{"id":1222,"date":"2006-10-07T17:53:31","date_gmt":"2006-10-07T21:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2006-10-07T18:46:42","modified_gmt":"2006-10-07T22:46:42","slug":"wente-takes-the-ttc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/10\/07\/wente-takes-the-ttc\/","title":{"rendered":"Wente takes the TTC"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

A year ago, Globe<\/em> columnist Margaret Wente wrote a column glorifying her SUV and dismissing public transit as something you only take when you have to. She received a lot of well-deserved criticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To her credit, she took the criticism on board and decided to take only the TTC for a week and write about. Her diary (“Carless in Toronto”) appears in today’s Toronto section (unfortunately only accessible online to subscribers).<\/p>\n

It’s typical Wente — breezy and superficial — but it’s also valuable because it reveals the impediments and attitudes that keep many people from taking the TTC on a regular basis in Toronto. It is people with these attitudes who need to be converted to transit in the long run if Toronto is to become a sustainable city.<\/p>\n

And, I have to be honest, some of her observations made me realize the things I do to live carless in Toronto. She notes, for example, that most of her friends live a long distance away from her and from subway lines — “Geographically Undesirable” in her phrase — which makes me realize that my Toronto is very much circumscribed to areas accessible by subway or streetcar, and I simply don’t usually include places outside these areas as destinations I can reasonably expect to get to (unless I hitch a ride). She likewise points out how where her mom lives in Scarborough feels inaccessible because it is across a “transit divide” (subway\/LRT\/bus) — “by TTC” she writes “[my mom] might as well be on the other side of the Grand Canyon.” While Wente is indulging in typical exagerration, she’s not completely wrong if I look at my own travel assumptions. I think this psychological issue is one of the strongest arguments for continuing to build subways, despite the economics — they make more places feel easily and rapidly accessible by transit in a way that even dedicated-lane surface transit doesn’t.<\/p>\n

Wente finds other incoveniences too — greatly extended travel times even when transit is direct, can’t do bulk shopping, need to wear sensible shoes for walking, more planning required — and a few benefits, like saving money, time to read, and developing a sense of community. She cleverly leaves the most obnoxious anti-transit argument to her exercise instructor, who says “Okay, I admit it’s a class thing. All those smelly people breathing on you. What if they cough and their spit lands on you?”<\/p>\n

It’s easy to mock such attitudes, but they need to be dealt with if transit is to expand its customer base in Toronto. In many European cities, most people take transit as a matter of course. How do we puncture these attitudes and get these Torontonians to take transit?<\/p>\n

photo by Sam Javanrouh<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year ago, Globe columnist Margaret Wente wrote a column glorifying her SUV and dismissing public transit as something you only take when you have to. She received a lot of well-deserved criticism. 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