The Car’s “Way”

Peter Norton’s recent book, Fighting Traffic (2010), clearly describes the historical process of putting the car first in the life of cities public rights-of-way.  The period from about 1915 to 1935 saw the transition of streets as, well, what today’s progressive generation would call “complete.”  Trips were short and slow, and therefore walking predominated.  Goods moved by horse and buggy, which made streets dirty and required sidewalks to be slightly elevated.  The streetcar was the main conveyance for people going further, and it stopped frequently for boardings and didn’t get up to much more than 10 mph between the stops and the need to avoid collisions (consider this a time when traffic signals didn’t exist).

When the car entered this miasma of urban life and movement, it was immediately seen as a significant danger — to people.  The force of a pedestrian-car contretemps was between the impulsiveness of human foot traffic and the yearnings of car owners to realize the advantages their investment provided: status and speed.   The first was to buy admiration and deference from other road users.  That deference — expressed as standing aside to let the car have its “way” — was translated into speed.  And speed was the enforcer of the “right” to a “way” for drivers.

The speed soon became a lethal force, especially to people who weren’t paying attention to this new order of things and stepped into the “way” of the driver.  This drew the attention of local safety organizations, which had been successful in gaining housing codes and labour codes to protect people in buildings from fire, collapse, and health problems.  The car was cast, appropriately, as an endangerer and those who were behind the car’s steering wheel when it collided with a pedestrian or cyclist (organized before motorists into a road lobby, the League of American Wheelmen), they were castigated.

The driver’s constant effort to pick up speed was foiled not just by the constant flow of pedestrians crossing the street whenever, however, but also by the need to slow down at every “conflict” with other vehicles, including other cars accessing on or off-street parking, or streetcars, which in the emerging road culture of “might makes right” were clearly superior.  This brought about the engineer’s solution: the right-of-way, officially allocated by traffic police at first, and later by traffic signals.

In a campaign eerily similar to the National Rifle Association’s current campaign against gun controls, the automobile interests wrested control of the road-safety agenda from local safety organizations’ hands and concertedly promoted the idea that it was not any inherent nature of the “beast” that caused deaths (children were all too often its victims) but a small number of bad road users.  They also worked hard at devising a “system for sharing” the roads that, surprise-surprise, favoured the automobile operating at speed.  During this period of time speed limits rose from 10 mph to 30 mph, from being able to inflict recoverable injuries to inflicting death.

Getting in the driver’s way was a no-no.  And the driver soon learned that the amount of “way” he owned was directly related to his speed, a nicely circular logic.  By this standard, pedestrians and cyclists had no “way” as they were not only slow by comparison, but they had little mass with which to inflict harm on other road users (although a cyclist who can keep up with motor traffic can become a serious threat to pedestrians and other cyclists).

Traffic signals provided a switch that alternated the “way” between two competing flows of traffic, allowing one flow the freedom to proceed apace through the intersection, while the opposing flow faced the obligation to stop and wait.  The allocation of the total time of free-flow was eventually unevenly allocated by relative traffic flows (only motor vehicles were counted for this purpose) and the sequencing of  signals of the dominant flow was eventually mastered to allow speedy progress.   Speed clearly favoured not only the car’s status, but conformed to what the manufacturers considered a level that provided the value their advertisements implied would make the each vehicle’s price a worthy investment.  Speed buys its driver a private good, while privatizing a precious public good.  But the private advantage is fleeting, as time-journal studies show car-owners use higher speeds to travel further, rather an reallocate the time-savings to other activities.

Today, city planning departments are looking this heritage of road culture in the eye and making bold statements about how it has created streets that put “through-ness” ahead of “place-ness” (my words), long trips over short ones.  The result has not only been a loss of enjoyment each moment of a journey that only pedestrians can enjoy, but a drain on a limited resource: road space.   A person traveling by car takes 30 times the amount of public space when stopped (and more when moving) than a pedestrian.  The smaller amount of space a car takes when stopped is really no advantage, since parking supply, due to the combinations and permutations of demand and restrictive zoning rules, must exceed local car population by a factor of four to eight.

