Real and Imaginary Traffic Rules for Cyclists

Motorists who complain about cyclists seem to have two principal beefs. Some argue that cyclists take up space that "rightfully" belongs to cars, and that cyclists simply get in the way of what they view as "legitimate" road users. Others point out that the rules of the road apply to all of us. Unfortunately, the first view tends to inform the second: many motorists don't just want cyclists to obey the rules of the road, they want cyclists to obey the rules as they understand them, or even as they invent them.

The laws motorists claim cyclists routinely break fall into four categories: laws which really do serve the purpose of keeping us safe, laws in which the spirit reasonably ought to exempt bicycles, laws which serve a purpose but do not apply in the context that many motorists claim, and, last, laws not found in the Ontario statute books at all, and which some motorists have apparently made up out of whole cloth.

Real Laws that Really Apply

Everyone who operates a vehicle at night needs lights and reflectors. That includes cyclists as well as drivers. Every vehicle should obey the traffic lights. Vehicles don't belong on sidewalks or in crosswalks. Any cyclist can turn into a pedestrian at any time; just get off the saddle, grab the handlebars, and walk. Don't ride past open streetcar doors. Yield to the bus. Respect crosswalks. The list of laws that reasonably apply to bicycles includes most of the highway traffic act.

Real Laws that Common Sense Says Shouldn't Apply to Bicycles

Traffic calming rules apply to bicycles, although many of them really should not. When a local neighbourhood committee asks for stop signs on every block to deter commuting motorists from barreling through at fifty km/h or more, they don't intend to force bicycles traveling at twenty to thirty km/h to stop every sixty meters. However, we have a solution for this: change the law, so the letter reflects the intent. Where four-way stop signs and other traffic calming measures don't need to apply to bicycles, change the rules, and change the signs to match.

Real (Sort of) Laws That Would Paralyze Urban Traffic

According to a literal reading of the highway traffic act, you cannot pass another car on the right. Toronto has a number of streets with advanced right turn signals, and of course, cars routinely turn right on red. In congested traffic, the cars in the least congested lane move ahead as quickly as they can. Whenever cars in the rightmost lane move before cars in the left or center lane, they technically violate the law. If everyone followed the law rigidly, no lane could move unless the left-most lane started moving first. Nobody ever drives like that, but some motorists apparently insist that cyclists ought to ride that way.

"Rules" Made Up Out of Whole Cloth

One motorist recently wrote to a public forum, complaining that:

As a driver, this is frustrating. Cars move at a good clip, as I'm sure you're aware. When a cyclist darts in front of them to avoid a "pothole", as in your example, they usually do not signal. This is actually the law, to signal, if you are a car or a bike...any vehicle needs to signal.

This argument misstates the law in two ways. First, cars do not "move at a good clip"; they travel at the speed selected by their drivers, who have at all times the obligation to operate them in a safe manner. That means a driver who cannot avoid a cyclist in front of them maneuvering to avoid a pothole should slow down. Second, a cyclist, like a car, has a right to maneuver in the cyclist's own lane without needing to signal. If you want to pass a cyclist in their own lane, you have the responsibility to do it safely. That means leaving the cyclist enough room to avoid road hazards. If you can't pass safely, slow down. I don't think any motorist has ever died from driving at bicycle speed for a few blocks.

Then we have the extraordinary delusion that the highway traffic act, or any other traffic regulation, contains some sort of provision for those drivers who consider it unfair that cyclists take advantage of the nimble nature of our vehicles. Yes, bicycles work better in congested traffic, precisely because we can cycle through gaps in traffic that cars cannot. If you want to take advantage of that too, get on your bike; with one less car, we'll all have less congestion to worry about.

Why does this matter? First of all, it matters that road users have reasonable expectations of one another. Also, some drivers seem to believe they do not have to respect any cyclist if they see just one cyclist do something they consider wrong. That attitude has plenty of obnoxious features by itself; if you extend that way of thinking to cars, could the police ban motorized traffic from the city for twenty-four hours after every hit and run? If drivers can behave with contempt and distrust for all cyclists because of the behavior of one cyclist, can any cyclist who has ever encountered a drunk driver treat all motorists with contempt and disdain? But this belief in collective guilt takes on an additional dimension of absurdity when the "rules" motorists blame us all for breaking exist only in heir own heads. Plenty of cyclists, including myself, advocate excellent cycling, which includes showing respect for other road users. We should follow the rules that keep us and other road users safe. Those rules, however, come from the law and the courts, not the desires of individual motorists.

Mr. Bush doesn't get it

...the American people will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our creator meant for all.

Almost five years after Jean Chretien summed up the problem with a single nation trying to police the globe and impose one version of the "good life" on everyone, George Bush still doesn't get it. As the United States prepared to invade Iraq, Chretien asked the single question that, in retrospect, everyone should have asked: once we grant the world's dominant military power to impose their vision of freedom on anyone, anywhere, by armed force, what limits to this power exist? And if any nation can suffer an invasion simply because opinion moulders in the United States find their society insufficiently "free", then what freedom, what security does anyone have?

Almost two hundred and twenty years after the framing of the United States constitution, and four bloody years in Iraq (and counting), the basic concept that freedom means, above all, limits on the power of people with uniforms and guns still escapes many "serious" foreign policy minds in Washington. Almost eighty years after the Kellog-Briand pact, it hasn't penetrated the mind of George Bush or his supporters that the same principle of freedom from government intervention that underpins the US constitution has to apply to everyone. Trapped in a tragic conviction that the United States government can make people free by pointing guns at them, Mr. Bush and his supporters have succeeded only at diminishing everyone's freedom.

A beautiful pause in Wisconsin

Toronto, Ontario. -- On the way home, we spent three days in Wisconsin, first visiting the Milwaukee Art Museum to see their current exhibition, Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape. Then we stayed at a lovely, quiet resort in central Wisconsin, the Oakwood Lodge in Green Lake.

I think that the picture says it all.

And here's another picture.

The Road East

We headed east from Bear Butte and Sturgis South Dakota on Tuesday, making for Sioux Falls where we had to drop a colleague off. Interstate 90, the road which traverses the southern part of South Dakota from Minnesota to Wyoming, has relatively little traffic. However, much of that traffic consists of big vehicles. We regularly saw bus-sized recreational vehicles (RVs) towing SUVs. In fact, one RV actually had a hummer in tow, which pretty much redefined the term "wretched excess" for me.

We stopped for lunch at Wall Drug, which has essentially evolved from a small town drug store on the edge of the badlands to a large western-themed mall. They have a cafe which serves a good inexpensive breakfast, and a sculpture court where you can take someone's picture on a jackelope.

After we had dropped our co-worker off for the flight home, we headed for our first night's stop in Fairmont, MN. The next day we drove on through to the Mississippi crossing, and then on through the Wisconsin Dells, and so to Kenosha on Lake Michigan.

And so we ended the first part of our trip, the excursion to South Dakota and our religious meeting.

A Prairie Trail

Green Lake, Wisconsin. -- I am writing from a resort in Wisconsin, but (to keep with our chronology), I am recalling the events of a few days ago, on the prairie.

John has already written about our reasons for being in South Dakota, where John spoke at a Spiritual Forum in Rapid City and where we stayed for two nights at the prayer camp at the foot of Bear Butte. So I am just adding a few impressions.

Now I have to admit that I do not like camping as a rule, being quite fond of the comforts found in say, a nice Holiday Inn or a cosy bed and breakfast. But the experience of camping on the prairie was lovely in a lot of ways. First, and most important, because of the warm welcome we received from the First Nations people there. Second, because of the gentle breezes that kept the heat at bay (even though they threatened to blow one tent away).

