Summer Streets Gets New York Moving

(This article originally appeared on Spacing Toronto, August 15, 2011)

On my recent trip to New York I found myself walking Broadway on a sweltering Saturday afternoon, negotiating the sidewalk amidst hordes of people and attempting to stay out of the way of what I have come to think fondly of as the dance between New York’s homicidal drivers and its suicidal pedestrians and cyclists.

So it was with much relief that my travelling partner and I stumbled upon the fourth annual Summer Streets, a Saturday shut down of Park Avenue and connecting streets between Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park (roughly the equivalent distance of shutting down Yonge St from Front St all the way to Eglinton Ave). As a Streetsblog NYC video shows, shutting cars from the street allows for cyclists, pedestrians, joggers, rollerbladers, and parents with children from all over the city and the surrounding area to flood out into the normally hectic street and enjoy themselves.

We rented—if you can call a free rental a rental—bikes and suddenly the open road was ours for the next hour (if we didn’t bring back the bikes in an hour they charged our credit card one dollar per minute. Ouch).

There are five rest stops along the route where, if you are so inclined, you can partake in activities like the “Belly, Butt, and Thigh Workout” or “Barefoot Running” or “Salsa Lessons”. Since we only had an hour before we began to lose our lunch money with each late minute, we zoomed past these rest stops, which were packed with people and music.

Many cross streets were also shut down, but since the stretch of closed roadway cut through so much of lower Manhatten, a few remained open to allow traffic through. There were volunteers at each of these crossings holding Stop/Go signs as well as traffic police posted to make sure cyclists and pedestrian didn’t accidentally coast through. It might have been the only time in New York that I saw cyclists stop for red lights. Or drivers and pedestrians, actually. The only thing crazier than New York cyclists are New York drivers and New York pedestrians.

After the experience of New York’s famously clogged streets, it was amazing to fly down this wide road with thousands of other cyclists. This was a great way to see a large swath of New York and experience the city in a way that is impossible on a regular basis. As we made our way through the elevated roadway around Grand Central Station, we were treated to a view of the normally busy New York streets.

Could we do this in Toronto? When I moved to Toronto, I was immediately impressed with the amount of street shut downs in the summer for street festivals, but would the city be so keen on shutting down multiple kilometres of central roadway so people could ride their bikes and walk?

Spurred on by Bogotá's Ciclovía, these car-free events have been popping up all over the world. Vancouver is attempting their version of this with LiveStreets, which sees eight kilometres of roadway shut down to cars from Kitsilano to Commercial Drive through the downtown core. Not only does this encourage people who may be too timid to get on their bike and ride, but it shows a different kind of possible city, one that gives space back to people.

I went back to Park Avenue a few days later. It was filled with cars, the pedestrians all crammed onto the sidewalks. I saw few cyclists. The air was filled with the sounds of honking.

Vancouver's Parkades Under Parks

If you're going to have a car parkade, best to put a real park on top of it like this one here in Vancouver's Coal Harbour.

The Myth of the Cyclist as Urban Warrior

(this article was originally posted on Spacing Toronto's website on March 25, 2011)

Hell hath no fury like a biker scorned. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy learned this the hard way after his blog post, "Battle of the Bike Lanes", criticized the recent proliferation of New York bike lanes under the city’s current Commissioner of the Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Kahn. This initial post sparked a flurry of comments and rebuttals from such heavy weights as The Economist, and prompted Cassidy to follow-up with a second and then a third post.

Of course, hell hath no fury like a motorist scorned, too. Here in Toronto we've witnessed Rob Ford proclaim that streets are for cars, trucks, and buses, while Don Cherry gleefully gave the verbal middle-finger to all those bike riding pinkos. In Vancouver, the construction of the Hornby Street separated bike lane in October 2010 prompted a flurry of media that opined the state of the beleaguered driver, which continues even as the City releases information stating that traffic remains unchanged along Hornby except for a one-minute delay during rush hour. In New York, the bike lane debate has even concerned the courts.

The rhetoric around the bike has reached untenable heights. Not only is it completely unproductive, but it works to make both motorists and bicyclists unsafe by stoking anger and fear. By positioning it as a war between two clear sides, we reduce our ability to compromise, to work together. Spittle flies from both sides of the debate, as cyclists rush to label car drivers as gas-guzzling, suburban, earth-pigs and motorists respond by calling cyclists pretentious, militant, holier-than-thous (albeit with great calf muscles). Just reading the comments on blog posts and newspaper articles on the subject is enough to turn my hair white.

How did we get to this point? But, more importantly, how do we get away from it?

