sasha on the street

As the term comes to a close here in Toronto (no I do not go to York, which is currently on strike) I am in the process of writing all my final papers. One of my classes is called Concrete Technology and Non-Destructive Testing and initially I thought the paper I was writing was not useful to my blog, but I’ve had a change of thoughts.

I’m putting together a paper on pre-cast elements for highway repair. It is a newer construction method to repair the aging highways in North America. Closing our highways for to repair them is not an option and I am reminded of that each time I drive the highways. It seems to be that there is not a large enough window of non-peak congestion to do construction; now instead we have super-congestion and congestion.

The trucking industry, and much of the goods moved in Canada, are dependant upon the highways system. Did you know that (thanks to the Canadian Trucking Alliance for these statistics):

• over 80% of goods moved with in Canada are moved by trucks
• As a whole, the trucking industry generated an estimated $67 billion in revenues in 2005
• In 2006, the exports from Canada shipped by trucks totalled $185.8 billion (50.7% of total exports) down from $188.4 billion in 2005. Imports from the United States shipped by trucks amounted to $166 billion in 2006 (76.7% of total imports), up from $164.7 billion in 2005.
• the GTA is trucking centre of Canada (with its easy connections to the US through Windsor and Niagara Falls)
• The main interprovincial trucking flow was the Quebec–Ontario route (both directions), which accounted for $40.4 billion worth of commodities, or 28 per cent of the total interprovincial trade.
• The busiest transborder trucking routes were Ontario–U.S. central region, Ontario–U.S. south region and Ontario–U.S. northeast region. Combined, they accounted for almost 80 per cent of the shipments

There is also the commuter side of things, which I will save for part two of this blog. But as this shows the need for a functioning highway system in Southern Ontario is paramount, so finding a efficient and effective way to repair them is necessary.

What is the best way to learn a city? Go for a run. When I used to move or travel to new cities to get to know the city I would throw on my shoes, some tunes and head out the door. With no set schedule I would run for as long I wanted to or until I felt like I had an understanding of the city.

Recently I was in St. Catharines, Ontario for a conference. What a disaster! The first day I found a beautiful trail along the Canal. Winding trails, big trees, old CN bridges, etc … it was spectacular. Upon returning to the conference my friends that were residents in St. Catharines told me that it was one of the most dangerous areas in the city - I guess ignorance is bliss.

On the second day of the conference I headed out once again for a run. I ran through some beautiful neighbourhoods, up and down some rather large hills and got a great veiw and understanding of the city. At about 30mins I approached a mall and had a sense of where I was. I stopped, looked around and realized the only way back was to run down highway 406 or take the same route back. I took the same route back. I even asked a local where to go and he was just astonished at where I had ended up and couldn’t really give me directions (eventually I managed to get the answer I needed, don’t run on the 406 go back the way you came).

So what’s my point?

Jane Jacob’s must have despised the city planners of St. Catharines. It is yet another example of a city not built for pedestrians. With the automobile at the top of the planning hierarchy the city was dissected by an expressway.

I don’t even know where one could begin to fix the city. Likely it would be with the removal of the highway and replacing it with something pedestrians, cyclists and motorists could use and interact on. Our cities/urban areas are precious. With more and more people moving from the rural to the urban it is essential that we build and restore our cities to be ‘active’ - less car more walking, cycling, transit, etc.

On Monday the TTC announced it was increasing service across the routes. Their goal is to have a maximum waiting time on routes of 30 minutes or less, following the subway hours of operations. The goal is to reduce this to 20 minutes over the next five years. This is an attempt by the TTC to increase ridership, the predict ridership to increase by 100,000 people over the coming years.

As reported by Steve Munro here is what we can expect:

• Peak bus loading standards are reduced by about 10% (a route will be considered to be “full” with a lower average load).  This triggers service improvements on many routes, but loading generally has been rising and there is already a backlog of changes waiting to begin.  This affects 62 routes with a total of 89 more am and 65 pm peak buses.
• Off peak bus standards, as well as streetcar and rapid transit standards for all periods, are unchanged at, effectively, a seated load.  Note that this is an average over an hour and local variations will occur.
• Routes with services less frequent than 30 minutes will be improved to the new 30-minute maximum headway.  This affects 26 routes.
• All routes will operate seven days a week during all periods until at least 1:00 am.  This affects about 86 routes.

Routes Affected:

The full list of routes affected can be found here. As you can see it’s a lot of routes!