Ottawa’s planners are at the early stages of doing what they are terming a “refresh” of five important documents: the Official Plan, the Transportation Master Plan, the Infrastructure Master Plan, the Pedestrian Plan, and finally, the Cycling Plan.  The theme this time is, appropriately to me, “affordability” (their word).   Planners seem ready to finally blow the whistle and say, “sorry” to those who own, manufacture, sell, insure, service, and fuel cars that we are running out of space, space that, frankly, we want to put to another use: people and commerce and culture, which an increasing number of urbanists and economists point out attract the “creative” classes that make cities vibrant and successful.  This point-of-view is being complemented by the that from the leaders of the most powerful of the “soft” services: health, who say that the present mix of danger, pollution, and personal cost have created a pathological stew of death-disability, obesity, stress, and, for the equality crowd over in the social service sector, unequal mobility.   Affordability refers not just to what the taxpayers can afford collectively, but to the amount of income needed to live a minimal quality of life.

This focus is good, but it reflects past plan reviews that have made nice motherhood statements that rarely get implemented.   One that I especially liked from the last TMP was, “In 2031, the ability of residents to access essential opportunities will not depend on their ownership of a car. “  When I went to the microphone to comment on the launch of the current 5-year review, I asked for assurance that such a committment would be in the new TMP.  I was told, “yes.”

However, the preliminary documents again set a fairly low goal for shifts in trip modes: it reports that walking, in the last five years, dropped from a share of 9.6 percent to 9.3, but offers no comment.  Then it forecasts this share will go only up to 10 percent during the twenty-year period. when the planners should expect to rise to at least 20 percent (walking is counted only when the trip is made completely on foot).   The car is forecast to still be the standard by which residents will judge the efficiency of their time and the success of their life.  That means children will be deemed unfit to travel independently and seniors facing declining abilities, will face the contradiction of both becoming more dependent on door-to-door motor transport and having their driving abilities closely scrutinized.  There is no recognition that seniors deserve such a service without having to drive or own a car.

The five documents being revised need a reasonably complete vision of what will replace car-dependency, not just in the downtown core that has the least space for road widenings and parking augmentation, but in all areas that are centrally serviced.   That vision needs to make bold steps to, first, creating a finer-grained distribution of shops and services that are within walking, or easy-to-access and frequent, transit service, rather than malls or the big-box “power centres” available only by “district” rather than neighbourhood.  If successful in this, most non-commute trips will be considerably shorter.  Second, commute trips would be shortened if  planners and official stop telling them that they have a right to drive themselves to these destinations, instead of putting their intellect to arranging their lives to live within a reasonable distance for an efficient travel-mode-of-choice.  Fourth, “road-pricing” should also be utilized to ensure a scarce resource is well used.   Fourth, the use of the roads needs to clearly be restructured to favour the less-land-intensive “active” modes, rather than the “improvements” of the last 75 years that reflected our collective fear of delaying any driver.   The fastest way to convey this shift in priorities from a car-first to a foot-first culture is to lower speed limits to half their present levels.   The “complete streets” concept is nice, but is based on further separation of the modes (which lower speeds will make less necessary), will apply only to main streets, and will take a long time and many hundreds of millions of dollars to effect.  Easier and more effective is to remove turn lanes (making crosswalks shorter), move transit stops back nearer to intersections (making walking distances at transfer points shorter and safer), and stop synchronizing lights for car-driver time-efficiencies.   Lower speeds means that narrow streets don’t need segregated cycling lanes, as cars and bicycles will travel at much the same speed.

We can’t afford to give the car as much “way” as it has been granted in its heyday.  Today’s younger generation has found communications and information technology (and related devices) to fascinate them more than cars, the piloting of which prohibits using such devices.   Transportation needs to measure success in terms of trips completed and the percent of the population — and visitors — that are able to move independently, not in kilometres traveled or in cars sold.   Everyone deserves the same amount of “way,” and there really is not enough to go around unless the car, even if, rarely, it has every seat filled, is given far less.  We’ll all breathe easier as a result.  But we can’t hold our breathes much longer.