First, let's ditch the war metaphors. Between Cassidy’s bike lane “battles” and the omnipresent “war on the car”, I feel like we might have lost some important perspective. A recent letter sent by Councillor Adam Vaughan to BIAs and resident associations in his ward, used the word “barricaded” in place of “curbed” to describe Denzil Minnan-Wong’s separated bike lane proposal, going on to say a bike path would “carve” through Grange Park. While respecting Councillor Vaughan’s work to increase bicycle infrastructure in the city, it’s this kind of unnecessarily value-laden language that contributes to an antagonistic atmosphere through positioning the cyclist as the urban warrior vs. the rest of the city. We would hardly refer to the curb on the sidewalk as a barricade for pedestrians.

And let’s also remember that if we insist on calling this a war, then most of us are constantly switching sides. An interesting thing happens when we walk, bike, or drive around the city. We seem to forget that we ever use any other form of transportation other than the one we are currently using. I've been in cars with people who impatiently drum their fingers at pedestrians taking too long to cross the street, while witnessing those same people deplore the lack of patience drivers have while they are crossing the street themselves. Drivers are bikers are pedestrians are transit users. We do not exist in easily separated categories, pitted against each other in travel statistics. Most of us use at least more than one way to get around, even if it’s just walking from the car to the restaurant. Splitting the debate into an Us vs. Them dichotomy is too coarse, a point which Dave Meslin picks up on in his Toronto Star editorial where he argues that Rob Ford may not be the be the harbinger of the bicyclepocalypse as originally thought.

Cyclists, let’s tone down the environmental angle. Arguments about the environmental and economic benefits of cycling are all well and good, but by over-focusing on these elements we run the risk of alienating a lot of people while missing out on the greater point. Increased bicycle infrastructure should ultimately be about safety and allowing everyone to feel comfortable riding their bike, including the timid. This is, after all, mostly who bike lanes are for. There are plenty of us out there now, with the bicycle network as pitiful as it is, pedaling away everyday. While I would love to ride in a bike lane along Spadina, the absence of one is not enough to keep me off the street. As do many others in this city, I feel confident enough to — as Rob Ford says — swim with the sharks. The important point, however, is that you shouldn’t have to possess nerves of steel just to get to work. Cassidy writes about how in the 1980s when he biked around New York he would frequently arrive shaking with fear — if that’s not a good argument for increased bicycle infrastructure, I’m not sure what is.

Let’s stop demonizing everyone based on the actions of a few. There are certainly bad cyclists out there, and I’ve almost been hit on the sidewalk several times by a few of them. But I’ve also almost been hit crossing the street by terrible drivers talking on cell phones and running stop signs. This doesn’t mean that every motorist is a negligent jerk, just as every cyclist isn’t a law-breaking hooligan. Taking every opportunity to point an indignant finger and proclaim “Aha! See?” gets us nowhere fast.

As StreetsblogNYC pointed out in a handy pie chart, even in a city that has taken a very proactive stance toward bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, the allocation of road space in New York has barely budged. I’m sure a similar pie chart of Toronto or Vancouver road space allocation would show a similar trend.

It's time both sides put away their swords and focused their energy on implementing "complete streets" that provide space for cars, transit, pedestrian and bikes. Let's tell a different story.

China's Traffic Jam as a Linear City

photo taken from Associated Press, The Globe and Mail

Just a few days ago the epic 100km traffic jam in China disappeared overnight, but before that it seems as though a small economy had sprung up around the traffic jam to serve the thousands of people caught inside the newly created linear city.

The Globe and Mail reported that nearby villagers were selling noodles and boxed lunches to those in the traffic jam, and that "Drivers caught in the gridlock have reportedly been passing the time by playing cards, sleeping and walking between cars."

How strange though that a temporary (one would hope) almost nomadic in nature linear city with its own food economy and social circles can spring up over a period of ten days on a hot stretch of highway turned parking lot. You can get to know someone pretty well in ten days, so did drivers make friends with their neighbours? Perhaps exchanging real-world addresses so that when the jam finally cleared and their temporary city disintegrated they could keep in touch?

And what if the traffic jam hadn't cleared when it did? I suppose the first signs of traffic jam economics was the villagers selling noodles and lunch boxes, but soon bigger entrepreneurs would move into the area with mobile showers, restaurants, bars and maybe even a nightclub. If the traffic jam had gotten large enough and been there for a long enough time perhaps even a politician would have been assigned to the new "riding" giving a voice for those in what would be called Linear City or Trafficopolis. Eventually the government could build a school or other urban amenities nearby to serve this new population. And then maybe, when the traffic finally cleared, some residents would decide to stay in their newfound home.

This also happens (albeit in a much smaller scale) when people are stuck in their cars waiting in line-ups for a ferry or to get across the border. Growing up in Vancouver with family on Vancouver Island, there were many times when we would be sitting in a vast parking lot of cars waiting to get on the ferry to take us to Victoria. There were shops and a playground nearby as well as a restaurant, cafe, and several washrooms. People walked their dogs, talked to their new neighbours, brought out a frisbee or football -- and then it all disappeared when the ferry loaded and everyone went back to being strangers in their cars.

