Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

February 15, 2008 19:17 +0000 | Public Space Transit Travel 8

So I'm considering a trip to Bogotá. If you'd like to know why, read on. Even better, if you'd like to come with me, let me know.

I'm a regular reader of One Good Move, a mostly America-centric left-leaning political blog that collects video clips from mainstream and independent sources. Think of it as a Metafilter for the American left with a penchant for video.

Anyway, during my daily gleaning, I came across this post on current developments in Bogotá, Columbia including a massive amount of urban redesign with a focus on people as opposed to cars.

In a space of 3years, the Mayor killed a $5billion highway project and at a fraction of the cost, constructed an amazing network of transit buses and cycling infrastructure. The results were astounding. Through the efforts of succeeding mayors with similar ideals, the murder rate in a city known for violence and poverty has dropped 70% in 12 years. A major contributing factor to this dramatic shift was the redevelopment of a city with the residents in mind.

Today, Bogotá sports a series of arterial rapid bus systems, interconnected with 16km of a cycling freeway. Every Sunday, the city shuts down dozens of highway lanes and roads to accommodate Ciclovía, a car-free day of sorts that sees hordes of people of all ages and colours taking dance classes in the streets, riding bikes up expressways and in short, living in their city as opposed to their livingrooms.

There's more detail in the 3 videos below, and I encourage you to watch them, especially if you're interested in public space activism.

"If a fish needs to swim, a man needs to walk."
- Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia

November 22, 2007 08:43 +0000 | Politics Protests Stupid People Transit 5

Maybe it was the feeling of seclusion, being trapped in the suburbs 'till I can find a job and place to live downtown, or maybe it was a desperate need to get back into my activist boots after a paltry two month sabbatical, but my reasons for attending the Keep Transit Public rally were more than just my belief in the cause.

Let's get the details in first: Vancouver has a convoluted (but still partially responsible to the public) board that manages the transit infrastructure (trains, buses and roads) in and around the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). This board suffers from a lot of the same issues that Toronto runs into in that it's mostly made up of the mayors of all the cities & towns inside the GVRD, so no one can agree where to spend the money. The burbs want more roads and buses, the urban centres want more trains, narrow roads. Nothing gets done and a lot of money is spent. People are mad.

So the BC government, in it's usual cowardice, had decided to abdicate even more of its responsibility and redesign the system to use a hybrid multi-mayor board with a bunch of unelected, unaccountable private business groups who can apparently be trusted to "see the big picture" and not wreck the city for their own interests.

At best, this kind of plan is either stupid or naive. At worst, it's a bunch of rich capitalist politicians scrubbing the backs of their rich friends... and Vancouver will be stuck with the result.

So I went to the protest. I didn't expect much to come of it of course because we are sitting with a majority government and the Liberals here will get whatever they please. It was much like any other small rally (<100 people) but for some reason, it would appear that the wingnuts were the only ones yelling. One moron was shouting "this is Fascist" every few minutes -- though he clearly knew nothing about Fascism. The speakers were their usual overplayed selves (as appears to be the norm with most rallies) and in my own observations of the crowd, I found myself asking a scary question: "It's been 6years... have I become a moderate already?".

I had to check myself to be sure that my ideals were still there: yep, all good, I was just surrounded by wingnuts.

Don't get me wrong, their hearts are definitely in the right place. Bill 43 is a terrible plan and sure to do all the wrong things (though probably a few right things as well) in this province. I just didn't feel like they were being effective and that's the opposite of what I want.

August 30, 2007 15:40 +0000 | Transit 0

A short time ago, The TTC released a survey to the public asking for input in how to deal with their latest budget crunch. It was mostly questions like "We're broke. Would you rather pay more or have less?". The survey was criticised by transit activists all over, and so Torontoist has posted a better survey the results of which will be delivered to the TTC when it's finished.

If you live in Toronto, I encourage you to do both surveys, but definitely do the Torontoist one... it's better.

August 04, 2007 17:23 +0000 | Geek Stuff Imager Transit 0

Toronto's summers are brutal, sometimes even downright hostile. In fact, the weather here is a major contributing factor to my returning to Vancouver. With this in mind, the fact that I spent two and a half hours on the subway on Wednesday just riding from Finch to Downsview to Finch writing code, probably doesn't seem so insane... when you realise that the subway is air conditioned.

I swear, the subway is a great place to write code, and I've been developing a really cool command-line interface for my imager. Fun stuff, I promise.

March 01, 2007 03:30 +0000 | Transit 1

I'm riding the subway home coming away from a presentation on the future of transportation in Toronto.

On the whole, I'm pleased to see that we have some seriously smart people making decisions on the future of transport in the GTA. With that said however, I feel that as smart as they are, they could use a broader understanding of all the factors involved.

The panel consisted of Gary McNeil, the CEO of Go Transit, (the regional commuter rail corporation), Rob MacIsaac, the chair of the board of the Greater Toronto Transit Association, Adam Giambrone, the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC: subways, busses and streetcars), Natalie Helferty, an ecologist and an urban planner with 40years of experience who's name escapes me. Everyone was very knowledgeable and handled themselves quite well, but unfortuneately, at least from my perspective, I didn't see a lot of knowledge sharing going on between the groups.

The Go Transit chair was hell bent on expanding his network into the suburbs while the ecologist wanted to focus on better community and urban planning. The TTC Chair was a force on stage with his comprehensive knowledge of the TTC inside and out, while the GTTA chair seemed only interested in overall scope and planning. It was frustrating to watch really because it was obvious to anyone in the audience that all of these subjects were deeply intertwined and yet no one on stage seemed to get it.

I did walk away with some nice moments though. I got Giambrone to commit that they will be phasing out drivers and door operators on the subway in the years approching 2012. I also got some applause when I pointed out that no one seemed interested in the effect of cycling on transit in the city. As much as I might criticise though, I do have the impression that the people in charge of transit in this city really know what they're doing. Giambrone especially, it's nice to have a certain confidence in the abilities of those that would have a serious effect on your life.

Now if only they would all stop talking to us and start listening to each other -- that would be progress.