{"id":9992,"date":"2010-03-19T12:14:08","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T16:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=9992"},"modified":"2013-01-21T13:37:04","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:37:04","slug":"toronto-election-how-to-avoid-getting-a-wedgie-in-this-brady-bunch-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/03\/19\/toronto-election-how-to-avoid-getting-a-wedgie-in-this-brady-bunch-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto election: how to avoid getting a wedgie in this Brady Bunch city"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The following is a reprint of my recent Psychogeography<\/a> column in Eye Weekly. Photo by Lone Primate<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

In an election year very strange and illogical things happen. The dead can even come back to life. That happened a few weeks ago when mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi<\/strong> raised the imaginary War Against the Car from its tomb like a legislative Lazarus. The issue he used was the Jarvis bike lanes<\/a>, something that was put to rest last spring after a contentious (and mostly ridiculous) battle. Raising this \u201cwedge issue\u201d was an early shot in a long campaign and signaled the direction he may go: divide and conquer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange that Rossi chose to use the Jarvis lanes to stir up potential motorist votes (that is, votes largely outside of the old City of Toronto) when he is the former CEO of the Heart and Stroke Foundation<\/a>, the organization whose annual signature event, the \u201cRide For Heart,\u201d closes the Gardiner and DVP to all traffic but bicycles. Every year, on cue, this event draws the red-hot ire of motorists who complain of being put out and done wrong. Perhaps that\u2019s why he knew who would react, on cue, to his anti-Jarvis stand.<\/p>\n

Yet it would be silly for a reasonable opponent to use Ride for Heart against Rossi; it\u2019s a good event for a good cause. But when you engage in the wedge \u2014 it is, after all, a violently shaped metaphor, one that can poke a lot of people in the eye \u2014 you risk this kind of response. Fire begets fire. Without trying to be particularly naive, it\u2019s also politically risky in this city: wedge politicking is downright un-Torontonian. To try and divide a city that not only celebrates its differences but also enshrines them in its very soul \u2014 \u201cDiversity our Strength\u201d and all that \u2014 seems like an explicit rejection of what the city you want to run is all about.
\n
\nThe reason the Jarvis bike lanes, and the inconsequential two extra minutes of rush-hour driving time they\u2019ll add, can still get this kind of political and media traction and whip all sides into a frenzy is because Toronto is in the weird in-between space of being almost a full-on alpha city, embracing all its big-cityness, and just another second-tier city in the eastern part of North America. In the big alpha cities like New York, London, Paris or Tokyo, nobody who drives expects to do it easily. Slow speeds, congestion, impossible parking, intense regulation and expensive fees are all just part of driving. When Mayor Bloomberg put bike lanes all over New York City, including all the way down Broadway, people grumbled, but there was no revolution.<\/p>\n

In the second-tier cities, driving conditions are a non-issue. People can easily get around their cities, park near where they want to go (often for free) and still feel at least a bit of the romance of car driving (think American Graffiti<\/em> or just about any car commercial that evokes an emotional response). Cars are just part of life and are safe as houses. Nobody would ever (want to) mess with that relationship (because there would be big trouble).<\/p>\n

Yet that\u2019s what happening in Toronto, and it\u2019s why this wedge can find a slot. It isn\u2019t a specific person or official or regime forcing the change in the way people live, it\u2019s simply time and history. For a few decades Toronto hasn\u2019t been a pleasure to drive in, and lots of other Canadians live in fear (fear, I tell you) of the \u201cdrive across the top\u201d along the 401 when passing through the city to get to points east and west. As the easy-automobile age shrinks like the manufacturing economy that built it up, it\u2019s scary if you\u2019re a driver. All that they know is suddenly wrong and under attack. That isn\u2019t their fault. It’s scarier, too, we\u2019re in that middle zone of cityness: though it can be hard to drive here, the city\u2019s transit and cycling infrastructures haven\u2019t caught up to make not-driving a completely viable option for everybody.<\/p>\n

The worst thing to do right now \u2014 and the thing that gives a wedge issue like Jarvis traction \u2014 is to gloat. Just like it would be good for drivers to get on a bike and see what it\u2019s like to ride in traffic (especially the ones whose rear quarter-panels I\u2019m always having to kick when they squeeze me into the curb after passing), everybody who doesn\u2019t drive, should \u2014 at least a few times, and in different conditions like downtown but especially in the suburbs.<\/p>\n

When driving, you quickly realize that a lot of the dumb things drivers do to kill you have more to do with the dynamics of the situation (big steel vs. little steel). Cyclists (and pedestrians) are small and they can sneak into places the driver didn\u2019t expect them to be (like passing a car on the right hand side that is about to turn right itself \u2014 that\u2019s a really dumb thing to do). Quickly, the new driver would realize that all drivers aren\u2019t bad: the situation is.<\/p>\n

Out in the suburbs the new drivers would learn that driving is about as awful a drag as you can imagine. No matter how wide the street, during a lot of the day much of the grid will be erratically slow. If you need to be in three or four different points in the inner suburbs over the course of a few hours \u2014 something the transit system doesn\u2019t do particularly well either \u2014 you cede control over your life and time to traffic. You\u2019ll swear as you\u2019ve never sworn before. Heretofore dormant road rage will surface. Driving \u201cout there\u201d is nasty and brutish, and the Jarvis dynamic is suddenly clear: people are trying to make this even worse for me.<\/p>\n

The way to de-escalate this situation is to extend Toronto\u2019s idea of diversity from skin colour and religion to transportation choice. The cyclists don\u2019t need bike lanes but rather \u201cwe\u201d need to figure out how to make different kinds of transportation work together in the same place, all over the city. Actually making things happen is the hard part, but a shift in thinking from us and them to \u201cwe\u201d is a start. Like it or not, the amalgamated city is here to stay and like the kids in the Brady Bunch (fathered by Mike Harris) we need to figure out how to live with each other so when a wedge is thrown at is, we duck and it disappears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a reprint of my recent Psychogeography column in Eye Weekly. Photo by Lone Primate. In an election year very strange and illogical things happen. The dead can even come back to life. That happened a few weeks ago when mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi raised the imaginary War Against the Car from itsContinue reading “Toronto election: how to avoid getting a wedgie in this Brady Bunch city”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[535,14614,1301,984,427,31,423,14618,10724,359,14616,426,2469,14615,1529,469,564,1154,470,10726,762,14613,468,19,14617,5380],"class_list":["post-9992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-traffic","tag-alpha","tag-car-commercial","tag-car-driving","tag-ceo","tag-driver","tag-election","tag-eye-weekly","tag-former-ceo","tag-heart-and-stroke-foundation","tag-london","tag-manufacturing-economy","tag-mayor","tag-mayoral-candidate","tag-media-traction","tag-mike-harris","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-north-america","tag-paris","tag-rocco-rossi","tag-steel","tag-steel-vs","tag-tokyo","tag-toronto","tag-transportation-choice","tag-transportation-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nToronto election: how to avoid getting a wedgie in this Brady Bunch city - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/03\/19\/toronto-election-how-to-avoid-getting-a-wedgie-in-this-brady-bunch-city\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Toronto election: how to avoid getting a wedgie in this Brady Bunch city - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following is a reprint of my recent Psychogeography column in Eye Weekly. 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