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New Transit Infrastructure Coming to Toronto in 2011

Nick Warzin — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:46:43 +0000

An unprecedented motion to introduce a brand new type of transit infrastructure was passed the other day by Toronto City Council, marking the first time since the opening of the Yonge subway in 1954 that a fundamentally new mode of public transportation was built in the City of Toronto. This new mode of transit has a number of benefits over existing transit systems:

It is not owned or managed by the Toronto Transit Commission
It is not owned or managed by GO Transit, Metrolinx or any other provincially-focused committee, thinktank or authority
Stations are cheap and can be built in about half an hour, and once built can be moved and re-built elsewhere
It allows its riders to sit down, and yet they grow healthier the longer they use it

What is this magical and riddle-fraught form of transportation, you ask?

(More under the cut.)

Allow me to introduce BIXI.

BIXI is a bike-sharing system. This is a BIXI bicycle:

BIXI is the brainchild of the City of Montréal, and has proven so successful that multiple cities have decided to adopt Montréal's brilliantly engineered take on bike-sharing.

BIXI is coming to Toronto in time for Summer 2011, with an initial rollout of 1000 bikes and 80 stations.

While the merits of BIXI were being debated by Toronto City Council that day, I happened to be in Montréal. This was an excellent opportunity to provide timely tweets regarding BIXI's efficiency, widespread uptake and ease-of-use right from the source as the debate raged on. Note: I missed this opportunity entirely, and instead just biked around a lot. I did, however, take some photos.

BIXI members receive a personalized key that allows them unlimited access to bikes, but for occasional users the heart of the BIXI system is the touchscreen pay station:

The only accepted method of payment is a major credit card. The system also uses this card as a means of identification. This is clever. A City Councillor declared the use of credit cards as restrictive. This Councillor clearly hasn't jumped through the hoops necessary to drive on our public roads lately.

The pay station uses a simple icon-driven touchscreen interface. Swiping and securing a bike took seconds. The system provides you with a temporary pin-code which you then punch in on a bike dock itself, unlocking the bike. Very clear thinkers designed this system, and the simplicity of it is breathtaking. It will stand out in great contrast to everything else in Toronto.

The bikes pedal smoothly and are easy to use. They have three gears, and all gear and brake cables are protected from the elements (and vandals). If a bike breaks on you, there is a "in need of repair" button on every bike dock which alerts staff. The bicycles also have a basket in front with a bungee cord, and dynamo-powered front and rear indicator lights. See? Brilliantly engineered.

Much of my trip was spent on Montreal's latest and greatest bike lane: Boulevard de Maisonneuve.

Urbanphoto.net provides a great (if hugely biased in favour of smart, thoughtful people) overview of the de Maisonneuve Bike Path. I realized something unfortunate, though, as I cruised comfortably across Canada's most urban city: Toronto doesn't have a single bike line quite like it. We have our share of sharrows, of course, and a few proper lanes running along mostly secondary routes, but nothing in Toronto can compare to even the least of Montreal's fully divided bike lanes. Why is this? Is there really no incentive, no eager cyclist population? Is a meaningful bike network an economic lose-lose situation for the city? Are Toronto's policymakers entirely composed of short-sighted nincompoops from Etobicoke, or only partially?

Have a peek at the Big M:

As I pulled my bike back into a bike dock, I realized that Toronto seems to be building the stations of a transit network before building the tracks. In the very same council meeting where BIXI was approved, councillors voted to scrap prototype bike lanes on University Avenue, one of the most needlessly wide avenues in the city. The lanes on Jarvis are hanging by a similarly narrow thread. If this is the fight that cycling advocates and proponents of shared space have to look forward to, it's going to be quite the uphill bike-ride. (Not quite as bad as my uphill trek on rue Berri, though. Ugh.)

Choose your path, Toronto.

The role of Yonge & Dundas Square

Nick Warzin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:48:49 +0000

Listen.

I'm not pointing this out to confirm a widespread belief that I can find something to be negative about regardless of the circumstances. Amidst all the hooping and hollering of this evening's revelry downtown, however, I noticed an interesting phenomenon and felt I should at least bumble through a word or two about it.

