The PenOpticon

When I read inspiring books like Bill McKibben's Deep Economy and Mike Nickerson's Life, Money and Illusion , I dream utopian dreams of a world with no cars. Instead, our roads are practically empty except for hundreds of modern, quiet, hybrid and electric buses. Lotsa buses. Enough buses that you'd almost never have to wait more than a minute or three to catch one. Enough buses to ensure you almost always get a seat. Maybe even a window seat.

And then I wake up and realize I'm standing in the middle of a crowded aisle on a VIVA bus, heading to York University. For some unknown reason, the driver refuses to open the roof vents or turn on the air conditioning. The packed load of sweating students sways with nausea as the bus lurches through stop and go traffic, navigates around road construction and dodges the SUVs that routinely cut in front.

Those of us who travel without earbuds are treated to the cacophonous hiss and pop of 30 or 40 iPods which rhythmically bash away at the eardrums of their wearers. 

And then we arrive. And we stagger out of the bus like early morning drunks only to shuffle through a gauntlet of idling buses that spew diesel fumes which gather and linger around the walkways and buildings.

What I want to know is this: if we really are on the verge of Peak Oil; if a barrel of the stuff will soon cost more than $100; if the ice caps are melting, causing half the world to flood and other half to dry out; then, why can't we at least learn to turn off buses when they are parked?  York Region Transit is about to raise fairs to $3 a ride.  How much of this fair increase could be waived if drivers routinely shut off the engines when their buses are stopped for more than 3 minutes.

Of course, I'd prefer to see a car-less world where clean buses rule the roads. In the meantime, can we at least build buses that doesn't spew diesel and irony? Right now, they are choking the life out of us.

Woke up on National Clean Air Day, took a deep breath and gagged on the humid grey sludge that passes for air in these parts. I briefly considered keying every Hummer I could find, but wussed out and hopped on the VIVA to get to work as per usual.  I guess I shoulda cycled. When the weather is warm, I try to get on the bike and huff the 17Km to work, but on days like June 6th, every breath felt like sucking a lung through a meat grinder. Besides, the bike was already at work, left there from the previous day's commute. So VIVA it was — a prompt and uneventful trip.

In any case, I did get on the bike around noon and cycled over to "Getting Vaughan Moving", an event/photo-op showcasing VIVA buses, carpooling, car sharing, electric scooters, Segways and every other mode of land transport that does not involve single occupant 4-wheeled vehicles.  I was hoping to get some interesting pictures of people on Segways, balancing on scooters, etc, but there were so many cameras clicking, I spent more time drooling over fancy DSLRs instead of taking many of my own.

It's good that the region is finally getting serious about smart commuting, but the fact that the event was held in a parking lot, and the fact that very little of the official speechifying could actually be heard (due to the din of an adjacent freeway), makes me question the motives of the whole thing. After all, the reason we have a transportation problem is because the will of the federal government, the province with the complicity of many local politicians has lead to a cancerous rate of growth and development in York Region. While the politicians preach "intensification", the GTA continues to sprawl and scrape its way toward Lake Simcoe and beyond.

In reality, we do not have a transportation problem or an energy crisis. What we now have is a population that is out of step with the full spectrum of resources needed to keep it healthy and productive. As we race to replace our best farmland with Walmarts and subdivisions, we depend more and more on Chile, China and other countries for the food we eat. We depend on a supply chain that grows longer, more complex, more expensive and more precarious with each passing year. Could we do things differently?

I like to think so. We work to control growth and conserve valuable resources (including water and farmland), we can effectively engineer abundance. We could learn to live well within our means — but only if we take the trouble to fully understand what we mean by "our means".

In the meantime, we're told to accept run-away growth and intensification (1.6 million people in York Region by 2031). The politicians smile and say never you mind the numbers. Just get in the Smartcar, take a spin on the Segway. Mill about on the steaming blacktop and chow down on the free greasy burgers. 

Shall we all just smile and get with the program? 

Donna Cansfield,  Ontario Minister of Transportation boasts about how much money Ontario contributes to the region:

Vaughan Smartcar Photo-Op-Mobile:

Suit on a Segway

Getting Vaughan Moving (can I move somewhere else?)

I'm a loyal rider and supporter of York Region's VIVA Transit system . I spend at least 2 hours a day on these fast, (mostly) efficient buses. Most of the fleet now includes an LCD TV display at the front of each bus.  It used to be easy to ignore these things (they were turned off much of the time), but over the past few weeks, the incessant, mindless, insulting crap that flickers over VIVA TV is really starting to bug me.  This stream of shite appears to be downloaded over a wireless internet connection and played back in a continuous loop using Windows-based display software. As shown in Exhibit A and B, you get the time, weather, scrolling headlines of "celebrity" gossip and any other headline that includes the word "sex", "scandal" or "explosion" in it.  Apparently we are all dying to know about the lunatic antics of Brangelina, Tomkat, Spears and Hilton, et al.