What Words Define Seniors

You sometimes need a spur to get down to writing about something that has slowly been growing in your mind.  Today’s “wonderword” puzzle — which I rarely do — was that spur.  The 15-x-15 matrix of letters each day have “hidden” (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal, either forwards or backwards) words that share a common theme, which today was “senior citizen.”  So what did David Ouellet, the “author,” think were good descriptors of our advanced-age ilk?

Before I share his shallow contribution to the field that I have been studying since before I turned 65, we should look at what is generally though of as our unique qualities in the eyes of those who are younger: needy, slow, old-fashioned, medications, recollections.  These are not flattering, and Mr. Ouellet diplomatically avoided them.  The alphabetical list one works from has “accomplishments” for starters.  That’s positive, but it implies that the only ones ahead of us are the ones we recall.  And that brings up two others, “memories” and “stories.”  We are more likely to talk about our past rather than the trends and issues of the present.  I suppose we are guilty, but this is more true when talking with younger people than with other seniors.  Whose fault is that?
Let’s continue with “eligible,” which implies the needs thing, as it refers to becoming a “pensioner” and getting federal Old Age Security payments as well as many things that seniors qualify for, such as reduce fares on transit, or at cinemas, or on special days at some stores.  In fact, “movies” and “travel”  are in the list.  Do we increase our spending overall when we get discounts?  As far as movies are concerned, I would say no, since so few movies appeal to the older generation, what with cursing, nudity, and gratuitous violence so common. And seeing movies in theatres is not a great experience; even with loud sound, the dialogue is hard to understand  because of the peripheral sounds that are meant to envelope you in concert with the picture.  And the action is so fast (made worse by the wide screen).  And the low light and tight spaces make the experience difficult, especially when you need to get to the bathroom multiple times during the two-hour run.

When we become “elderly,” we need “care” and this is probably what our kids and society in general cringe about.  “Giver” is also in the list, but not specifically attached to “care.”  So maybe there is recognition that, as much as we are income-poor, we are equity-rich and “time”-rich, and are among the more generous “groups” of philanthropists and volunteers.

The largest category, “interests,” reinforces the image of seniors having lots of “time” and having little constructive to use it on.  So, “games,” “singing,” “dancing,” knitting,” along with “chess,” “bridge,” and “bingo” are nicely bunched together at the start of the list.  And when we are ready for exercise, we don’t walk; we “stroll,”  since we aren’t in a hurry and probably have lower stamina, arthritis, and slow reflexes slowing us down.  “Hobbies,” for which there is no verb, is also in the list.

“Nice” starts a list of qualities we add to the general population.  I notice that bus driver rarely look, really look, at my transfer to see whether it has not expired, but that is probably because seniors are “nice” and wouldn’t cheat.  I also notice that younger rider often ask me for tips on using the bus, which relates to their correct assumption that my “age” means that I have spent many “years” using transit, which allows me to “advise” them and that we are “open” to such requests from strangers.   I don’t know if “love” refers to the depth of feeling younger people have for us, or that we are not too old to still make “love,” something that I don’t mind being thought capable of.  (There was a local seniors fair last week on the topic, with the main speaker being the Sex-with-Sue guru — I had a conflict, so I couldn’t attend).

Finally, seniors have a strong a interest in the past, supposedly.  It goes beyond our own “memories” and being able to “remember” how things used to be during our youth, but is real “history,” full of “ancient” “ancestors.”  One thing is for sure: we focus on “change”: abhoring that which has already occurred, and resisting any future changes.  I especially like the word “respect”; but hope that the respect I get is for my “accomplishments” and not just for my “age” and my “giver” reputation.  My activities are still few in numbers as I prefer to form and act through groups to make change for all ages, but especially for the age group that is so subject to — and fascinated by — “change.”

