1. Our debates about how we share the public right-of-way focus a lot on travel time.
I’d like to talk about comfort, risk and trade-offs.
I’d like to talk about comfort, risk and trade-offs.
2. Let me preface this by saying that I’ve taken transit to work for about 10 years. I biked for 5 (and will again!). At the moment I drive.
3. So yes, while I believe in and advocate for cycling infrastructure and safe streets, I also own and drive a car.
4. Any discussion about reallocating road space seems to inevitably pivot on one metric: change in travel time for drivers.
5. Any attempt to update 1960s road design to reflect contemporary policy objectives brings out the familiar tropes…
6. ‘Making congestion worse’. ‘War on the car’. All ways of saying that cars move too slowly, and driving commutes take too long…
7. …implying that drivers are disproportionately aggrieved and discomfited, compared to those using other modes to travel around the city.
8. They’re not.
We ALL wish our commutes were shorter. Commuting is not what we want to do, it is what takes us to the things we want to do.
We ALL wish our commutes were shorter. Commuting is not what we want to do, it is what takes us to the things we want to do.
9. But here’s the thing: at least in a car, your commute is COMFORTABLE.
10. When you drive, you are travelling in your own personal climate-controlled space, dry, warm in the winter, cool in the summer…
11. When you drive, you always have a seat, you have a place to put down your heavy bags, your car does all the work...
12. When you drive, you can play your music out loud, as loud as you want, and sing along, and the batteries never run out…
13. Having walked, biked, and travelled to work by bus/streetcar/subway – let’s be frank, a car is a moving comfort box.
14. Compare driving to the experience of TTC riders crammed on a bus, jostling on a platform, or watching streetcars pass by…
15. Compare driving to the experience of a pedestrian in winter, waiting on a corner for a signal to change after pressing a beg button…
16. Compare driving to getting caught in the rain – whether on bike, on foot, or waiting on the street for a bus or streetcar…
17. Yet somehow, despite relative comfort, we seem to elevate the time of drivers above those of travelers using other modes.
18. And let me add to the notion of comfort, that of safety and risk.
When I drive, I never feel remotely at risk. At city speeds, I’m not.
When I drive, I never feel remotely at risk. At city speeds, I’m not.
19. Compare that to a cyclist, on a painted sharrow, looking at the rear wheels of the passing truck, and imagining the worst…
20. Compare that to a pedestrian, with the right of way, unsure if the driver of the right-signalling car with tinted windows has seen them…
21. …or the one who uses a crosswalk every day, but never really feels secure that somebody isn’t going to blow through it…
22. And yet we have #REimagineYonge, where some Councillors would diminish improvements to the comfort and safety of pedestrians/cyclists…
23. …so that drivers in 2031 might save a half-minute – 30 seconds – based on modelling of Transform Yonge vs. the 6-lane alternative. 
24. This is perverse – it implies a system of thinking that prioritizes the time of drivers, however small, above all else.
25. Look at #GardinerEast – the Boulevard was preferable in almost every respect, but it cost a small number of drivers a few minutes. DOA.
26. If we are to be honest, there is probably no intervention that improves all metrics for all users. We are dealing in trade-offs.
27. An opinion: a minute longer in a car isn’t a big deal, and is a fair trade-off to meaningfully improve the safety and comfort of others.
28. But making fair decisions in a context demanding trade-offs requires the application of transparent weighting & prioritization.
29. Instead, we have Councillors who wield driver time like a trump card that tops any other consideration – safety, environment, cost…
30. Rather than evidence-based decision-making, evidence is collected and then arbitrarily discarded. It is effectively study-washing.
31. the sad irony is that protecting every minute of driver time today will ultimately cost drivers dearly down the road.
32. If you really want to help drivers in the long-run, you need more people to choose to travel by other modes.
33. For that to happen, we need to make those modes safe, comfortable and reliable. That requires short-term trade-offs for long-term gain.
34. But that requires a decision-making horizon that extends far beyond the next election cycle, considering present and future users.
35. Regrettably, when making infrastructure decisions that will impact the city for decades or more, that’s the perspective we’re missing.
36. Final thoughts: perhaps the ire of drivers is as much rooted in a mismatch between expectations and reality as day-to-day experience…
37 …and perhaps it would help if we stopped lying to drivers that a city such as Toronto can ever roll back congestion…
38 …a city whose arterial roads were built out when it and the surrounding region had millions fewer people...
39 …a city that is growing by 25,000 people a year, in a region that is growing by 70,000 people a year…
40 …a city with a thriving downtown employment centre that is adding jobs, and that attracts people from across that large, growing region…
41 ...a city that sprawls, 40km x 20km, and that is largely comprised of low density neighbourhoods…
42 …a city that has under-invested in transit, and that seems determined to get the least value for dollars spent on new infrastructure…
43 …if we stop telling drivers they are at war, maybe we will see less aggression on our roads and in our discourse…
44 …and if we can begin to talk honestly about the degree to which congestion will be a fact of life in this city going forward…
45 ...then maybe we could also start talking honestly about long-term solutions to efficiently and equitably moving people.
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