Third, as an Ontario resident, I had never really seen the grasslands up close or realized how rich and colourful they are. Black-eyed Susans are the flower of choice there, growing by every roadside in the hundreds. There are plants with little red berries (I don't know the name) and others that have elegant brown thistle-like (but not prickly) flowers. Best of all, sage grows alongside the pathways, and across the pathways too, so that, as you walk, it is as if your footsteps are always raising incense.

Honouring our Ancestors

Christian Solidarity Walk,
Mato Paha 2006

Green Lake, Wisconsin - As part of our trip to Mato Paha (Bear Butte), we attended a spiritual encampment set up to pray for the protection of the sacred mountain. There we met a Lakota woman who spoke to us of White people who ask to join First Nations rituals, to take part in Sweat Lodges and watch the Sun Dance. She told me she asks them what they do to honour their own ancestors, what rituals they have.

As a Christian, my religious rituals do not relate to my ancestors. But I do make an effort to honour my ancestors; I work for justice towards Aboriginal North Americans on my behalf and theirs.

My great-great-great uncle, William Spragge, signed the Manitoulin Island Treaty on behalf of the Crown. I don't know his actual attitude towards the First Nations he negotiated with, whether he truly wished to make the encounter between two cultures as just and fair as he could, or whether he mainly wished to move Aboriginals and their cultures out of the way of European settlement. In a sense, it does not matter very much. The Europeans who first encountered First Nations people shared the difficult task of reconciling two very different cultures with very different views of the world, and I believe in evaluating even their worst failures with compassion.

But whatever my ancestors did or failed to do right in the centuries that preceded this one, their actions form part of an ongoing relationship. I can choose to honour the best things my ancestors did by doing everything I can to foster a just relationship between the Aboriginal and Non-aboriginal people of this continent. If enough of us do so, in the end I believe history will see even the worst mistakes of our ancestors as slips at the rocky beginning of a positive relationship. If we and the generations that follow us fail, then all that our ancestors did, the good and the bad, will blend into a history of genocide, of the destruction of a people. I do this work, I strive to steer our relationships in a positive direction, because I have the honour of my ancestors in my keeping.

Not Quite Critical Mass

Sturgis SD. - The thunder creeps in everywhere: through library windows, through the walls of our tent at night, and into the cafe where we eat. Tens of thousands of engines roar in unison at the Sturgis motorcycle rally, where we have come to attend a prayer camp for the protection of Mato Paha, the holy mountain threatened by bars and party venues. We have come to meet with Native Elders, and have joined a prayer camp sponsored by the Northern Cheyenne.

During the rally, Sturgis South Dakota presents a picture of a culture utterly enthralled to the internal combustion engine; some motorcycle rally participants arrive on motorcycles with their tents and bedrolls, while others ride in van homes or rolling palaces towed by semi-trailers. The festival has grayed; the average age of the participants has topped fifty. But even the AARP of motorcycle rallies has plenty of beer, plenty of noise, and a very busy court and jail.

A Cyclist Goes for a Long Drive...

Winner, SD. - If you read the cycling stories and the cycling advocacy here, the stories of travel by car we have posted in the last three days may make you wonder: why did we choose to drive? And does that mean my advocacy for cycling only means advocating easy cycling?
The work I have undertaken on behalf of Christian Peacemaker Teams requires travel to Rapid City South Dakota, two destinations not served by any public transit other than a bus service which runs on an irregular schedule, and an airline service. The work we plan to do requires mobility in a place where summer temperatures routinely get up into the mid forties (Celsius). We need to go to the area at a time when demand for accommodation pushes hotel prices for even budget hotels into the $200.00 per night range. We have to navigate changing circumstances, complex politics, and extreme, unpredictable weather. To do this work, we need a car. A bicycle touring champion might operate successfully on a bicycle in these conditions, though I doubt it, but I cannot.
All this means nothing to the Earth's carbon balance. Does the work we do justify itself to future generations, who will have to endure the atmosphere we leave behind? I believe it does. Nothing creates as much pollution as unconstrained conflict. I consider peacemaking a carbon offset. I believe the work we do to heal confrontations justifies the carbon we must expend.

Classical taste in the Midwest

Sioux Center, Iowa. - During our stay in Beloit, Wisconsin (which we learned is pronounced Beloyt, not Belwah), we enjoyed visiting Beloit College. Besides the fascinating effigy mounds and Emma Goldman sculpture, there was the Wright Museum of Art, a delightful red brick structure. Its courtyard with round arches has a definite air of promoting art as a civilizing influence.

Among the exhibits was a plaster cast of the ancient Greek discus thrower. The label explained that he was one of a collection of plaster casts acquired from the Greek government's exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Typical of such collections, these casts were once treasured, subsequently fell into sad disrepair, but are now being rediscovered. The museum invited us to "adopt" the plaster cast of the discus thrower or one of his fellows.

After enjoying a small exhibit of plein air painting, and a show of sequential paintings, we were on our way.

Crossing Minnesota

We set ourselves a challenge yesterday: swimming, blogging, sightseeing, and getting from the edge of southern Wisconsin to the borders of South Dakota. By Mapquest's account, it should take eight hours to drive that distance, but MapQuest does not take construction delays, rainstorms, or meal breaks into account.
We started out looking at Native effigy mounds at Beloit College, a small liberal arts university. The mounds at Beloit look like small humps, clearly visible as human constructions, rising between two and four feet above ground level. The brochure provided by the college anthropology museum tells us they date from AD 800-1000, and surmises that Native families built them as projects to foster family unity. Beloit College has added some modern sculptural installations to the grounds as well, including a tribute to Emma Goldman. It consists of a seat with a cage in front of it, and an open liberating window to the left.


We had lunch in Beloit, then drove north and west, past Madison to the Mississippi crossing that divides Wisconsin from Minnesota. The Mississippi has cut a large valley here, with impressive bluffs looming over it. According to the historical plaque, the area has attracted tourists since 1855. The highway follows the valley for a short while, then climbs out into rolling farmland of Minnesota. We stopped for dinner in Rochester, which appeared to have a balloon festival under way.
After dinner, we drove on in the dark; rain turned the drive into a challenge at first, then an endurance test. We arrived after midnight.
Today we pick up our co-worker and travel on to the meeting in Rapid City.

Revisiting old Haunts

Beloit, Wisconsin. - I have little to add to John's post except to say a bit about revisiting Ann Arbor. When we arrived there with Rebecca and Doug I was delighted to show them the parking structure, which goes beyond parking to be a lesson in cross-cultural mathematics. Each floor is indicated in a variety of number systems -- modern Arabic, Roman numerals, Egyptian, Chinese and Hindi. Having lived six years in this lovely city with its high concentration of Ph.D.'s, all I can say is, this is so Ann Arbor.

It's interesting how a one-and-a-half hour revisit to a city one knows well, becomes a condensed version of one's remembered life there. Zola is special to us because of many visits for waffles and other treats, but especially because, the evening after I successfully defended my dissertation, my superisor Howard took us to dinner there.

By the way, it is the addition of yogurt and lemon zest that makes the Zola waffle so special

The Journey is Our Home

Yesterday we left our house with the sun. Friends picked us up in the Christian Peacemaker Teams car, and we headed west for Chicago. Rebecca and Doug had meetings at the Chicago offices of CPT; we plan to attend a spiritual gathering on the subject of Mato Paha, the great sacred mountain of the Western Plains.