VIVA and byt^emedia (what dat?) have made a terrible marketing blunder here. Most of the time, most riders simply ignore these obnoxious flickerings. And for those few who mistakenly look up, much of the time, that screen will have already crashed with a Blue Screen of Death, or entered a perpetual reboot & crash cycle. So, it would be best for riders and the VIVA marketing geniuses to just get rid of these things now – it would free up some bandwidth so passengers could check their email, browse the web — or blog their brains out. If you VIVA suits still believe that riders can't survive without the boob tube, at least give us BBC World, or CBC's Newsworld, or CNN. I just don't want to hear about Paris Hilton's latest involuntary gyrations or Tomkat's wonky dance moves.

It's time to torpedo this horrible experiment.  

The "407", that notorious ribbon of concrete and crash barriers that slices across the northern half of Toronto has really done it now.  The 407 ETR marketing types have introduced a "loyalty program" that rewards people for driving more.  To paraphrase their own lame slogan: Ladies and gentleman… start your fossil fuel, greenhouse gas-emitting engines. Drive at least 400 KM a month during the six-month "qualifying period" and you could win yourself some free kilometers. As the world slowly wakes up to the reality of global warming, the 407 geniuses want to pay you to stay asleep at the wheel and drive like there's no tomorrow. Way to go 407. Idiots.

On the other hand, at least the 407 ETR suits are honest about what they are doing. In reality their approach is not all that different from thousands of "green" marketing schemes — like airlines that encourage flyers to pay an extra green tax to make up for the tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel they are about to ignite in the upper atmosphere. Captain: "We'll burn 183,380 litres of fuel on this flight". Passenger: "Well then, here's 20 bucks. Go plant a tree".

For too long we have allowed corporate interests to appropriate Green as a mere marketing ploy. Do you buy the unbleached coffee filters? Do you heave a sigh of relief when the 60-inch big screen TV arrives wrapped in recycled cardboard (while ignoring the 20 pounds of packing foam)? Do you pay the extra 10 cents a litre for clean gasoline?  If only these token gestures could actually save the place. 

Sadly, the emptiness and dishonesty of these schemes is just a corporate reflection of the established Liberal<=>Conservative (they are interchangeable) political establishment. Any politician who can look people in the eye and bleat about "sustainable development" in a country with high immigration, dwindling fresh water, dwindling air quality and rapid soil depletion is full of CO_{2 (or some slimy, toxic effluent).}

I’ve gushed over York Region’s VIVA bus system since the beginning. I know all of the transit cops by sight and have watched them take down quite a few mugs who gambled they could ride without paying for the privilege. Today was different, however. Today, the bus was a standing-room only affair– we were packed in like a full drawer of socks. (These were mostly First Year socks, about to begin their first day at York University). There was no room even for a cop to move down the aisle to check for cheaters and no room for a passenger to pull out a ticket stub with out elbowing a neighbour in the soft bits. But then, why would a transit cop ride the crowded east-west Purple route when there are plenty of half-empty north-south Blue buses to check?

When we were about to turn south on Keele Street, I could see that it was completely clogged with traffic. I could also see that according to the VIVA digital display another bus was due in six minutes. So I pushed my way out and waited. Adding a few minutes to the trip in exchange for the possibility of an actual seat seemed like a worthwhile trade, especially since I could use the time to enjoy the morning sunshine and gulp air that had not just been humidified in the lungs of a hundred other people.

But when the next bus arrived, it didn’t actually arrive! It just kept-on-a-goin’. I waived to the driver to stop and he merely shrugged and pointed at the passengers standing in his considerably less-crowded bus. “NOOOOooooooooooohhhhh”, I sad, using a choice four-letter word. “Big deal”, you say, “so the bus never stopped.” I agree — this has happened to me many times while riding the TTC, but this was a VIVA bus, a hight-tech, award-winning system! If such technology can’t save us, then what will?

So I walked the last five kilometres to work, stopping briefly to photograph the Inflatable Wailing Man that stands outside Cousin Vinny’s Discount Emporium. Today I felt just like that guy, only I’m considerably shorter and fatter:

Leaving the Wailing Man behind, I walked south on Keele past the usual maze of industrial complexes and warehouses, past the 404 toll way and over the Canadian National tracks. It wasn’t so bad. The Fall wildflowers are blooming. The Monarchs are still bopping along, slowly moving southward. The air was even breathable. The industrial din was not so good, though. The cacophony of a Toronto rush hour is a terrible thing to inflict on the human ear.

Maybe I’ll ride the bike tomorrow, though I know I’ll soon ride VIVA again. The sad thing is that too many commuter students give rapid transit a short trial and then quickly opt for cars. If only VIVA would run a few of their larger articulated buses during rush hour, then those students might just stick with the bus. If not, then in a few weeks, there’ll be more room for wailing fat guys like me ;-)