This is Yonge-Dundas Square, a plaza opened in downtown Toronto back in late 2002. It is a public-private partnership, and exists largely due to the efforts of outgoing city councillor Kyle Rae. The square was intended to be the city's new central meeting place; its Times Square; its Piccadilly Circus. Yes, I'm ripping this word-for-word from the Wikipedia page. I'm le tired.

This photo was also taken during what will probably be remembered as the largest impromptu gathering of people on Yonge Street in decades: the celebration of Canada's gold medal in Men's Hockey, and a more general celebration of our Olympic successes.

Notice anything strange about the crowd? About where they chose to celebrate? The Square is dark, barren, unused and ignored, while tens of thousands of people dance and sing in the middle of the street.

There are good reasons for this, and you'll find many of them made clear either directly or incidentally in this book.

I'm not sure if Jane Jacobs ever commented publicly on Y-D Square and the "revitalization" of Yonge Street, but I have a feeling she could have predicted the phenomenon I photographed above. A city's streets are its veins, and its life, and the confluence of a city's most important and most travelled routes becomes the very heart of a city: more so than its financial district, and more so than its shopping strips. This is not, however, an effect that can be manufactured (and as I say this, thousands of SimCity players around the globe grimly nod in unison), and Y-D Square was a distinct attempt to manufacture the heart of our city.

The Square always seemed to me like a really crass attempt at selling a bit of ad space: an exploitation of Yonge Street's role as the heart of our city. Some of the events organized there over the past eight years bear this out, while others seem like genuinely interesting and positive uses of the space (though, probably not surprisingly, much of the latter has been organized not by city staff but by the populace itself: see Newmindspace, et al). This is probably consistent with the idea of a public/private partnership, and I suppose as long as the private sector plays a role in defining our public spaces there will always be events whose primary purpose is to provide a large number of eyeballs in one place.

Any and all cynicism aside, I still find it interesting that when a party of this magnitude occurs -- the celebration of the century so far, easily besting the impromptu party after the Leafs' second-round playoff victory in 2002 -- the square that was built specifically to contain it is left empty. Somewhere out there, a Toronto city planner is still misunderstanding how cities work. And if Jane Jacobs could witness this, I feel she wouldn't be surprised at all.

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Hamilton’s Lyric Theatre demolished

Nick Warzin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:47:40 +0000

Roof brought the curtain down - Hamilton Spectator

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Lyric Theatre - Raise the Hammer

The Lyric/Century Theatre, before:

The Lyric/Century Theatre, after:

Taquitosm?

Nick Warzin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:15:29 +0000

Is a taquitosm the food product, or what happens to your body after you eat it?

Ugh. It was funny at the time.

WHERE IS MY MICROFIBRE EYEGLASSES RAG

Nick Warzin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:00:56 +0000

There's a smudge.

The houses cry in old Baltimore City

Nick Warzin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:57:39 +0000

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This isn’t particularly pretty, but…

Nick Warzin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:39:57 +0000

...I vomited behind this ice-box once.

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Drive home from Richmond, VA

Nick Warzin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:00:11 +0000

Well, hi! Here are a couple GPS routes from my recent drive home. Note that neither of these do much to describe how beautiful some interstate highways are (which is why I'd still like to do a Street View tour of some of the highlights), and neither communicate just how awesome I am at long-distance road-tripping: it was a 14-hour drive, and I think I finished in about an hour. That's right. You'll also see evidence below that I occasionally jump off the highway and move across America at near-light speed. This is also true, and isn't a symptom of a bad GPS receiver in the least.

Drive from Richmond, VA to Philly, PA:

Drive from Allentown, PA to ...Rochester, NY?:

And no, I have no idea why the BlackBerry stopped tracking me in Rochester. I imagine it simply gave up -- I almost did at that point.

The "Speed Profiles" are still an experiment, so expect them to be about as accurate as my Superman-like tour over the Atlantic. The second one is brilliant, though: you can track my passing speeds, straightaways, hills... I must say, I am shockingly consistent, and I never use cruise. This post makes me want to go on another trip.