We had a long drive ahead of us for this first day: from Toronto through Chicago to Beloit in Wisconsin. Fortunately, our friends took turns with the driving, allowing me to catch up on sleep that the trip preparations had given me no time for. We took our friends to lunch in Ann Arbor at Zola's cafe, and treated them to the best waffles on this mortal Earth. Then we hit the road again, through the hills of southern Michigan and the northern Indiana, through the dark and slag-scarred mills of Gary Indiana, and so to the CPT American office on Chicago's West Side. There we rested and had dinner.

Whenever I see it, the scale of the American industrial landscape impresses me; where other cities have a lifting railway bridge, Chicago has a row of lifting bridges. The use of steel in places like Chicago also impresses me; where in Toronto we tend to build in square forms that have a spare functional beauty, American designers use more decoration, shaping even objects such as bridge supports into decorative shapes which look to me like tulip bulbs, and weaving decorations into bridge railings.

After dinner, and after leaving our friends behind, we headed west for the final phase of the day's journey: the trip to Beloit Wisconsin. We followed I-90 out of Chicago to Rockford, where crews repairing up the road reduced traffic to a monumentally frustrating crawl. And so to the inn and bed after a long day, a long leap at the start of our journey.

Riding to Port Hope

This weekend, I joined Vic Gedris and a mixed group of bicycle riders to celebrate my birthday weekend with a cycling and camping trip. Two nights under the stars, and a 100 kilometer round trip; what better way could I chose to close out an interesting 51st year?

The trip had a several highlights for me, things both important and trivial:

• The train that returned my wave with a toot,

• the patience of my fellow riders, who often waited for an old man who fell behind,

• the waiters in the Beamish House restaurant at Port Hope, who responded to the news that a party of tired, hungry and sweaty cyclists had descended on their patio with pitchers of ice water and plates of food,

• the impromptu pot luck dinner we organized on Saturday night after the ride.

• the waterfront trail winding through the country along the waterfront, and the ongoing work to improve it.

Not Ready to Make Nice

We rented the "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing" on DVD last week, and by coincidence, at just about the same time I ran across evidence of the evolution of people on the opposite side: advocates for the Iraq war.

Consider David Warren, perhaps the most strident of the Canadian backers of the war in Iraq; he generally gets credited with the "flypaper" justification for occupying Iraq. Four years ago, in high indignation over Jean Chretien's refusal to participate in Iraq, Mr. Warren had this to say:

...this New Canada that makes me heartsick as it does several millions of my fellow Canadians -- that fills us with such a deep sense of shame.... This Canada that despatched its few remaining available soldiers hurriedly to peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan as a kind of insurance in case the Americans asked for help. ("Sorry! We gave at the office.")

Over the next three and a half years, Canada went through two elections, the second of which brought in a Conservative party government. Through those three and a half years, the Canadian government remained fully committed to the mission in Afghanistan the Chretien government had first signed on for in 2002. But as Iraq sank into chaos and failure, as American casualties mounted and ten percent of Iraq's population fled, Canada stayed resolutely clear of any involvement with the "coalition of the willing". In November 2006, David Warren wrote this:

With a few gracious exceptions, such as Britain, Australia, Poland -- and Canada, rather late in the day -- the West has watched America defend our common vital interests, alone.... I am, on balance, ashamed of the hesitant and scrounging support my own countrymen have given our American allies.

Last week, he had this to say about the Canadian dead coming home from Afghanistan:

...we are a nation, and when they send our boys back from Afghanistan in boxes, it doesn’t matter what our politics are. We stand with them and for them, and we salute them, for they were our bravest and best.

When did Canada's commitment to Afghanistan change from a poor excuse to avoid helping the Americans in Iraq to a noble cause? And more important, why does it matter?

Let us try another example: consider Dan Riehl's argument in favor of Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq.

...we have engaged a ruthless enemy in a generational conflict that only the naive thought would be over in a few years, or go precisely as planned at its beginning.

I wonder if Riehl considers the multitude of US officials who confidently predicted a short war, a "cakewalk", before the invasion of Iraq among the naive, and whether the presence of so many naive policy makers in the Bush administration has helped lead to the current sorry state of Iraq. But, again, what do we accomplish by holding the proponents of the Iraq war to account for the disconnect between what they said then and what they say now, or for the contradictions between what they say and reality?

I think it matters that we hold the advocates for the war in Iraq accountable, simply to make the point that reality always wins. Politicians, whatever they want to believe, cannot order up the truth to suit themselves, and when they ignore the actual situation in favor of the things they and their constituents prefer to believe, they incur a high cost, which someone else often has to pay. Holding people accountable doesn't mean stocks and dunces caps in the public square; still less does it mean denying the very real arguments about the iniquities of Saddam Hussein that people sincerely advanced in the run-up to the war in Iraq. It does mean not accepting nonsense and not listening to absurdities in silence. It means always keeping in mind the difference between forgiving the people who pushed so hard for a disastrous war, and condoning their arrogance and thoughtlessness.

Shopping by Bicycle

I shop by bicycle. I find I can get enough groceries to last at least half a week into the rear panniers of my bicycle, and if I need to buy more, I can always load my front panniers. The picture to the right tells the story: all the food and drink on the table went into the panniers. I didn't have to pack tightly to fit everything in. The food I buy in an ordinary shopping trip, the kind many people make in a car, will generally fit comfortably enough in one or two panniers.

When I buy larger items, such as toilet paper, I generally use a bungee cord to strap the object to the rear deck of my bike, as the picture to the left illustrates. Usually, a single length of bungee cord suffices to secure a quite large item to the rear of the bike.

I find that I can ride quite comfortably carrying heavy load on the bike. The goods I bought in the shopping trip pictured above have mass of at least ten kilos (weighing twenty-two pounds), more than I would ever want to carry on foot. Riding, I didn't even notice I had them on. In many ways, a bicycle shows its advantages best when carrying heavy loads.

Cycling in Toronto -- Next Steps

The web log "I bike TO" has started some interesting discussions of our ultimate goals; imagining what the streets of Toronto should ultimately look like, and how they should ultimately work. I would like to start with a more modest goal: imagining what our next steps will look like. What do we need to do this year, and between now and 2010?

Building Critical Mass

Eight years ago, I stood on the street in Amsterdam and watched hundreds of cyclists rolling through an intersection. I thought then: the Dutch have passed the tipping point. Cyclists in Amsterdam have the numbers, to dominate not only the streets, but the perception of the streets. To a resident of Amsterdam, Rob Ford's "Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks." must seem self-evidently absurd.

So how do we get past that tipping point? In a culture saturated in car advertisements, where car columnists can speak about speeding as "not the problem", how do we turn this corner. In fact, nobody can guarantee we ever will.

Not one to go down without a comment, or a fight, I will propose four measures to support right now to get the bicycle commuters, the bicycle shoppers, and the Sunday cyclists out on the road.

1. We need safe bicycle routes. That means bicycle routes safe from aggressive drivers, but also safe from muggers and rapists. We need lit, monitored cycle paths. We need more bicycle lanes, if lanes attract more cyclists and help keep them safe. We need more effective education for motorists on the need to share the road. We need sharrows on every street in the city.

2. We need year-round bicycle routes. A fellow parishioner of mine told me his bicycles wear out in two years because he rides them in winter. The combination of salt slathered on roads, bicycle paths with "No Winter Maintenance" signs, and the inevitable hazards of winter add up to a potent, and toxic, combination of factors steering people away from winter cycling. I believe we need to designate winter bicycle routes along side streets, where we can avoid salt in favor of plowing. I believe we need to get the city to commit to keeping selected cycling routes open all year.

3. We need public transit to accommodate bicyclists, not just when the TTC or GO finds it convenient to have cyclists aboard, but all of the time.