 

 

“Fourth Places”: Thoughts not worked into recent guided walk

The “Fourth Places” depicted in the Art of  Maxwell Bates and Philip Surrey
Remarks Prepared for the July 14th, 2012 Walking Tour Left on the “Cutting-Room Floor”

Being a guide – or as author E.V. Walter (see reading list) called it,  periegete or ciceroni –  means working with serious limitations other speaker or writers don’t face: you are mobile and you have to compete with sounds and sights that you can’t control.  But those other influences are part of the charm of these walks.  In any case, despite my experience with being a guide, found it hard to work these snippets of wisdom in, putting my limited time into point to things that were tangible.

The art of these two artists of the 1950s and 1960s depicted people in places.  Were these the “third places” described by Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place? And by Jane Jacobs in the Death and Life of Great American Cities.  Or were they more like the places depicted by Jonathan Raban in Soft City and by Richard Sennett in The Fall of Public Man and by David Engwicht in Reclaiming Our Cities and Towns.  The former are populated by people who know each others and feel a sense of proprietorship of the places, seeing the link between their own health and that of the places they shared; the latter were marked by anonymity.  The setting for Cheers TV comedy is like this.  The latter are more on their own, seeing people as instruments of achieving their own personal ends.

Oldenburg refers to the former as “third places” to distinguish them from the other two main places we spend our time, our homes and our workplaces, which are formally structured to assign roles and responsibilities, while “third places” are informally structured to allow for social “play.”

We come out of our homes to get supplies and services and to make contact with others outside our family and place of work or study. The people depicted in Surrey’s and Bates’ drawings are not at first and second places (although the waiters are at work), but are these places third or fourth place?  Do the people know each other?  It is important because some people enter publoic and semi-public places seeking anonymity – to get away from the people and related responsibilities at home or work – while others live, perhaps because they live alone or work in an isolated setting, enter such places to have meaningful contact with others, whether people they already know, or meet new friends and associates.

Australian David Engwicht, writer and artist, after his first visit to Paris, referred to the activity of sitting alone at sidewalk cafes, facing the passing flows of people, as using the strangers to imagining fanciful tales for each, guessing what each is doing or their life history.  At the same time, Raban emphasizes people`s loneliness or their need for stimulation they gain by experiencing the view of people different from themselves, or their fanciful adventures with seeing how others react to their appearance and speech.  David Reisman (The Lonely Crowd, 1950) talks about “other-directed” people looking to others for guidance on how they should act or dress.

There is also the matter of people whose needs are not considered by the people who build public places.  The two elderly men (“Old Men,” Bates, 1967), although not conversing – they are looking, not at each other, but at something ahead of both – are clearly together, presumably sharing things after meeting at their regular spot.  The probably like to sit silently for periods of time; then compare their “readings” of what they both see.  They likely have limited means for buying food at restaurants, so they need public benches, since patio seating is only for playing customers. Students have similar needs, as do adults with young children.  Being “on the margins” means being in the half of the population that does not make and spend enough money to be among those I call the AAA’s, Active Affluent Adults; they are instead part of the groups that make up what I call the “PED-CIVS” – poor, elderly, disabled, children, ill/infirm, visitors, and “simplicists.” Government and business leaders assume they are provided for by AAAs, either directly or via various “assistance” programs.  Transit agencies talk of the former, who own and drive cars, as being “transit-choice,” while the latter, who have no choice but to travel by transit, as “transit-captive.” with the implication that the latter group need little service and consideration to be drawn to transit, especially since transit is a “natural monopoly.”

Last year, I did a survey in the very walkable Byward Market to look for City-provided seating and found none; there is only the private seating provided by restaurants on city sidewalks that requires payment for a person to sell food, and the National Capital Commission, which has supplied seating in its delightful back lanes and along one side of Sussex Drive, the toniest area for retailing (most of the retail outlets are in NCC buildings).  The city, though, does provide a good deal of bicycle parking.  There are several planters holding trees, but their ledges are too high for seating, except if the person is tall and athletic.