I’ll test out this new plan tonight. One of my usual routes is the 501 Queen, notorious for not running on schedule and breaking down. I’ll keep you posted on my experience tonight.

I wrote a book review for a class I’m taking and decided to post it on my blog as well (you can find it here).

The book was amazing. Jane Jacobs helped to shape Toronto to who it is today - full of character, full of life, and full of interesting people and places.

Her book definitely changed my perception of Toronto, or any city for that matter. But for Toronto you can see evidence of Jacobs all over; the piers of an unfinished Gardiner Expressway, The Allen Road, which seems to go no where yet doesn’t dissect anymore neighbourhoods, or the various sections of our city from Little Italy, to Little Portugal, to Riverdale.

Jacob’s read is a must for any planner or city lover out there.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the joint OTC/ITEconference on urban streetscaping. Most of the speakers were from the City of Toronto but the first presentation, one of the better ones, was from the City of Markham. The best presentation of the day was by Phil Weber of Ourston Roundabouts.

What is Streetscaping?

Streetscaping is any urban road design and how it affects the street users and nearby residents. More recently streetscaping has shifted its focus from automobiles and placed pedestrians at the top of the hierarchy, streets are after all where people are involved in a realm of activities including motor vehicle traffic. With pedestrians now at the top of the hierarchy streetscaping helps planners define a neighbourhoods aesthetic qualities, economic identity, health and social cohesion NOT just its mobility.

Great so Toronto’s streets will see some beautification. Don’t get me wrong there are many beautiful intersections across Toronto but equally there are some pretty hideous ones too.

To support streetscaping the City of Toronto has a 20-year roll out plan for new garbage cans, transit shelters, newspaper boxes, and other signage and amenities to make our city more appeasing. The plan is to place over 20,000 new amenities across the city, most of which will be up in the next 5 years.

Roundabouts

As I said above Roundabouts was the highlight of my day. Roundabouts are more efficient, safer, more aesthetically pleasing but not meant for retrofit in large cities. Although I was disappointed to hear this, it does make sense. Roundabouts take up more space than a signalized intersection, which would require cities to procure expensive lands.

Roundabouts will become more prevalent in rural and suburban design. Phil Weber of Ourston Roundabouts Canada showed many great examples of roundabouts across American; Avon, Coloradowas his highlighted town. Again they are safer; they eliminate those horrifying ‘t-bone’ accidents because of their geometry. Overall they are quieter and they are more fuel efficient. And typically in our suburban and rural areas we have the land available to place these roundabouts.

I found yesterday very enlightening and look forward to the city beautiful movement across Toronto.

Yesterday the Ontario Legislature put forward a bill in an effort to reduce accidents amongst teenager drivers. According to their research (as quoted on 680news last night) individuals under the age of 21 are 3.5 times more likely to get into a car accident than the rest of us out there driving.

In 1994 The Ontario Government passed a law for graduating licensing. What does that mean? A G1 is granted if one passes a written test and is of at minimum 16 years of age. The G2 is the middle stage and one has to pass a driving test, that does not include highway driving. A finally an individual must do a second highway driving test to achieve their full, G license.  From the time one gets their G1 it takes a minimum of 20 months to get your full license, depending on whether or not you use an accredited driving school.

Drinking and Driving.

Government put forward a motion to have a zero tolerance policy for individuals 21 and under. For those individuals who get their license after the age of 21 there is a one-year imposed zero tolerance policy. This is more a modification to the original legislature for the graduated licensing protocol. Under the original protocol an individual only holding their G2 license had a zero-tolerance policy enforced. Once they had their full license, a G-license, than there is a tolerable limit of 0.08% blood alcohol level. I agree with the legislation, anything to mitigate drinking and driving amongst teenagers.
Speeding. The new legislation is again a zero-tolerance policy. A first offense warrants a 30-day suspension, your second offense gets you a 90day suspension. Upon a third infraction the driver is reverted back to their G1 license.
Passengers.

The new proposal is to limit the number of teenagers in the car to one. Previously the legislation did not limit the number of teenagers during the day, but during the first six months of a teenager could not have more than one teenager in the car between midnight and 5am. Some teenagers are saying that this will only cause more drinking and driving. I have to say that I think that is a little excessive, I’m not sure that any law, television show, media, etc advocates drinking and driving.
This new legislation is in reaction to several recent accidents including the horrific accident up in Muskoka on Lake Joseph. I wrote about the accident here back in August. Unfortunately a cousin of mine was in the accident up in Muskoka. I agree with this legislation, if it prevents accidents, even just one, and a family doesn’t have to go what Allan Mintz went through than I am in favour of these new laws.