4. We need to reach out.

   • We need to reach the thousands of unorganized cyclists in this city. Almost two thirds of the population of Toronto cycles; we need to make sure they know that by riding more, and by getting involved in the politics of this city, we can make our rides easier and safer.

   • We need to reach out to racialized and immigrant communities. We need to make the economic and health benefits of doing without cars clear to everyone in Toronto, and we need to hear what other communities need to make car-free transportation work for them.

I do not propose these things as our ultimate goals, merely as the next steps toward which we should organize. But I believe that as we begin to achieve these goals, we will move close to a bicycle friendly city, one which has broken the car addiction.

Answers for rude drivers....

In January of this year, I posted on the need for an alternative means of communication with rude and aggressive drivers. A reader added a comment to the effect that the Australians may have found a gesture that works.

I hope it works, because road rage hasn't gone away.

This is my bicycle...

This is my bicycle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Together, we make up a truly remarkable vehicle: efficient, agile, silent, non-polluting.

A bicycle has a ratio of one watt to the guidance system, the cyclist's brain, for every four watts that goes into the propulsion system, the cyclist's legs. Consider, by contrast, the car: for every watt of brain power, in many cars a thousand watts go into the drive train. That makes a bicycle the smartest transportation system on the road today.

My bicycle gives me pleasure, lets me move through the world using less energy than any other vehicle, gives me a way to experience, directly, the smells of the city, the slopes, turns, and texture of the road, see, hear, and feel the world I move through.

I ride to shops, work sites, through places of beauty and peace and across gulfs of concrete and hazard. I ride in cooling breezes during the summer, and snow flurries in the winter.

After eleven years of riding, this bicycle has come to fit me.Together, this bicycle and I move in the world.

A feature, not a bug...

Cyclists do not have to pay car insurance premiums. To judge from the comment recently dropped on I Bike TO, some people regard that as a bug. I see it as a feature, for two reasons:

1. Operating a vehicle with a mass of 100 kilograms powered by a 100 watt power source carries less risk to everyone around you than operating a vehicle with a mass of 2000 kilos and a peak power of over 150,000 watts. Cars pose a risk to drivers, passengers, other road users, and even pedestrians. As well as keeping hundreds of auto body shops in business, your (2003) car insurance premiums helped pay the funeral expenses of 2,778 people killed in crashes in this country, and medical and rehabilitation costs for 222,260 people injured. When you drive, you operate a two-tonne battering ram fueled by the explosive equivalent of 800 pounds of dynamite. The risk translates into cost, but even insurance premiums cannot offset all the risks of driving. We should welcome a method of transport which avoids the risks of the car, not resent it for costing less.
   
2. The Canadian Charter of Rights identifies personal mobility as a right. Attaching a price tag to a right makes it hard for many people to exercise, and makes it irrelevant to many poor people. In a car-dependent culture, high-speed roads can act as prison walls confining poor communities. A means of personal mobility available to everyone makes everyone free.
   

Thirty-day chip

I started this year by posting my sole New Year's Resolution: to cycle more and drive less. Now at my house we keep track of our car-free days. We expect to make this our fourteenth car-free day; we used our bicycles to go out to dinner in Port Credit. We've promised ourselves that we will do something special when we have accumulated thirty car-free days.

We try to define a car-free day as a day in which we neither drive nor do we make any secondary use of a car; by ordering food delivered or by taking a taxi. We can have a car-free day where we take the train or public transit. But above all, a car-free day means taking the opportunity to travel by bicycle.

For me, car-free means freedom, from the cost of gas, as well as from all the other costs, economic and personal, of using a car. It means relying on myself for my own travel.

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An Armed Society

The National Rifle Association in the US likes to quote Robert Heinlein: "An armed society is a polite society."

Here in Toronto, we have the arms, all right. We (or most of us) frequently tool around in two-tonne battering rams, each powered by enough high explosive to take down a building. We seem to have missed out on the "polite" part, though.

Most drivers behave with appropriate courtesy and respect, but a minority behaves in ways ranging from pushy and disrespectful to homicidally reckless. What did we do wrong? When do we get the "polite" part of our armed society?

I generally disagree with Heinlein every chance I get, but I partly agree with him here. In an armed society, people take their manners seriously, because what they do, and say, can have serious consequences. I think we do not have a polite society on the roads because we do not have a society of armed, self-confident equals. Instead, we have a society of patient, courteous drivers and a minority of motorized yobs. And because the majority has not yet developed an effective way of responding to the disrespectful, even lethal minority around us, violent drivers have impunity. Many people do not take their behavior seriously, because the consequences only go one way.

If we want to respond to aggressive drivers, we can assert our rights on the street, or we can assert them effectively in the courts. Given the consequences of a demolition derby, or even a game of chicken, on our streets, dealing with violent drivers through the courts makes more sense than anything else. If you drive a car, you operate a weapon, and the misuse of that privilege ought to carry the same consequences as the misuse of any other dangerous weapon. The time has come to take the rights and the responsibilities of all drivers seriously.

Urban Oddness

Yesterday I was on the westbound platform at Toronto’s Runnymede subway station when I saw an odd sight. A man, walking along the platform, turned his head to look at a round rust stain on the floor, a stain that suggested the former presence of a garbage can. The man then tossed a crumpled piece of paper in the general vicinity of the round stain. This action suggested three possibilities:

1. The man saw the stain but registered it in his mind as a garbage can, and therefore tossed his garbage in the proper direction.
2. The main disagreed with the transit commission’s decision to remove the garbage can, and therefore tossed his trash in the hope the garbage can would rematerialize some day.
3. The man didn’t know where he would find a garbage can, and so just tossed his garbage in the nearest available place.

Of these possibilities I find the first one the most intriguing, because it suggests that, for the man, a representation (the stain) took on the same value as the thing itself (the garbage can). This calls to mind French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s idea of the simulacrum. Professor Dino Felluga offers the following helpful précis: “Baudrillard is not merely suggesting that postmodern culture is artificial, because the concept of artificiality still requires some sense of reality against which to recognize the artifice. His point, rather, is that we have lost all ability to make sense of the distinction between nature and artifice.” I would suggest that a parallel to the man’s actions in the subway might be if someone whose pet had died adopted a plush toy animal, treating it just like the real animal.

I see though that I have been sloppy: the rusty circle is a trace of the garbage can, not a representation. It is a leftover, a relic, a remnant. So a better parallel to the man’s actions in the subway might be a widower who has taken to addressing his wife’s discarded shoes as though they were her.

Returning to our subway litterbug, the person’s actions show a stubborn ability to ignore an obvious loss (of the garbage can), in order to accomplish a task (trash disposal). This seems to me, in an odd way, to blend wishful thinking with well-developed survival skills.

Cars, Planes and Snake Oil

George Monbiot wants us to believe the science of global warming, not the politics. He wants you to understand that the atmosphere does not care about our politics or our needs; it responds without malice or mercy to the gases we put into it.

George Monbiot also wants you to believe that aviation, which produces roughly 3% of the world's greenhouse gases, poses such a threat that we must stop airport construction at once and ground as many of the world's airplanes as possible, but that we can continue driving our cars, which produce (in Canada) six times as much greenhouse gas in tonnes (you can find the relevant figures for Canadian emissions here) without worrying. Seems that we can keep driving with just a few minor technological changes, including the risibly Rube Goldberg vision of crane-equipped filling stations lifting out spent batteries from electric cars and dropping fresh ones in.