The evolution of retailing since the artists did their work has made the plight of PED-CIVS more difficult.  Shopping now occurs in shopping malls and “power centres” further away and more car-oriented.  The malls discourage loitering and power centres have no places to sit and visit, not to mention sidewalks that provide a segregated area for people moving on foot.  Those who might displease AAAs and shopowners are ushered out of stores and malls.  Although many malls support seniors walking clubs, malls seem to be in decline (no new ones are being built, and some are being revamped to remove the indoor walking/seating areas).  The centres of towns, which have the best transit and where people without cars live, don`t attract this new “format” of retailing, which needs larger parcels of land for the larger stores and even-larger parking lots, on land that is less expensive than central lands.  On the whole, people of all backgrounds are better served by smaller stores, so that a larger variety can fit into a small area.  The website, http://www.walkscore.com, can compute “walkability” for any address in North America, as well as scores for “bikability” and transit access.

The area of the walk has the largest shopping mall in the region, Rideau Centre.  Although it is “anchored” by the last two of four department stores in the area (Caplans and Ogilvy’s have closed), it specializes in fashion, lacking what the Byward Market has: food products, full-service restaurants, and clubs, let alone a “street culture.”  The windows of the department stores lack the elaborate display of time past.  “The windows of the department stores were theatres.  They showed Americans lives as yet unlived in, with vacant possession.  When your nose was pressed hard against the glass, it was almost yours.” [Raban, Hunting Mister Heartbreak, p. 51]  Two bright signs: However, recently, Forever 21 took over two floors next to the main entrance, to which they added windows facing the street.  The site of the Caplan’s store, now a condiminium, now has a two-storey street-facing Urban Outfitters store.

This section of Rideau Street in front of the Centre’s entrance was the subject of an urban design experiment in the 1980s that failed.  The business owners on the street, envious of the climate-controlled environment the newcomer business would be getting in the mall, demanded that city build a structure to cover the sidewalks.  Although it provided climate-control, the fact that it was still a public sidewalk denied the merchants “client-control.”  Predictably, the “street people” used it as their personal space and the merchants, after few years, demand it be removed.  The structure lives on, serving as the “roof” for the farmer’s market in the town of Perth, about 60 kms to our west.

Those who are most left out are the homeless, who can’t manage the accoutrements of the AAAs.  If life in public is a theatre, they are never off stage.  Like many cities, these people are mostly found in the core, thanks, ironically, to popularity of public areas that assure the crowds on sidewalks they need for begging – or getting donations for their“busking”.  Each day they shuffle between the places that provide overnight accommodation and the other places with social and training programs and some individual counselling.  The men and women are segregated, too.  Drug-dealing and prostitution also occur in these areas.  Nearby is Ottawa’s largest concentration of public housing for families (most tenants are new immigrants) and seniors.  The manager of the largest grocery store says that more than 70 percent of his customers arrive by foot or bicycle.

Most merchants in the area are members of self-taxing associations, business improvement areas, that have slowly eliminated public seating and places where the homeless might congregate or sleep, often by putting spikes on ledges, as one does to protect high places on one home from pigeons.   This, according to author and student of urbanism, William Whyte, won’t: “The best way to handle the problem of undesirables is  to make a place attractive to everyone else.” [1980, p.63]

Raban has some choice comments about the lower element of cities (from Hunting Mister Heartbreak):

The current term for these misfortunes was ‘street people’, an expression that had taken over from bag ladies, winos, and bums. . . . The term was too easy by half.  It casually lumped together the criminal and the innocent, the dangerous and the safe.  It included long-term mental patients discharged from hospital under what was called, in a sublime euphemism, the “de-institutionalized program”, along with crack addicts, thieves, alcoholics, hoboes, the temporarily jobless, the alimony defaulters, rent-hike victims and everyone else who’d fallen short of the appallingly high standards that Manhattan set for staying properly housed and fed. . . . ”

“There were the Street People and there were the Air People.  Air People levitated like fakirs.  Large portions of their day were spent waiting for, and travelling in, the elevators that were as fundamental to the middle-class culture of New York as gondolas had been to Venice in the Renaissance.  It was the big distinction — to be able to press a button and take wing to your apartment.  It didn’t matter that you lived in the sixth, the 16th or 60th floor: access to the elevator was proof that your life had the buoyancy that was needed to stay afloat in a city where the ground was seen as the realm of failure and menace. [pp. 65-66]

