively) economical way to either draw more Riders into the transit fold, or benefit current users with the option to cycle in or away from their first or last stop, all while laying some basic groundwork for the future of grass-roots growth in Transit ridership overall….So what’s the holdup in moving ahead with it?

Is there an issue with Public Perceptions?
Or does the problem start down at the source of most Mainstream Media Content nowadays ?

Bashing Bike Racks

Our News Media has clearly been pandering to the Public desire to “Go Green” by chasing down existing stories to support a more ecological point of view, yet what has it done to actually update our social views on Consumption and the prevailing Car Culture? In order to at least take a more productive personal view of our worsening traffic congestion problems, let’s try to put aside our presumed right to drive around in our already over-crowded urban centers in near-empty automobiles as solo occupants. Pausing for a moment to consider an alternative way of traveling, where instead of driving ourselves around in big empty cars and struggling to find parking at every stop, we instead saw ourselves enjoying the freedom of biking around our local destinations after piggy-backing on buses for the longer haul distances in between…and from there considering what other resources are available to feel the needs, currently being met with generally wasteful and problematic automobile traffic.

PR – Root Development

Luckily for concerned Netizens everywhere online, and offline Citizens everywhere else, the much-hyped power of Social Media remains more of an elusive enigma to most Marketers, than a predictable resource for producing measurable results in manufacturing Public Opinion and Consent. Sure, there are many Marketing Executives (and their sub-contracted PR Pro’s) who’ve got the hang of participating in various “Social Media” networks out there, but they’ve yet to really demonstrate any particularly innovative uses for them, much less actually or driving any remarkably new application development on these platforms…As yet. So for now, nobodies concerned that Marketing and Public Relations firms are going to start really driving many conversation online, they way they have in the Mainstream Broadcast modes of News, Entertainment and Communication. Of course nothing stays the same for long on the Internet, so maybe there’s underground movement that we can cultivate in the meantime…