George Monbiot's claims in this regard involve three specific problems:

1. Claims that electric cars and high-mileage engines will solve the problems posed by the automobile ignore all of the side effects of a culture designed to cater to the needs of the car. Road construction produces tonnes of greenhouse gases, and once constructed, these roads trap sunlight and radiate terawatts of heat. A road, as a friend of mine observed, constitutes an extraordinary act of violence against the landscape. Electric cars will not change any of this; they will, no less than the gasoline cars they may or may not replace, keep huge areas smothered under heat-absorbing asphalt. Nor will electric cars require less manufacturing, metal smelting, or maintenance than gas cars, all of which requires energy.
2. Electric cars will not "run on" batteries; the batteries will merely store the energy to drive them. And cars require a lot of energy: powering the traffic of a medium-sized city will require tens of thousands of wind turbines. The hunger of these thousands of batteries for power will lead to the very conflict Monbiot and those who agree with him cite in relation to biofuels: between the mobility desires of the well to do, and the basic needs of the poor. Charging thousands of batteries will push up the price of the power everyone will need to heat their homes and water, and to cook.
3. Most of us, at least the majority of those of us who live in cities in the developed world, can do without the car. We could accomplish most if not all of what we do with car travel, for most Canadians, with improved public transit and human-powered personal transport. To a certain extent, we can replace aviation as well, with trains and ships. But to provide essential services for isolated communities, for trips (such as trips to the sick bed of a friend or relative overseas) we cannot do without aviation.

I claim no particular expertise on global warming; I can't tell you whether the doubters have it right, or the people who claim we have already passed the point of no return, and without high technology solutions, we have already plunged into disaster, or those, like Monbiot, who claim we can avoid the worst of global warming if we make sacrifices. I can, however, say this: if we indeed must cut our emissions by 90%, we will almost certainly need to reduce private car ownership very substantially. I do not think those in the environmental movement who gloss over this reality do the world any real favours.

Get on your bike

Gas, like any other limited good, goes to the highest bidder. Suppliers charge whatever the market (meaning the people willing to pay the highest prices) will pay. The oil companies will continue to raise their prices until people start to resist in the only real and meaningful way: they get out of their cars. Complaining about gas prices will do you no good. Writing politicians will not help at all. As long as you refuse to do without their product, as long as many of you won't even try, the oil companies will have you under their thumb. Want to free yourself from the oil companies and their prices? Then you have to free yourself from the car.

Getting out of your car accomplishes three things. First, it takes the pressure off the supplies of gas. If the supply of gas starts to outrun the demand, prices at the pump have to come down, as gas stations start competing for business. Second, it shifts the emphasis from facilities for cars to the alternatives, such as bike routes and public transit. Since these alternatives use less fuel, that further reduces the ability to oil companies to set their own prices. Finally, getting onto a bike, or public transit, or to any alternative to the car frees you. The real advantage the oil companies have over you lives in your own mind: the conviction that you have no alternative to driving your car and burning their gas. Once you free yourself of that belief, you have the power, because they have to sell gasoline, and you don't have to burn it.

So if you want freedom from high gas prices, relax that death grip on the pump handle and the steering wheel. You don't have to take your car to the auto graveyard; if everyone replaced 10km a week of driving with cycling, walking, and public transit, the gas stations in this city would sell seven hundred thousand fewer litres each week. That would make them take notice, and almost certainly have them rolling back their prices, in a big hurry.

Odd and hostile, or hostile to the odd?

Balloon Juice recently linked to interesting comment on the Virginia Tech murders. In an unusually lucid piece, the Wall Street Journal's Opinion web site weighs in on preventative involuntary commitment. I don't oppose all involuntary treatment, particularly for people giving serious indications they may commit violence. But I do have a very fussy attitude about the spirit in which we provide this treatment.

...the worst-case scenario would've been a minor league civil liberties goof: an unpleasant semester break for an odd and hostile young misanthrope who might've even have learned to be more polite.

When I read this in a proposal for involuntary commitment, I see an entirely unacceptable willingness to disregard the civil rights of "odd" (not like us) and "hostile" people. If we can justify locking up people who pose a threat, we should lock up polite conformists whom qualified evaluators judge a threat, no less than the rude, odd, and defiant.

Apart from any other considerations, a political nonconformist, for example a passionate supporter of George W. Bush in Berkeley CA., will appear "odd" to the people in their vicinity. And when someone flatly disagrees with views you cherish, they generally appear pretty hostile. When you dismiss the rights of the "odd" and the "hostile", you lay the foundations for social repression, and political repression does not follow far behind.

Level crossings -- levelling industrial infrastructure

Spacing wire linked to an interesting article from NOW, proposing an expanded number of level railway crossings for pedestrians and cyclists. I applaud anything which promises to make walking or cycling easier, and if we can make pedestrian or bicycle level crossings safe, I see nothing wrong with them. However, the article contained a couple of passages which displayed a disturbing skepticism about the future of railways in Toronto:

The insistence on a lofty 7-metre height clearance (in case the railways ever get around to converting from diesel to overhead electric) dooms walkers and cyclists to climbing up and down a hundred stairs or following winding, fenced ramps like rats in a maze.

Obviously, bridges built with less than the required clearance for overhead wiring would complicate efforts to electrify the railways, leaving us with diesel pollution (and carbon emissions) from train traffic for a long time.

For better or worse, rail-based industry in the 416 is in full retreat.

Considering that people who live in Toronto have not yet stopped shopping, that means the trucking industry continues to advance. That, in turn, means that we continue to depend on one of the most carbon-inefficient means of transporting goods. I don't see a "better" side to this; I see it as unambiguously worse. If we can make level crossings work safely, the article in NOW makes a pretty good case for them. However, that case should not include an argument that we no longer need railways, or that we can give up on electrifying them.

The comments in Spacing included an even more explicit demand that the railways "adapt" to the needs of the city. I see this refrain too often in discussions of city policy; in the name of banishing industry from the city, too many people seem willing to destroy less polluting transportation systems. We have already seen plenty of calls to make the port lands into residential neighbourhoods and vandalize the turning basin with a "promenade". Now, apparently, we should not worry about destroying the rail corridors. If we carry on like this, the trucking industry will inherit to sole ability to deliver goods to Toronto, at a serious cost in local and global pollution.

In the NOW article, Roger Brook speaks of the Wallace Avenue Bridge which crosses the rail corridor in the West End. I cannot speak to the utility of the bridge for pedestrians, but as a cyclist, I cross that corridor regularly. I have written about the intersection between Annette, Dupont, and Dundas and the railway underpass. In my opinion, the Dupont underpass offers most cyclists the best possible place to cross the West End rail corridor, or it would if the city would take just a few measures to make the intersection safer.

Drivers... about left turns (and signalling)...

Recently, I had occasion to make a left turn onto Runnymede Road from a two lane local street. To allow cars making right turns to pass me, I had pulled over to the left side of the lane, then a car pulled onto the right side of my bike with its left turn signal going.

I accordingly pulled out in front of the car, and when the road cleared, I pushed off, making sure I stayed in front of him.

The safe and courteous way for cyclists and cars to share the road in a left turn goes like this: the cars and bicycles go in the order they arrived at the intersection. When a bicycle turns, the cyclist rides ahead first, making a wide, "L"-shaped left turn, which leaves room for the car to proceed through the intersection. That way, the car turns into the left lane (or the left side of a single lane), and the bicycle turns into the right lane.

A car which tries to pull out to the right and turn to the left will cross paths with the route the cyclist would normally take to turn left and reach the right lane. Experts on bicycle safety warn cyclists to avoid situations such as this. As the diagram to the left shows, the car and bicycle tracks overlap in this situation.

