A Copenhagen bike lane. PHOTO: bmevans80 on Flickr

I am reminded of a conversation I had while in Copenhagen last month. One of the first things you notice about Copenhagen is their extensive cycling infrastructure and how well it’s used. The climate in Denmark is similar to ours (while I was there it was cold and snowing) but because bike lanes are wide, separated, part of a large network and receive good snow clearance, they’re used year-round by large numbers of commuters and families. When I told a local woman named Anna Sophia how impressive that was, her first reaction was to lament that it wasn’t nearly good enough. “Amsterdam has a great cycling culture,” she said. “Ours is OK.”

Then I told her how many bike lanes are available to Torontonians, what they’re like, and the fact that efforts to expand our bike lane network are met by some with the “war on the car” accusation. She laughed, and said two things. First, “that’s such a Canadian/American thing to say.” (I don’t think she was trying to be hurtful.)

The second thing is what really stuck with me, though. She said, “I can’t imagine what this city would be like without our bike lanes. Everyone would have to drive. It would be so congested and impossible to get around.” The realization hit me like a tonne of bricks: she’s describing Toronto.

As Hamutal Dotan wrote for Torontoist earlier today, “what we need—urgently, and very badly—is to measure the success of our roadways by how well they move people, not cars, and privilege the modes of transportation which are most efficient at moving the largest numbers of people.” Rossi was absolutely right when he said that “cars are simply a necessity for many people,” and planners need to recognize that. However, his contention that this city suffers from too much traffic congestion due to a “war on the car” is backwards: the fact that we have so many cars on the road causing congestion is a direct result of urban design that has disproportionately favoured cars over other methods of transportation. The idea that we can somehow accommodate more cars on downtown roads while improving traffic conditions is fantasy. The best way to improve driving conditions is to offer better alternatives to driving.

All of our best research shows that when people have a transit system that works and treats them with dignity and a cycling infrastructure that doesn’t make them fear for their safety, they take advantage of it and drive less. That means fewer cars on the road, which means less congestion for those who choose or need to continue to drive. Drivers (a group that, as an Autoshare member, I include myself in, along with being a cyclist, pedestrian, and transit user) who want less congested streets should favour “complete streets” that do a better job of balancing different transportation options.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are some things I’ve learned this week that I don’t think I could have gotten from just following the news coverage from back home.

Canada’s international reputation really is very damaged. That’s not eco-spin or a partisan jab, it’s the reality on the ground. You can see it in people’s eyes when you introduce yourself as Canadian, and hear it in their voices as they ask how we went so wrong. I now understand first-hand what George Monbiot meant when he said that Stephen Harper risks doing to Canada what George Bush and Dick Cheney did to the United States. By the end of the week members of the Canadian Youth Delegation had actually sewed American flags onto their backpacks.

Speaking of youth, they really are having an incredible impact. I’d wondered if reports of youth influence was just pandering, but the members of the youth delegation I saw in action are truly some of the most engaged, intelligent, passionate, and affective people here.

Despite claims by some of the government’s defeatist defenders (“Canada isn’t significant enough to have an impact on the talks anyway”), Canada could have taken a major leadership position at this conference. I’ll point to two pieces of evidence. First, an account of the Rio climate talks told by Jean Charest at a press conference Wednesday morning (and confirmed by former MP David MacDonald, who’s traveling with me and was in government at the time), at which Canada was the first G7 country to sign the deal at a critical moment, convincing others to follow. Second, the fact that countries like Tuvalu and Maldives have dominated this conference due to their strong leadership, and despite their extremely small size.

There are lots of easy obvious things we could be doing that Copenhagen and other European cities take for granted. Escalators and hallway lights are all motion activated. My hotel room has a “master switch” by the door that lets me turn off all the power in the room before I leave. All toilets have two flush options. I bought a drink of Gløgg at an outdoor stand and put a deposit down on the cup, then got the deposit back by returning my cup to an automated station. All simple ideas we seem to have not even considered.

People who live in Copenhagen are hard core. It’s freezing, it’s night time, there’s snow on the ground, and they’re still cycling around the city in large numbers. And they look like they’re enjoying it.

I wrote an article for today’s Metro Toronto about the Friends for Life Bike Rally. We leave for Montreal this Sunday, and I’ve still got a fundraising gap to make up before the end of the week. Please donate now, if you can. It’s much appreciated.

My first post was today, regarding the end of BikeShare. All future posts by me should appear here. My contributions to Torontoist will be fundamentally municipal or local in nature, while I’ll continue to use this blog for topics that are more federal and/or partisan. (I won’t post here less than I have been, I’m just adding Torontoist to the pile.)

By the way, this seems like a good time to solicit feedback from y’all on what you want to get out of this blog. What sorts of posts have you liked? What haven’t you liked? And, come to think of it, who are you? Where are you? How did you find me? I’ve been getting over a thousand visits a month (increasing each month since I started), but I don’t have a good sense of who you all are. It’d be great to hear from you via comments to this post.

This morning I wanted to try something new, so I swam to work. You know, through this soup we Torontonians sometimes refer to as “air.”

Southwestern Ontario is seeing some of its highest temperatures ever recorded today, and last night was Toronto’s warmest evening on record. Add to that the deadly pollutants that make up smog, and we’ve got one thick, sticky, stinky situation on our hands. (Stephen Colbert has started referring to environmentalists as “airhuggers.” As in, crazy hippies who are so out of touch with reality that they think breathing air is important.)