One of the poems from Larrick’s book, On City Streets (chosen by young people) that I did read to end my walkabout, is worth repeating here:

[Untitled]
Two girls of twelve or so at a table
in the automat, smiling at each other
and the world; eating sedately.
And a tramp, wearing two or three tattered coats,
dark with dirt, mumbling, sat down beside them –
Miss Muffit’s spider.
But, unlike her, they were not frightened away,
and did not shudder as they might if older and look askance.
The did not steal a glance
at their dark companion and were slightly amused:
in their shining innocence seeing
in him another human being.
Charles Reznikoff, p. 90

We Real Cool

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool.  We
left school.  We

Lurk late.  We
Strike straight.  We

Sing sin.  We
thin gin.  We

Jazz June.  We
Die soon.
Gwendolyn Brooks (p. 59)

The depicted encounters in restaurants also suggest of anonymous “fourth places”, the patrons sitting alone at tables or at counters, where people seated adjacently don’t look at each other, so it is not possible to tell whether that are communicating or not.  Only Bates’ two “Tavern” paintings suggest people related to each other, not as couples.  Such places are favourites of Oldenburg.

There are three paintings depicting transportation: a commuter train, a line of taillights of commuting motorists at dusk, and a family near a busstop, presumably going to a common destination.  Commuting, although an activity feely chosen by AAAs, is depicted seen as tedious, whether also lonely (the motorists) or anonymous (those on the commuter train).  The driving commuter faces the delays of congestion, but does so alone, making his delays harder to take.  Jonathan Raban says of this experience, “Who feels love for his fellow man at rush hour?  Not me.”

Here are two poems about commuting on transit from the same collection:

Fatigue

The man in the corner
all slumped over
looks forlorner
than a tired lover,

Forehead dulled
with heavy working,
eyelids lulled
by the train’s jerking;

Head hangs noddy,
limbs go limply,
among a number
he dozes simply;

A dumb slumber,
a dead ending,
a spent body
homeward wending.
Peggy Bacon, p. 62

Subway Rush Hour
Mingled
breath and smell
so close
mingled
black and white
so near
no room for fear.
Langston Hughes, p. 63

The family, if they take the bus together, will generally travel outside rush hour and will avoid being jostled and squashed; instead they parents will be offered comments from other travellers about how nice the children are, especially from seniors.  But such comments usually don’t develop into conversations or even an exchange of names or phone numbers.

Children see many adults on these trips.  Here is a poem of one such experience:

A Lazy Thought

There go the grownups
To the office,
To the store.
Subway rush,
Traffic crush;
Hurry, scurry,
Worry, flurry.

No wonder
Grownups
Don’t grow up
Any more.

It takes a lot
Of slow
To Grow.
Eve Merriam, p. 44

The car has a strange relationship to public places.  Although it has a role to bring people to such places, it is also isolating; and it takes up a lot of public space when parked. Despite the lack of public seating, each parked car has seating that is deemed private and unavailable.  When on the road, it also pollutes: air, noise, grime.  But worse, it is a threat in which the smallest error by a driver or pedestrian can result in tragedy.  As a result, we see few children and elderly in public places in city centres.  Here is my Haiku contribution to the basic principle governing the use of inequitable power in public places:

“In every field, the more you wield, the more you yield; lest others shield.”

Even outside the commuting and the restaurant or sitting-in-parks experiences, there are many others where we are mostly anonymous, from the semi-anonymity of the sales process of questions and answers and the offering of a credit card to complete a sale, or the many faces we see on sidewalks and in crosswalks, or looking back from the seat of a car.

Faces

People that I meet and pass
In the city’s broken roar,
Faces that I lose so soon
And never found before,

Do you know how much you tell
In the meeting of our eyes,
How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?

Secrets rushing without sound
Crying from your hiding places –
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.