So why insist on proceeding in order? Why not just allow cars to go first? Two reasons: I ride my bicycle for much the same reason most people drive: I have somewhere I want to go. I want to get there safely, and I also want to get there today. If I get off the street and wait for all the cars to go by, I will never get anywhere. Also, the rules of the road, including having vehicles proceed in order, makes traffic movements predictable and therefore safe. When some cars queue up safely to turn, and others pass in violation of the laws, other road users lose the ability to anticipate the movements of other vehicles. Treating cyclists as vehicles (as the Highway Traffic Act requires) simply makes everyone safer.

On the subject of safe turns... if you pull up behind me while I wait at an intersection, I will look to see if you have your right turn signal on. If you do, I (and most cyclists) will move left or right if we can do so safely so that you can turn. If you do not signal, I can't tell what you want to do.

Requiem æternam...

Some time ago, I spent a short time in a community where one young man beat another to death. I and a colleague brought flowers to the parents of the young man who had died. I thought of that (no surprise here) today.

To see a murdered child in a grieving parent's eye
Opens a wound at the end of memory,
Faces the blankness of road now dark
Nothing more to say, no word but sorrow,
No sorrow out of place.

For those of us who believe, let us keep the dead, and even more the living left behind, in our prayers.

Safe Riding, Safe Routes

The city can provide for safe, comfortable, and effective cycling in three ways: by ensuring safe conditions along common cycling routes, installing bicycle lanes, and building bicycle paths.

1. By bicycle routes, I mean the routes through the city which cyclists actually take, because overall they offer easier or more pleasant cycling, and because they take us where we want to go. It makes sense for planners to focus on these routes when they work to remove or mitigate hazards to street bicycling. Bicycle routes may or may not have bicycle lanes.

2. By bicycle lanes, I mean half lanes reserved and marked as reserved for cyclists.

3. By bicycle paths, I mean paths separated from roads, through parks or dedicated bicycle rights of way.

I intend to write a series of posts in the next few weeks on all these provisions for cycling, and especially for bicycle commuting. In this post, I intend to focus on bicycle routes, and some of the things which make a bicycle route easy and safe, or difficult and dangerous, to negotiate.

Living in the West End, I frequently cycle downtown by way of Annette Street and either Dundas Street or Dupont Street. This route has several major advantages: Annette has on-street parking, which usually leaves a half-lane for cycling; it has a 40 km/h speed limit; it has no hills. Annette provides an ideal route, until I reach Dundas. Whether I go East on Dupont or South on Dundas, I have to get past the intersection which joins Dundas, Annette, and Dupont. That intersection has three features which make it hazardous for cyclists:

1. High speed; Dundas between Bloor and Annette has few residential or commercial buildings to calm traffic, which consequently approaches the intersection moving quickly.

2. An open ramp, which allows cars traveling North on Dundas quick access to Dupont, and which allows traffic moving West on Dupont access to Dundas southbound. This ramp creates a large open space in which cars move both rapidly and unpredictably, which creates a dangerous situation for cyclists.

3. A railway underpass on Dupont, with bad sightlines.

Four measures which might improve the situation for cyclists include:

1. Bike lanes in the railway underpass on Dupont.

2. A traffic island at the ramp between Dundas and Dupont.

3. More economic development on Dundas South of Annette would calm traffic.

4. Either extend the traffic signals at Dundas and Annette to control the ramp between Dundas and Dupont, in effect creating a “long intersection”, or else install a separate signal to control access to the ramp.

When aiming for safety on bicycle routes, I believe it makes the most sense to focus on intersections. According to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center, accidents at intersections account for about 50% of all bicycle crashes. In some cases, such as the Bloor, Kipling, and Dundas intersection, it probably makes sense to provide cyclists with an effective bypass, since the designers of that intersection clearly intended it for high-speed car traffic. In all cases, traffic planners ought to ensure that bicycle routes offer: safe conditions, well-maintained pavement, and good sight lines, and safe intersections, either through signals, traffic calming, the provision of bicycle lanes, or (where these prove impossible) effective bypasses for cyclists.

Upholding our Right to Cycle: a Few Measures

Cycling alone will not make Toronto a green city. However, making cycling an effective option for shopping, commuting, and just getting around will make Toronto a greener city. For those eager to discuss these things in economic terms, it will also mean that we will have to spend less on the roads and will have a healthier, more motivated, and quite probably a more productive work force to draw on. For those of us who like to focus on important things, cycling unquestionably offers more enjoyment than driving. Simply put, you get more out of life on a bike.

So why do relatively few Toronto residents cycle? Why do I see lines of smoking cars with steaming drivers in so many places? They surely don't all suffer from physical disabilities. Something keeps them in their cars. Some of these things the city can, possibly, do something about. Some of them it can't. I offer this list of things the city could begin to do, today, to make cycling safer and more appealing.

1. Offer tax breaks for businesses which support commuting by bicycle. That doesn't have to mean just the business which employs the cyclists; it also means offering support to health clubs which offer “cycling memberships”, basic deals that include a locker and access to a shower in the morning.
2. Connect the bicycle lanes in the city. A set of unconnected bike lanes and paths does no more for cyclists than a set of unconnected chain links does for an anchor. Bike lanes have to get us somewhere. In fact, they have to get us where we want, or need, to go, and do it by a relatively direct route. Shopping areas, commercial and industrial complexes, transit stations, and recreational areas; we need ways to get to any and all of them by bike.
3. Make intersections work for cyclists. Over the next little while, I hope to post on some of the conditions which make intersections dangerous, or at least intimidating, for cyclists, and what the city can and should do about them.
4. Connect the cycle lanes to public transport. Right now, almost all of our commuter facilities have policies that say you can take your bike on the GO on the TTC subway, as long as you (and your boss) don't mind you sticking to the schedule they find convenient. Of course, they don't find it convenient to allow cyclists to use the system in peak commuting hours, the time most people actually have to get to work.
5. Maintain bicycle paths in the winter. I know the big argument against it, money, but if you don't maintain bike paths in winter, I don't think you will ever see a significant increase in bicycle commuters. Not maintaining bicycle paths in winter also sends a terrible message: it tells everyone that the city regards cycling as recreation. To plow the Don Valley parkway while leaving the Don Bicycle paths under half a meter of snow confirms what Rob Ford says: bicycling belongs in a park, a form of recreation not transportation.
6. Reduce the amount of salt on streets with bike lanes. Salt ruins clothes, shoes, and bikes.

The city could do a lot more, and I could write a lot more, but in accordance with normal blogging practice, I will break my comments up into chunks, and this one will do for now.

[edit] In the comments section below, Geoffrey mentioned this link to the Ontario Coroner's report on bicycle safety. Have a look; it contains some excellent recommendations for changes to the highway traffic act.

Remember the joy of Cycling

I enjoy riding my bicycle. I find it gives me, in the words of Alice Monroe, "the freedom of a great unemotional happiness." I enjoy feeling the exhilarating freedom of moving on my own power so quickly, quietly, and nimbly through city streets and country roads, liberated from the metal cages we so often ride in, experiencing one of the great passions of my life, movement, wandering and change through my own body. I can think of few things more rewarding than seeing the world up close, feeling its streets and walkways, its sunshine and shade, smelling its smells. Few things make me feel so alive and connected as the simple act of riding a bicycle.

So why do we so often fall back on joyless ideological arguments for cycling? Why do we insist that such a pleasurable thing must have the added benefit of saving the world? A cycling web-log I read recently claimed the city could cut 20% of its greenhouse gas emissions if everyone cycled to work one day a week. Alas, given the actual sources of greenhouse gases, cycling to work one day a week would only reduce our greenhouse emissions by about one percent. Now, even a one percent reduction in greenhouse gases matters, so by all means cycle or take public transit when you can.

