A Day of Firsts for Ford

Well here we are on the first day of December, on the first day of Rob Ford’s mayoral mandate, and already we’re provided with the first examples of the kinds of media events and posturing that will either draw the first jeers of ridicule for the new regime, or the first signs of suburban solidarity from the 50% of Torontonians who brought Ford to power…Depending on which side of the tracks you’re sitting when the Rob Ford’s gravy-less train to municipal prosperity either rolls past, away from, or right over your neighborhood in it’s headlong rush to dismantle everything that doesn’t sit well with the new administration at City Hall.

If first impressions are anything to base our outlook on, then today’s events should be a telling reminder of what we can look forward to during at least one term of reactionary, pandering, and short-sighted politics here in Toronto, and the backlash driven political desires of it’s dispossessed suburbs.

GoogleMap and Go

If you think about it, you couldn’t blame Cyclists for hoping that at least a few intriguing new technological developments might come out of a geek-powered event named the Sustainable Mobility Summit.  Thankfully that’s exactly what happened this past week at the 2010 Summit held in Ottawa Ontario, where Google Maps announced that its new Bike Directions service, which had already launched in the United States this past March, is now also coming to eight Canadian cities as well.  Conference-goers were the first to learn that Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton Calgary, Winnipeg, Gatineau, and Waterloo, and Vancouver, will all be getting mapped out with Google’s Bike Directions. Furthermore, as the host city for the Summit, Ottawa will have the distinct honour of being the first bike-friendly urban center to boast GoogleMap’s new Bike Directions features here in Canada!

What’s interesting though, isn’t just what this service offers us here in the Present, but what it can evolve into in the very near Future…

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…

Reflecting on our Roads

Whether we’re dealing with the results of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, or the U.S. Recovery Plan….Anybody who’s had to use roadways during the hot and dusty Summer of 2010 isn’t about to soon forget the ravaged pavement surfaces and miserable traffic congestion created by all the government sponsored stimulus projects. This is because most of them are are still clogging up our roads in their ongoing efforts to presumably continue stimulating the economy, as well as testing our personal patience with their lengthy reparations.

Ironically, even though these private and public works projects were designed to keep key sectors of the economy well primed with cash, and the economy rolling along, during this time most North-Americans had no idea that the entire Industry almost came to a screeching halt due to a critical shortage in the supply of road and highway paint…A shortage that not only threatened to block  the completion of those endless road projects, but which also hinted at some even bigger industrial concerns further up the supply chain. This supply issue tips us off to an even bigger story that goes far beyond the possibility of a cash grab by suppliers and contractors during a public-backed construction boom…and actually points to some fascinating possibilities in the Future.

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:

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 ?

A Pedestrian’s Prerogatives?

In a Perfect World ?!?

From the very outset, let’s be perfectly clear… Pedestrians on our city streets are assured the inalienable and basic human right to safe and secure access to our public spaces…Except when this access encroaches upon the open roadways, and contrary to traffic laws of course. The key issue here is the assurance of the Personal Responsibility required from all road users in assuring the protection of each other and ourselves. So if everyone is keeping public safety first in mind, then many other issues can more easily fall into place by default…Especially if we could evolve some of our traffic flow protocols along the way, once we can assure that the basics are being properly respected!

So what we’d like to consider here are not ways to limit the free reign that Pedestrians enjoy at Green lights (and sometimes abuse, just like any others on the road), but rather how Pedestrians can be more aware and participative in contributing to the smooth flow of traffic when things get abit tricky. Thus making our streets safer for everyone.

Of course we’ll be looking at this from the Cyclists point of view, and focusing on the one tool that we have to communicate danger to Pedestrians by learning to use our bike bells in a way that Pedestrians can appreciate, and respond more positively to…Perhaps from there maybe even considering a few basic signals as well

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.

MetroLinx: Laying New Paths to Tracks

Go Transit is a name that’s been synonymous with ‘commuting’ since it was first established by the Government of Ontario in 1967. Most Commuters in Southern Ontario are already quite familiar with the essential services provided through GO Transit to nearly 55 million passengers a year via a transport network that spans over 10,000 square kilometers. Yet many might still be surprised to learn just how progressively expansive the reach of the entire organization really is, just by peering behind the scenes to see what’s being projected (and already underway!) within Metrolinx – The overseeing and organizing agency for GO Transit, which provisions us all with an enormous operating network of trusted GO trains and buses!

Hell is Other People…Driving Badly

Even good Drivers (Motorists and Cyclists alike) know that there are times when they lapse into bad behavior, and anyone with a sense off conscience will usually correct themselves, and probably thank the stars that nothing worse than a good scare came of their foolishness. Bad drivers, on the other hand, seem to be in their own little world, which I suspect is the main reason that they’re a menace to begin with. Being unable to even consider others around them, let alone communicate non-verbally from inside their metallic glass bubbles, Bad Drivers not only create road hazards, they also drag the average down for all those around them by creating the frustrations and anxiety that can take hold and spread further down the road to corrupt other interactions, and ultimately even act as the tipping point for disaster. Unfortunately, since bad Drivers are likely accustomed to getting nasty looks from others, these types of Drivers aren’t likely to actually respond to negative visual feedback, much less actually correct their bad habits. So…Short of installing hood-mounted paintball guns to clearly mark the cars of these bad drivers, how do we get their attention, and get them to cooperate with us in making the roads safer for everyone?

Obviously Darcy Sheppard’s aggressive approach to getting a drivers attention stemmed from his vulnerable position as a naked Cyclists, and exasperated by mounting frustrations with Bad Drivers, but his dangerous behavior was apparently exasperated by other personal circumstances, and those unhealthy responses to perceived threats from bad drivers on the road were clearly allowed to escalate to the point where his own fate was sealed – by one driver who was clearly willing to use his car as a weapon, oblivious as he may have been to Sheppard’s past, or any future legal consequences to his own actions.