I took the epigraph to DRIVE from the introduction to Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day And How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel:
“’The evil genius of our time is the car,’ Barry Byrne, an elderly architect, observed several years ago. ‘We must conquer the automobile or become enslaved by it.’ … Less than a year after our conversation, Mr. Byrne, on his way to Sunday mass, was run down by a car and killed.”
Terkel died today at age 96, after a great career as an Pulitzer Prize-winning author and radio host.
The wonderful James Fallows considers what skills Barack Obama has shown us over the past two years. He concludes: “As a collection of talents brought to bear in a campaign, this is quite remarkable. And the sequential underestimations — by the Hillary Clinton camp, and now by the Republicans — will merit future analysis.”
Over at the Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan, the conservative who supports Obama, fears Palin and is calling on Republicans to renew themselves, ponders the Trouble with Lower Gas Prices: “The sad truth is: only high gas prices will ever wean us off Middle Eastern oil and provide the real market incentives to pioneer non-carbon energy.” Like others, he believes the solution is to raise gas taxes to keep prices high and concludes: “The point of this is not big government trying to find a solution to our energy needs. It is for government to provide the context and incentives for us to innovate. Obama has not been a real leader on this, and neither has McCain.”
The province of Ontario finally plans to ban the use of handheld phones and other devices while driving. Ontario will be the fourth province to do this, following the lead of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Quebec.
Tom Venderbilt, author Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), is spending the month in the great city of Montreal and has come up with “Ten Things to Know about Montreal Traffic.” Number one starts off: “The drivers are nuts.” That, of course, is no news to any Canadian. Number three is: “Every other car seems to be a Mazda.” When I was there in May pimping DRIVE, I was astounded by the number of Mazda3s. I drive one myself and about the only thing I don’t like about my car is feeling that I am one of millions on the roads in and around Toronto. But there are even more of them in Montreal.
“How Detroit Drove Into a Ditch” is a good piece by Paul Ingrassia, the former Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal who is writing a book about America’s car culture. He refers to GM, Ford and Chrysler as just the Detroit Three — they are, he suggests, no longer worthy of the Big. Needless to say, the question remains how soon there will be only two of them. On the possible sale of Chrysler, he writes: “The most logical buyer would be Nissan, India’s Tata or some other profitable foreign car company seeking to expand in the U.S. But desperation doesn’t breed logic, which is why General Motors might become the buyer. It’s difficult to see how this deal would make any sense for GM, which already has too many brands (eight) and must cut billions from its cost base. Adding more brands (Chrysler has three) and more costs would be charging headlong in the wrong direction, and distract GM’s management from putting its own house in order.”
I don’t spend as much time at Toronto’s Metro Reference Library as I once did because the internet has changed the way I research. But I still go occasionally so I’m delighted to learn that councillor Adam Vaughan has started a campaign to rename that lovely and inviting place The Jane Jacobs Reference Library. Jacobs wasn’t just the author of the classic book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she was an influential writer and thinker. More than that, modern Toronto, as I suggested in DRIVE, is Jacobs’s legacy and the library, designed by architect Raymond Moriyama, is one of the city’s gems.
Walter Robinson is the former executive director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and there’s a chapter in Watchdogs and Gadflies called “Walter Robinson and the Rise of Conservative Activism.” He’s now a columnist for the Ottawa Sun and his offering today is about how we can increase the voter turnout from the dismal 59.1 percent showing in our most recent election. His suggestions include ditching the first-past-the-post system in favour of some form of proportional representation (a change Robinson has been touting since before I started researching Watchdogs and Gadflies); reforming the voting process, including experimenting with electronic voting; and better journalism: “Pooping birds, innocent candidate gaffes or botched interviews in somebody’s second language are hardly the issues on which our nation will rise and fall.”
An obvious way to increase the percentage of people who vote: Orange County now has drive-thru voting.
I’ve been skeptical about past studies that have suggested that talking on the phone hands-free was just as bad as holding a cell phone while driving. My reasoning — as I suggested in DRIVE — was that at least people with headsets or Bluetooth units can put two hands on the steering wheel if they need to. But a new study from Dalhousie University has me rethinking my doubts. Researcher Raymond Klein told the CBC that while drivers holding their cell phones tend to slow down, but Bluetoothers don’t: “When people drive with a hands-free phone they tend not to compensate because they actually think it’s safer.”
If he’s right, it means the technology has the same effect as some of the safety features than are increasingly common in cars– giving drivers a false sense of security that leads to more bad driving.
Transportation Futures:
Ontario’s Inaugural Road Pricing Forum
www.rccao.com/events
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2008
Location: Hart House at the University of Toronto
Traffic congestion. Lost time. Crumbling roads. Increasing emissions. Few transportation choices.