So, this traffic jam did something else besides reveal the horror that can be a country choked to capacity with vehicular traffic. It revealed how humans can turn a non-place like a highway into something social in just a few days time. All it takes is for everyone to slow down a bit.

The Dichotomy of the Don Valley & Reflections on Urban Highways

A few days ago, I rode my bike along Bloor and over the Don Valley Parkway (DVP), a wide highway that threads through the green of the Don Valley. What struck me most about my view of the highway from the pedestrian/bicycle bridge, was the marked dichotomy between the two uses of the Don Valley -- one as smooth-paved high volume six lane highway, and the other as green parkland and river.

It was the stark physical representation of past planning decisions, laid out with two visions: one a fast-flowing mechanized stream of cars, trucks and motocycles, and the other a slow-flowing stream of water through a green valley. I wonder what the area would look like if the highway was absent? It's a shame that Toronto's widest streets and highways (Lake Shore Blvd, Gardiner Expressway, the DVP) are placed exactly in the spots that severe Torontonians connection to things like the Don Valley River or Lake Ontario. It seems easy in this city to forget that water lies so close.

Originally Woodbine Avenue, the DVP fully opened in 1966 and was conceived as part of a network of highways for Toronto including the constructed Gardiner Expressway that snakes along Toronto's waterfront, and the much opposed (thank you, Jane Jacobs) and never-built Spadina Expressway that would have literally chopped Toronto in two. This was all during the era of Robert Moses, the highway builder who loved to carve cities up with ribbons of asphalt. In fact, there is an entire book written by Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Battle for Gotham, that chronicles the "fight" between Jacobs and Moses.

Lying on the grass at Riverdale Park there are three things that are noticeable. One is the fantastic view of downtown Toronto (a rare sight it seems in a city that is so flat). The second is the broad, sloping grass of the park (I will have to remember to come sledding here in winter). And the third is the constant hum and buzz of the DVP, which is noticeable just at the bottom of the park (although not in this picture).

Projects to revamp the natural side of the Don Valley, including the Don Mouth Naturalization and Port Lands Flood Project are currently under way in the city in an effort to reestablish some of the natural environment of the Don Valley that has been affected by the DVP and other waterfront developments.

In the case of the Gardiner Expressway, Waterfront Toronto has been studying options on what to do with the ugly, elevated highway, including options, as they say, of "removal, replacement, enhancement, or maintaining the status quo." Parts of the Gardiner were already removed in 2001 and 2003. Their study also include the previously mentioned Lake Shore Blvd. To me, a boulevard is meant to evoke the kind of street you'd like to stroll along, especially one with the moniker 'lake shore"; however, the actual street is a daunting, multi-lane barren strip of pavement between the city and the lake.

Other cities that went urban highway crazy during the Moses years are also wondering what to do with them. San Francisco demolished the elevated Embarcadero in the early 90s, effectively reconnecting the waterfront with the rest of the city, while Boston spent billions of dollars to bury their urban freeway underground, a construction project nicknamed The Big Dig, which has opened up a long, corridor through the city to be developed.

On the other side of things, there are city's like Vancouver, which opposed highways bisecting their city and now don't have the expensive job of demolishing or re-routing them. Vancouver did, however, start the process of building the highway with the demolishing of the black neighbourhood of Hogan's Alley and subsequent construction of the elevated Dunsmuir Viaduct -- and there is even talk in city hall about demolishing that.

But back to the pedestrian/bicycle bridge overlooking the Don Valley River and the Don Valley Parkway. It is quite humbling to peer over the edge at the cars, which seem to appear from nowhere as if they have been shot out of a cannon below the bridge. Of course, if you turn around you can see where they come from: kilometres of highway. If you close your eyes you can imagine the sound as a rushing river of rapids. But when you open them again you realize the real river is tranquil and silent and just over to the side, behind that highway fence.

Adventures in Suburban New Hampshire

I'm visiting my grandma in her house in suburban New Hampshire located in a place called Stoneridge Estates, although there is neither stone nor ridge nearby. There is however a nice bucolic lake with a sandy (gravely?) beach nearby; however, I was notified by my grandma that the lake is man made, which is fitting for this area. It also seems fitting that I started reading James Howard Kunstler's classic (and so far excellent) book on American urban planning, The Geography of Nowhere.