But I don't feel any need to justify my enjoyment of cycling. I love to ride. If you want a reason to take up riding a bicycle, I can tell you that you will quite probably find many pleasures, including ones you did not expect, on a bike, whether you first came to cycling to escape outrageous gas prices, get fit, or make a statement on the environment. I hope many other people get to experience the pleasure of a bike ride (particularly Rob Ford and Case Ootes, who seem sadly determined to deprive themselves of it).

If you enjoy cycling, never forget it. Never forget to remind other people of it, either, particularly if they don't cycle themselves (yet). Never fall for the temptation to think or write about cycling as a sacrifice, some grim ecological duty. I don't believe painting the bicycle as a duty attracts very many people to cycling, and worse, it ignores the sheer joy that (thank the Creator) some of us find in cycling.

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace opened in Canada this Friday to some surprisingly bad reviews. I suppose this should not surprise me. Maybe an important story will always appear dull if you judge it by the standards of the profitably trivial fare that washes over movie screens every day of the year. Perhaps you have to fly into a rage at the film industry, and stay away from the theaters for months at a time, as I have done, in order to appreciate a beautiful film such as Amazing Grace.

But Susan Walker, who reviewed the film for the Toronto Star, expressed an opinion that astonished me when she wrote that Wilberforce's life did not "merit a 111-minute theatrical feature." Excuse me? This man stood at the center of one of the most important movements of history. However you apportion the credit, the anti-slavery movement in Britain overturned a blot on civilization which had existed throughout all of recorded history. And the anti-slavery movement did it first. The title has a supremely appropriate allusion: by an Amazing Grace, we believe, we know, that we as a society, a people, even a species can free ourselves from the most deep-rooted of evils. Thanks to Wilberforce, thanks to Granville Sharpe, thanks to Olaudah Equiano, to the Religious Society of Friends, and to all the people great and small who stood up against it, slavery no longer enjoys legal sanction in our world.

That means more than some reviewers seem to think. Rick Groen, who reviewed the film for the Toronto Globe and Mail, wrote that it left him "emotionally untouched". I don't know what would touch him. This movie requires the audience to bring to it some imagination of their own, an appreciation of what words mean. It shows us the chains, shows us the hold of a slave ship, shows us the exact dimensions of a slave berth. If the abolition of that horror leaves you untouched, consider this: for those of us working to end other horrors which have persisted from the dawn of human history until the opening of the twenty-first century, the name Wilberforce means hope. Three hundred years ago, reactionaries could argue that human nature, in its essentials, would never change, that no reform could ever have a lasting effect. After William Wilberforce, that argument has lost much of its force. People tell us that we will never see a world without war, that humans carry conflict encoded in our genes. They said the same thing about slavery, too, until 1833. The great emancipation tells us that the worst of our history need not shape our destiny. And that does bring tears to my eyes, because it seems to me a truly, deeply, wonderfully amazing Grace.

Rob Ford

Toronto city councillor Rob Ford said:

I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day.

I like Rob Ford. He's always struck me as an independent individual who stands up for what he believes. He doesn't take his convictions out of any standard package that I know of. I probably give him too much credit for not following the consensus of the "left/arts" crowd in this city. But I do respect the man.

That said, in this case, he's made a mistake. The law which defines the purpose of public roads in Ontario, the Ontario Highway Traffic act, defines a vehicle this way:

“vehicle” includes a motor vehicle, trailer, traction engine, farm tractor, road-building machine, bicycle and any vehicle drawn, propelled or driven by any kind of power, including muscular power, but does not include a motorized snow vehicle or a street car; (“véhicule”)

The Province of Ontario, which has the authority to build public roads and set the rules for their use, says that bicycles do belong on roads. The people of Ontario speak through that law, and until those who disagree change the laws (anyone has the right to try), cyclists by definition have the right to use the roads.

I have to go further; I think Councillor Ford should apologise. As a public servant, he has a responsibility to uphold the law. The law defines the public road as a space where people have a right to ride our bicycles. If someone dies in a crash while exercising a legal right, the blame does not rest with them. Any driver who carelessly hits a cyclist will quickly discover that. Nothing says Mr. Ford has to approve of spending city money for bicycle lanes, but out of respect for both motorists and cyclists, I urge him to retract his comments.

Drivers...

To the driver in a long stream of cars who let me turn left on Saturday from Dundas on to Gilmour Avenue... thanks.

To the driver who let me turn left from Annette onto Runnymede Road... thanks.

To the drivers who took extra care passing me on a snowy day... thanks.

Everyone who cycles in Toronto has plenty of stories of rude, impatient, or just plain psychotic drivers. Many of us find the sight of someone shrieking curses at us while operating a two-ton battering ram so alarming that we forget something: most drivers in this city, most of the time, behave with courtesy, respect, and responsibility. We remember the worst of the drivers we meet, and we remember the worst things they do.

I want to highlight the best: the drivers who let us in, the drivers who wait behind us for a safe place to pass, the drivers who stop to let us go. The polite drivers. The majority of people, and the majority of drivers in this city.

To all of you... thanks.

Bike repairs

I recently had occasion to take a car in for its biannual drive-clean test. The engine emissions passed the test comfortably, but the car needed an oil change, which meant an inspection, which uncovered problems with the ball joints and the brake pads and rotors. It all cost over two thousand dollars.

Last week, I rode my bicycle to the Loblaws, and noticed that the ratchet in my rear hub had started slipping badly. On the way home, I found myself in the middle of a road with a car approaching, pedaling furiously, and getting nowhere. Alarmed, I went to the bike shop. The proprietor cleaned and greased the wheel ratchet, then gave me the bad news: back gears of my bicycle came riveted to the hub, and the shop owner could not take it apart to fix it. After a decade of service, my faithful steed needs a new back wheel. The bill could run as high as sixty-five dollars.

Aside from taking less space on the street, not adding to the Earth's warming or my waistline, and (most important) making getting around the city a pleasure, my bicycle costs thirty times less than the cars I pay to maintain and insure. Buying, fueling, and insuring a car can cost up to half the after-tax income of many workers. A cycling colleague of mine once put it this way: drivers spend more time working for their cars than they save by driving them.

Mr. Wilkins and Civil Aviation

David Wilkins, the United States ambassador to Canada, has scolded Stockwell Day, Canada's minister for public safety, for raising the case of Maher Arar. In 2002, the United States deported Arar, a Canadian of Syrian origin, back to his country of origin based on a suspicion that he had links to terrorists. The Syrians jailed and tortured him. This week, in response to an inquiry that cleared Mr. Arar of any wrongdoing, the Canadian government compensated him. Stockwell Day then lobbied the United States government to take him off their watch list. Apparently on behalf of the Bush administration, the US ambassador, has described Canada's advocacy for Mr. Arar as an unjustified interference in American affairs.

In a less connected world, Mr. Wilkins would have a perfectly good point. However, not only do we live in a connected world, we live in a connected world where the United States government policy promotes connections in the form of free trade agreements, and undermines them by imposing national security restrictions. One of these restrictions looks set to undermine a basic foundation of the current international system: air travel.

The Bush Administration has not merely forbidden Mr. Arar to enter the United States, but have banned him from American airspace. This inconveniences Mr. Arar a lot more than simply denying him the delights of holidaying in Disney World. Very few commercial flights across Canada can guarantee they will not at any time enter sovereign US airspace, so Mr. Arar will find it difficult to find a commercial flight within Canada, to say nothing of the problems he will face should he wish to visit Mexico or points south. It also violates a principle of cooperation in air space and in maintaining the safety of flight that Canada and the United States, as well as most other countries, have shared for a long time. A series of treaties in force since 1944 govern access to national airspace by international flights. These treaties make provision for aviation safety, and enshrine the principle of equal and reciprocal access to national airspace. At least in principle, asserting that the United States can ban Mr. Arar from traveling in their airspace for any reason or no reason brings this principle into question. It undermines the understanding upon which international civil aviation depends.

