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.