This truly is the geography of nowhere. It's almost cliche to describe suburbs this way, but the area consists of wide, looping, discontinuous roads with no sidewalks, which are in turn connected to highways that lead to strip malls accessed only through a sea of parking. Why a suburban area with not much car traffic needs roads wide enough for three lanes, I don't know. When looking for a place to eat all that we could see from the highway were the tall signs of fast food and chain restaurants, except it's difficult to figure out which exit to take or which parking lot entrance will connect you to the one you want to patronize.

My grandma's street is so new that Google Maps hasn't even named it yet. I guess you truly do live in the geography of nowhere when even Google doesn't acknowledge that you exist. Each house resembles its neighbour and is set back in a grassy yard that no one seems to spend anytime in except to mow it. Some yards are small (like pictured below) while others are almost comically big. The most activity I have seen so far has been the sprinkler system coming on to keep the grass green.

The houses are large, but toy-like at the same time, like something used to plunk down your spot in Monopoly. SUVs seem to be the common car of choice here, I suppose to maneuver over all those stones and ridges. Here's what the street system looks like:

There is no public transit (everyone has cars and it's not dense enough). I've only seen one person biking so far, but unless you want to bike on the highway it would be hard to get anywhere. I went for a jog at 9am and saw one woman walking her dogs and another woman doing laps in her own oversized driveway while her kids pedalled their tricycles up and down, trailing her.

Everything is so spread out it's almost unbelievable. It's the complete opposite of the kind of place I'd like to live in when I'm old. My grandma can walk to the end of the street to get the mail, but that's it. Everything else you need a car for, and she can't drive. Our errands consisted of visiting an auto repair shop, two banks, a restaurant, a pharmacy and a seniors home--basically an archipelago of parking lots.

We got a taste of just how car-dependent this area is when we piled into the car one morning and realized the battery had completely died somehow during the night, which left me with a slightly panicky feeling of well how the hell are we going to get anywhere? Luckily, a neighbour brought over jumper cables and restored our independence.

Officer Collisions, Credit Card Transit, Bicycle Rush Hour, Surrey's New Library, & Affordable Vancouver Condos

An article in the Boston Globe, Trooper Down, Why drivers hit officers on the side of the road, discusses the phenomenon of how police, even when wearing visibility jackets and standing near the flashing lights of their police cars, get hit on the road.

Marcus Gee in The Globe & Mail enumerates the reasons why an Open-payments system is the right track for the Toronto Transit Commission, something I totally agree with as, coming from Vancouver, dealing with tokens and flimsy paper transfers is driving me batty.

And check out the best rush hour in the world, which takes place on two wheels in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Surrey City Centre Library by Bing Thom Architects looks to be an impressive structure and a forward thinking one as well since it will be built larger than currently necessary in anticipation of future use--something that perhaps the people over at the Translink and the BC Government should have thought about when they built the short platforms of the Canada Line.

Vancouver developer Ian Gillespie, the same that brought the upscale Shangri-La Vancouver, and architect Gregory Henriquez, the same that designed Woodward's, are experimenting with affordable condos near downtown Vancouver. How they do it? No parking spaces, for one.

Street as Sidewalk

One of the things about living on a busy street in a downtown neighbourhood is that there are always people outside. I have gotten used to opening my front door and being immediately caught up in a stream of people on the sidewalk; however, I was unprepared today when I went out to buy cat food and stepped right into what was a fairly robust street festival.

It's always a bit strange when you see a street, usually reserved solely for cars, taken over by hordes of pedestrians and sticky-fingered children. For one, I got a perspective of my street that I have never seen before: right down the middle. It's a view of the road only seen from those in cars or those navigating Google's street view. Normally, as bipeds, we aren't treated to this perfectly symmetrical cleaving of our streets, having to choose one side or the other to walk on, and it's quite pleasing to the eye to be able to stare right down the middle to the vanishing point.

It's funny, too, that when the streets are closed to cars people still tend to gravitate toward the sidewalks. It's as if streets have some intrinsic centrifugal force that spin the pedestrians out towards the edges. The thing is: people like order. We like knowing that on escalators you stand right and walk left. And street closures, by definition not-ordinary, upset this order. They're chaotic. People bump into each other not because they work against the stream, but because there is no stream. There's just a bunch of people walking. Slowly.

And I like interacting with the street in a way that I normally can't. It's a good reminder that streets don't simply have to be a way to get around, but can be a place to gather. I never realized how fast I walked down the sidewalk until today, when, as I slowly made my way down the five closed blocks, I actually noticed buildings I hadn't even seen before. Usually, I'm in search of a can of beans for dinner, powering through slow-walkers and dreaming of having my own personal jet pack. Or at least wider sidewalks.

I went out later as the festival was in take-down mode. Vans, cars, and trucks wound their way slowly through the stragglers on their way to be loaded up with disassembled tents and BBQs. Seeing your street closed to cars is kind of like seeing someone naked for the first time. I'm not sure if I'll be able to look at it quite the same way again.