– People in the restless street,
Can it be, oh, can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?
Sara Teasdale, p. 69

But this anonymity can produce unique benefits, the the participants as well as to the broader society.  The kinds of encounters in public places, which we don’t see depicted, are what William Whyte called triangulation, in which two people, who are already engaged in conversation, are passed by a third known to one of them.  It is this phenomenon that Whyte says is so important to cities performing their major function of commerce (what Engwicht labels exchange), and how in late financially-strapped 1970s NYC, companies that relocated from Manhattan to the outskirts of Connecticut, New Jersey and Westchester County did significantly worse than those which remained.  Sometimes a window display or a street performer, can also provide the “third leg` of a triangle.  Both writers also play up the importance of joy of street vendors.  I refer to the purpose of cities as, “maximize commerce, minimize commotion.”

Another element of being in public places is the feeling of safety and respect from the others also using it.  Jane Jacobs coined the phrase, “eyes on the street,” to contrast the “organic” what this occurs vs. the modern approach of having more police and more surveillance cameras.  These add nothing by their presence except the increased possibility that a lawbreaker or pest will be prosecuted successfully.  But having a place occupied or watched by a number of people who relate its health and conviviality as important to their own well-being is better.  I composed a talk about this, “Feet Follow Fabric,” for a web conference for World Planning Day, November 1, 2011, which is posted on hearthhealth.  It itemizes the factors that contribute to “eyes” playing a successful role: 1) a sense of “proprietorship” by occupants and neighbours, 2) flanking buildings that face the area, with a clear line separating the public from the private (but storefronts should be “active and flush” to the sidewalk), and 3) lots of people walking and/or sitting.  Obviously, neighbours should also keep windows clear for viewing and, when possible, open so that noises suggesting things happening outside will reach the occupants’ ears.  Children are not very good as “eyes” but they are important in attracting people to public places.  And dogs are a positive influence: Owning a dog helps: they induce their owners to make extra early/late walking trips.  And dogs scare criminals, according to a police friend.

To tie things up, we should ask: do the “street people” we saw at the beginning of our walk people provide ‘eyes’ for the streets they occupy?  I don’t think they do.  Despite the amount of time they spend on the streets, they feel little ownership.  I rarely yield to their open hands, but would, gladly, compensate them for doing work to maintain the street, such as picking up litter.  Even though I have suggested it to a few, there has been no positive response.  Perhaps it is the home/business-ownership thing they lack that would stimulate them into caring about the health of the public areas they use.  It could also be that they feel that they have little to offer or that, being rebuffed in so many subtle and not-so-subtle ways each day, they owe nothing to the “greater good.”  I favour the idea that most do not have an upbringing in which they were provided a very elaborate “mental model” of how society works, but rather a capricious one in which whim rules, especially for those with more power and money.

Bike Sharing Needs to be Subsidized?

[Re: Announcement from New York City: Citibank Paying $41 million for 10,000 shared bikes at 600 stations.  This saves NYC taxpayers, since bike sharing usually is subsidized by local government.  This was posted first to Transportation Nation]

As a former carshare entrepreneur, I find the bikesharing business model strange. First, the subsidies (although I have noted that NYC’s new service is not subsidized). Second the backloading of fees, the opposite of almost any other rental business, including bike rentals. And finally, the confusion over access fees and use fees. The ones in Ottawa have the access fee shown in large type, and the regressive use fees in smaller type.

The recent addition of long-term access fees provide 45-min free use, and short-term (tourist) only 30-minutes, seem to show that tourists are the ones that are paying a lot of the costs: they are the ones that want a bike for a half day (12 hrs), and they think that will pay only $7 (the one-day access fee) for it, not the $7 plus $152.25 usage fee that will appear on their credit card statement when they return home several days later.

The tourist would use this long-term seamless access because they want to enjoy the extensive pathway system, while the bike stations are limited to the core of the national capital (across the Ottawa River in two provinces). The system doesn’t have stations at the two museums further out, so visitors to these cannot “stop the clock” when they are inside.

And finally, the bikes are large and heavy, as has been pointed out (44 lbs vs. 25 for a regular bike). If you want to rent a lighter bike for more reasonable long periods, why is the information on finding these businesses not posted at the rental sites or on-line? These operators also have specialized bikes (tandems, road bikes, mountain bikes), trailers, and helmets. The use fees should be called “over-due fines.”