 What is active transportation?

Have you ever thought I’m going to combine how I get to work with my exercise for the day? Did you walk, run, or ride your bike to work? Those are all forms of active transportation. Active transportation is any form of human-powered transportation. The most popular are riding your bike and walking.

Active Transportation will soon be a new ‘buzz’ word, like sustainability. But it is better than sustainability. Not only does it combine sustainable, ‘green’ actions but it also improves your own health.

Toronto is trying to make it easier. Both GO Transit and the TTCare installing bike racks on the front of buses, by the end of 2010 the TTC will have 24 routes completely equipped with bike racks. This way you can combine using public transit and active transit.

I’ll continue to bike, run, and walk where I can. I’ve recently started running home from work, it’s a long way but very rewarding. As I’ve said to my friends I started running a lot again so I can eat more cookies, cake, candy, etc so if I run longer I guess I can eat even more!

Where is the future of Aviation?

The bulk of the documentary seemed to discuss the green and not-so-green side of aviation. There was some discussion regarding the ever expanding disparities in income and how fewer and fewer people in the world can actually afford to fly.

1) Virgin Airlines
Owned and operated by Sir Richard Branson, his goal is to ‘green’ his fleet of aircrafts. In this BBC articleit highlights that Branson plans to spend $3bn over the next 10 years on renewable energy initiatives, that he has ordered 15 of Boeing’s fuel-efficient Dreamliner Aircrafts, and that Branson intends to fly the first bio-fuel powered commercial aircraft. In his interview last night on The Sky’s the Limithe committed all of the profits from Virgin’s flights to finding ‘green’ fuel. His money has gone into researching algae oil as a source of fuel. Apparently you can drink the fuel of the future, although Branson claimed it tasted terrible!

2) Plane Stupid
Plane Stupid is a group of protesters that rallies to promote the effects of the aviation industry on our environment. In The Sky’s the Limitthey focused on the recent protest at Heathrow’s New Terminal, Terminal 5. They also showed a demonstration at British Airways headquarters in London, where Plane Stupid Members hung banners from their roof. With Heathrow’s plans to build a 6th terminal and a third ruway and wipe out the towns of Sipson, Harmondsworth and Harlington. Expect Plane Stupid to be there protecting with the citizens.

What also caught my attention was the Airbus Beluga. Both my boyfriend and couldn’t believe what we were seeing, it literaly looks like a flying whale. Designed to transport over-sized objects it looks like its ‘mouth’ opens up and swallows the object whole!

Having the opportunity to see the world and experience different culture gives everyone a much greater appreciation for humanity. I am not against travel, it offers a wealth of opportunities to learn, but I would like to see aviation travel get greener.

Meet blackle.com, the energy efficient search engine from google. Developed in 2005 by Heap Media, an Australian Company, Blackle is a reminder that we all need to be more energy efficient. Completely dependant on our computers it is the little things that count.

Everytime you load a page from blackle you are given an energy efficiency tip. A list of energy saving tips can be found here.

Again it is about doing the little things each day … dress for the weather, turn out your lights, walk instead of drive, and use an energy efficient search engine.

I was recently part of a discussion about the countdown signals at intersections. Designed for pedestrian’s they count down the seconds for one to cross the street. Some intersections are based purely on a countdown clock (i.e they start a fixed time and countdown to zero), some are based on sensors in the road (i.e when a car pulls up to the intersection the countdown clock begins) and some are based on a combination of these two (i.e the clock counts down but if no car pulls up to the line than the signal reverts back to the walk sign).

Some drivers are now using the countdown as either a primary or secondary cues in their decision making process at intersections.

I’m guilty of it myself using the countdown as a measure of whether to speed up or slow down when approaching an intersection, but it is always a secondary source of information the traffic light is the primary factor in my decision making process.

Is it wrong that we combine both factors when determining what to do at a traffic light? Ultimately the traffic light governs what to do at the intersection but I wonder if these help to reduce the number of yellow and red light ‘runners’? Are there any studies on the impact of the countdown on the driver? What about for the pedestrian? Are there fewer pedestrians who get ‘caught’ in the intersection?