Most Canadians agree that there is an urgent need to bring predictability and ease of mobility to the country’s transportation network — especially near large urban centres. Can road pricing play a role in improving mobility, air quality and the state of the nation’s transportation infrastructure? Or is it just a cash grab?
To answer these questions, the non-partisan Transportation Futures Forum will showcase how several countries have dealt with road pricing issues related to policy development, public acceptance, technology, governance and investment. They include:
· London’s Congestion Charging Scheme
· France’s Variable Tolling System
· Germany’s Satellite-based Toll Collection System for Heavy Trucks
· Oregon’s VMT-Based Road Charging Pilot Project
· Holland’s “Different Payment for Mobility” Plan
After a quick review of Canadian systems, a round table of local experts will be on hand to assess which road pricing approaches might be best for the Ontario context and when the time might be right for implementation — if ever. And your participation with over 150 decision makers, transportation practitioners, land use planners, business leaders, academic researchers and NGO representatives will make this event truly interactive and educational!
Register today for Ontario’s first ever Road Pricing Forum and take advantage of our Early Bird Rates! See www.rccao.com/events for more information. We look forward to seeing you on November 13th!
Presented by: Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario in conjunction with Healthy Transport Consulting
Sponsored by: Local 183 Toronto, Ontario Professional Planners Institute, ReNew Canada Magazine, Halcrow Consulting
Philadelphia Flyer fans did the predicted and booed Sarah Palin when she dropped the puck at the team’s season opener. Although some people in the crowd did clap and cheer, “their warm reception was no match for the 90 seconds of sustained booing that rumbled through the arena.”
“In Defense of Dignity,” is a compelling piece by Dan Savage, the author and syndicated sex advice columnist, about the death of his mother. It’s not just a moving story, but a powerful argument in favour of Initiative 1000, the ballot measure the people of Washington State will vote on in November. If it passes, doctors will be legally allowed to give terminally ill patients lethal doses of medication.
Savage doesn’t have much respect for those opposing I-1000 on religious grounds. “I know what my mother would say: The same church leaders who can’t manage to keep priests from raping children aren’t entitled to micromanage the final moments of our lives,” he writes, then goes on to argue, “The proper response to religious opposition to choice or love or death can be reduced to a series of bumper stickers: Don’t approve of abortion? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of gay marriage? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of physician-assisted suicide? For Christ’s sake, don’t have one. But don’t tell me I can’t have one—each one—because it offends your God.”
A guy who blogs at charmingly titled Not Your Average Idiot has reviewed DRIVE. He concludes: “I was left pondering the good and bad of the car, and with a reinforced impression of the quality and results of the past fifty or so years of professional “Urban Planning.” (Confession: I’m completely suburban, and rarely ride public transit. I’m as guilty as anyone.) I really enjoyed the book - it was a good read, informative and thought-provoking while still being entertaining. Recommended!”
Ed Snider is the owner of the Philadelphia Flyers, a team I’ve had no respect for since the mid-1970s. He is also a big Republican donor. So I am not surprised that he wants Sarah Palin to drop the puck at the team’s home opener on Saturday. But Ted Leonsis, owner of divisional rivals Washington Capitals, doesn’t think it’s a great idea: “I am surprised that the candidate would go on the ice in Philly — Philly fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus and booed Beyonce because she was wearing a Michael Jordan dress. This is dangerous territory.”
Disturbing news for the global auto market: 2009 could be a dismal year. The recession will mean many people won’t be in the market for a new car and those who do want a new ride will find the financial crisis has made getting a loan much tougher. For carmakers, that means a bad 2008 will click over into a worse 2009. In fact, J.D. Power and Associates predicts an “outright collapse” is possible.
A report called Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab (run by my hockey buddy Ron Deibert) revealed that China regularly scans Internet chats for sensitive keywords (including those related to Taiwan independence, the Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Communist Party) and stores the scanned conversations on insecure servers. The report’s author, Nart Villeneuve, “was able to view, download, and archive millions of private communications, ranging from business transactions to political correspondence, along with their identifying personal information.”
TOM-Skype is owned by TOM Online, a Chinese mobile firm, and Skype, which is owned by eBay. After the New York Times ran a story on the report, Skype issued an apology: “Last night, we learned that this practice was changed without our knowledge or consent and we are extremely concerned. We deeply apologise for the breach of privacy relating to chat messages on TOM’s servers in China and we are urgently addressing this situation with TOM.”
Congrats to Citizen Lab.
Sean Avery, now playing for the Dallas Stars, has a lot more in common with Don Cherry than he’d like to admit — including a knack for a good quote: “He serves a purpose. But he really does not know shit about hockey. He knows, like, unnecessary facts about putting Sears catalogues on your shin pads.”
(A clink of my glass to James Mirtle.)