Unfortunately, all this heat doesn’t appear to be a coincidence. The Earth is warmer than it’s been in 400 years or longer, and the science suggests that human activity is the cause.

One of the best ways we know of to heat this planet up as fast as possible is by using lots of energy on things like air conditioners. So, when it got hot today, of course the natural thing to do was crank the AC. People in my office building have been shivering all day, and during one meeting I noticed pronounced goose bumps on my arms — it’s genuinely cold. (That might have something to do with what the people who make the decisions are wearing.)

The result is, we’ve burned too much fuel, which is making it too hot in here, so we’re going to turn up our air conditioners, which necessitates burning even more fuel, which in turn will make it even hotter. And the circle of life goes on. (Never mind that a recent 40-year study showed air pollution deaths in Toronto outnumber deaths caused by extreme heat 8 to 1.)

Heat was the number one story on the radio this morning, with the IESO predicting we’d break another energy consumption record by 5pm today.

They were wrong — it only took us until noon. Ontario’s demand for power reached 26,331 megawatts, topping last July’s record 26,161 megawatts. Power consumption has continued to break records every hour since. The IESO is now predicting that we’ll hit 27,225 megawatts any minute now. Brownouts and blackouts are a serious possibility, though not as serious as the increased numbers of people who will show up at emergency rooms and/or die prematurely today because of smog-related respiratory problems.

What should the government do? For one, make energy prices reflect their real cost. The fact that my office is still too cold for comfort, even in the face of all this, is a pretty good indicator that energy prices are too low.

What can you do (besides turn stuff off)? I recommend making use of this handy vacation planning calendar.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go change into my swimsuit for the long swim home.

Tags: toronto, smog, air, airhugger, pollution, energy, prices, stewie

I felt worse about Claire’s bike than mine. Aside from some money I’d just put into a tune-up and some new tires, my bike had more sentimental value than monetary (I’ve had it since I was 14 or younger). Claire’s was fancier and newer. I felt all the things people feel when they’ve been robbed, and had a hard time getting to sleep last night.

One particularly frustrating point is that the theft took place in daylight, in a high-traffic area, and would have been transparent to anyone in the area (picture 2 bikes being removed at once, bolt cutters, a wheel being left behind, someone either carrying a one-wheeled bike away or loading it into a vehicle).

But hey, let’s get past my emotions. Claire and I will get nice new bikes from craigslist (or, come to think of it, maybe somewhere else that’s less likely to sell us someone else’s stolen bikes). Instead, let’s look at some good ideas to cut-down on bike theft (aside from advanced locking techniques mentioned earlier).

One of the best ideas I’ve heard is to require bicycle shops that buy used bikes to record the identity of the seller, in the same way pawn shops do. This is relatively simple to implement, and would be both a deterrent to thieves and a tool for police.

And speaking of police, I know they’ve got a whole lot to do and that they’ll never be able to enforce all laws perfectly. But given the number of public complaints they receive about how they treat bike theft, I’d like to see it bumped up on their priorities list. Here’s one place they could free-up some resources. (As I write this I’m waiting for them to call back. They told me to keep the line free. That was over 2 hours ago.)

As for my pain and loss, maybe I’ll just resort to poetry.

The group left the intersection of Yonge and Bloor around 8am; I got the time wrong and showed up at 8:20. As I began my trip, cars clogged the streets. I slowly weaved through near-gridlock as frustrated drivers leaned on their wheels. Taxi passengers watched meters tick on as people on the sidewalks passed them. Confused commuters waited at the corner for buses that weren’t coming. A friend of mine later told me that Bay Street was the same. This is Toronto without transit.

It only took a few minutes, however, to catch up with the group commute as they headed down Young street. Hundreds of bikes took up the whole right lane for as far as I could see. The cars were stuck behind me–a distant memory–leaving only cyclists and pedestrians. I came up to a friend of mine and we started chatting. Others were deeply engaged in conversations with strangers. Torontonians were enjoying their city, their public space. This is Toronto without cars.

At an event I attended today, Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume put it another way. “The greatest shame,” he said, “was that all of those people who filled the street were taken from subways, buses and streetcars instead of from cars.”

I’m not saying we should get rid of all cars (yet). It’s just that, for a moment, I saw Toronto without them. And it was a beautiful sight.

This morning reminded me of what I discovered last summer: that despite all obstacles and barriers, and even when compared to the first way, another way, and the better way, biking really is the best way to get around the city. Unfortunately, it still needs to be even easier and safer before it will enjoy the mass-adoption we need it to.

Let’s be realistic. The population of Toronto is expected to grow by 1,000,000 over the next few years (and that doesn’t even include the number of Green Party voters I’m trying to trick into moving to my riding). Just try and picture a million more cars on the road. No? How about 500,000 more? Ok, try imagining cramming just 10 more people onto a Yonge Street subway at rush hour. Ain’t gonna happen.

I’m not saying there’s no room to improve TTC infrastructure, but I’m doubtful it will happen in time. As for automobiles, Queen Street isn’t going to get any wider. Cycling is a big part of this city’s future. And that’s good news, but we’ve got some work to do before we get there.