If Canada decided to retaliate by picking an American at random, say Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, and making him persona non grata in our airspace, Senator Lieberman would find it very hard to find a commercial flight from most parts of North America to Europe. But that kind of retaliation, or really any kind of retaliation, would undermine the cooperation upon which aviation safety depends. The international air travel system depends on people and nations making their choices based on safety, not what they happen to feel like doing. In that sense, the banning of Mr. Arar belongs to that class of acts, like counterfeiting, that people can only get away with because most people don't do them.

Credibility versus Relevance

In Balloon Juice yesterday, John Cole linked to a story in the New York Sun by an associate of Ahmed Chalabi, arguing that the insurgents in Iraq have started to collapse. Cole titled his post The Credibility Gap, which in my opinion misses the point. We have certainly seen so many breathless announcements that American efforts in Iraq have "turned a corner" that claims such as these merely remind us of a long record of disappointment and death.

But when I read about claims that the insurgents in Iraq have begun to despair, I do not look for errors or distortions in the facts. I welcome news, any news, that anyone anywhere has grown tired of killing people, and if even one insurgent in Iraq has given up planting improvised explosive devices, good for them. But in relation to overall American policy, this argument looks more and more like one element in a shell game. Put simply, the measures that many Bush partisans use to claim success have little to do with the goals they hold up for the project.

When the proponents of George Bush's policy in Iraq want to justify the invasion, they hold up the hope of a viable liberal democracy planted in the center of the Middle East and the Arab Muslim world. When they measure success, they speak of insurgents losing steam. But it seems quite clear by now that it takes far more than the end of an insurgency to bring forth a democratic government capable of dealing with the inter-ethnic conflicts in Iraq today.

Given the history of inter-ethnic conflicts, given the dismal success rates of democratic regimes implanted from outside, and given the record of overly optimistic claims of impending success in Bush Administration policies, I can only hope that this time, the insurgents have begun to put down their arms. But the winding down of the insurgency does not necessarily presage the emergence of a liberal democracy in Iraq, articles such as the one John Cole links have little relevance to the larger prospect of success for Bush in Iraq.

We need a better vocabulary

Every cyclist regularly meets seriously rude drivers. Faced with a driver honking, screaming, or cursing at me, I have two bad choices: I can say, and do, nothing, and give them the impression that I agree they have no obligation to share the road with me, or I can use the one gesture universally recognized in traffic. Unfortunately, that one gesture does more than ask a driver to back off, or reconsider their actions. It communicates hostility, disrespect, and aggression.

We need a gesture that tells the driver we think he or she should smarten up, pay attention to the road, and stop honking or cursing at us for doing things drivers on four wheels do all the time. But we need a way to communicate that without getting aggressive or nasty, and escalating tempers further.

The OMB Makes a Decision

Among other things, OMB stands for Ontario Municipal Board, a court of last resort for scuffles between developers, city councils, preservationists, neighbourhood groups, and affordable housing advocates. Recently, the OMB handed down their decision on an appeal launched by a group of developers who want to build in the Queen Street West triangle. The OMB decision essentially gave the developers everything they wanted.

The Queen West triangle, so-called because it sits in a triangle formed from the street grid and a railway that cuts through at an angle, has come into prominence as a fashionable area for artists and designers. Attracted by its convenient location, access to public transit, and hip reputation, developers wanted to build there. The developers, naturally, wanted the highest possible density. The community had other ideas. They formed a neighbourhood association, called Active-18, and fought the development plans tooth and nail. They called themselves YIMBY (yes in my back yard), and claimed they did favour development, just not the high density the builders had in mind.

Nobody doubts that Toronto will grow, or that it has to grow; indeed, very few people claim that Toronto's population should not grow. But the Ontario government has wisely ordered a green belt around the Greater Toronto Area, checking the sprawl that leads to choked congestion and smog. That means we have to build more and higher buildings in the city, and that, inevitably, means we need more tall apartment buildings. Everyone in Toronto will tell you that as a general rule, this makes sense. But many of them will also tell you that nobody should do it where they live. Everyone supports intensification; nobody really wants sprawl. But most of us have really good reasons to intensify somebody else's neighbourhood.

Either out of genuine support for affordable housing downtown, or else out of a desire to look good, one of the firms developing in the Queen West Triangle, one of the builders arranged with St Clare's Multifaith Housing to build 199 affordable housing units, including lofts suitable for artists' live/work spaces. Unfortunately, in order to build these units, they must demolish an old industrial building in which a number of artists have illegally established lofts. The neighbourhood group has rallied against this, despite a consultant's report, which notes, among other things, that the lofts in the old building not only violate zoning laws, but my also violate fire codes: ...fire protection of the existing structural elements may not meet the requirements of the Ontario Building Code." Opposition to the replacement of 48 Abell with expanded affordable housing also ignores questions about the affordability of the existing artists' lofts, and does not address the plans to more than double the number of available affordable housing units.

Someone who only read the comments on this project in Toronto's local press could easily get the impression that a tyrannical OMB had sided with money and profit over community. I did not see a single comment which mentioned that, whatever the problems with their decision, the OMB backed a plan to create 100 affordable housing units in a city starved for them. Nor did the many protests against the OMB decision address the real need for intensification in the Greater Toronto Area. Toronto politicians, commentators, and civic leaders have so much invested in the "neighbourhood" paradigm that they fail to note that sometimes, local interests must make some sacrifices for the greater good. As long as many influential people in this city refuse to condemn any NIMBY position, no matter how harmful or heartless, the city will need the OMB to provide adult supervision.

Catfish recipe

I recently discovered the pleasures of cooking and eating American farmed catfish. Fish experts consider catfish farming one of the most sustainable ways of raising fish for human consumption; the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program rates farmed catfish as a best choice for our health and the health of the environment. The Endangered Fish Alliance recommends farmed catfish as a sustainable food choice.

For this recipe, you will need to buy fish without marinade. For some reason, all the catfish available at supermarkets in Toronto come with marinade on them, so you will have to seek out a fish market. The fish shop in the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto sells excellent catfish. If you live outside a major city centre, you may have trouble finding catfish. When I went shopping for catfish in Kenora, I could only buy apologies.

Spicy baked catfish, for two:

1 fillet catfish (300 grams)
4 tbsp ketchup or tomato paste (59ml)
1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper (2.5ml)
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin (7.5ml)
1 tsp soy sauce (5ml)
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce (2.5 ml or 2 drips)

1. pre-heat oven to 450 F (230 C)
2. mix ketchup or tomato paste with spices, soy and Worcestershire to make a sauce with a thick, slightly gummy consistency
3. brush it on one side of the fillet, and place on a wire rack in a pan
4. bake for 15-18 minutes, or until fish flakes.

You can serve the fish on a bed of rice or couscous.

For a less spicy version, reduce or omit the cayenne.

Off on the right wheel...

I have one New Year's resolution this year: drive less, cycle more. Thanks to a warm start to the year, I had ice-free roads and a chance to cycle on the first day, going to a party put on by a colleague in Christian Peacemaker Teams. I found that a sedentary fall had not left me unfit for cycling, and that I still enjoy it.

I would like to emphasise that most of all. Cycle, if you must, because bicycles do not contribute to global warming; cycle, if you choose, because it offers an easy and useful way to burn fat from your waistline. But if you want a reason to bicycle, do it because it offers more pleasure than most other forms of transportation.

See you, I hope perhaps more often, in the New Year.