I suspect that much of the need for subsidies comes from the rate structure and success attracting commuters — a significant selling point to cities trying to reduce car-use at peak hour. The free front-end use period induces commuter use that increases demand for bikes but only at peak periods, and results in mal-distributed fleets requiring special trucks to relocate them. It also creates the problem of users not finding a “docking” space when/where they want to end their trip, causing the user time and grief looking for another nearby station.

And where do these peak-hour commuters really come from? Probably from the ranks of walking, transit, and owned-bike commuters, since the distances the service is practical for are shorter than most owned-car commutes.

[One NYC activist has pointed out that the parking "stations" for these bikes -- the only place to park them, as no locks are provided to park them anywhere else -- are all busy sidewalks.   This not only makes walking harder, but reduces the number of prime vending spaces for street merchants, of which NYC has many thousands.  If bikes are good by taking the PLACE of cars, then they should, when parked, take the SPACE of cars.  And no helmets are provided, since that would not conform to public health practices.]

 

Reducing “Auto” Driving

I spend a fair amount of time promoting the idea that there are just too many cars, each being used too little to justify its manufacture and parking ‘footprint,’ not to mention the excessive space they occupy while actually being used, usually with 4 seats and the trunk unused.  I usually point to people’s assumption that, to drive a car, requires that they own one.  OPOCO, the One-Person, One-Car Orientation, is the root of all evil.

But more and more, I am coming to the conclusion that insisting on driving oneself is just as much a problem. “Auto” driving is as much a problem as “auto” ownership.

A recent article from Chicago radio station WBEZ, on December 12th, points to the plans of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to require all taxis to install GPS devices that are linked to their dispatchers, and for drivers to be subject to a new regulation to not drive more than 12 hours at a shift.  His ability to police the latter will depend in his ability to get the industry to buy into the GPS regulation. (http://www.wbez.org/story/chicagos-taxi-industry-could-see-big-changes-94840#).

This is an important component of my idea that all cars should be required to have a similar “black box” to allow them to be monitored so that tolls could be charged and so that drivers could be tracked when they speed, run red lights, or make illegal turns — not to mention providing a “smoking gun” when collisions are investigated after the fact.  Even the car’s mechanicals could be monitored.

Although I figured that it would take decades to bring about my MASC (metered access to shared car) dream, it might be much less time to have the tracking system in place for taxis.  It is natural for taxis to lead the way, as they are a heavily regulated industry, since they are a public service that requires regulation.

Look at the bike sharing systems being parachuted into major cities around the globe: the bikes have informatics as good as any that Chicago’s taxis will sport, all for the same purpose: to track them in real time — although cycling lawlessness is less an issue.

But how do we get people to not want to drive as much or at all?  Younger people might have the answer.  As Grist magazine recently said (http://www.grist.org/transportation/2011-12-27-driving-has-lost-its-cool-for-young-americans), “Amidst all the hand-wringing over distracted driving, one critical point is getting lost. The problem isn’t the texting, it’s the driving — and many younger Americans would rather do the former than the latter.”   Yes, thanks to new state/provincial laws forbidding the use of cell phones — or at least hand-held models — while driving, driving has become an either-or proposition.  When you drive, life is on hold.  This is a downer thought.  The article cites a Traffic Injury Prevention article that shows young people are not as interested in getting driver’s licenses today as earlier generations.  Grist also suggested that cell phones are replacing cars as means of keeping in touch with friends.  [Just a week ago the U.S. National Traffic Safety Board called for a complete ban on cell phones, as well as on any electronic devices, with the strange exception of GPS devices.]

Since part of reducing car populations is getting more people not just to share cars consecutively (car-sharing), but simultaneously (ride-sharing), there will be a reduced need to drive. Just find a car going your way– and that can be arranged by using an app soon to be created by some smart person for your smartphone –point to a destination on a map, and a list of available seats, including some on transit vehicles, will appear as options to choose from, complete with ETAs.  Just scroll to the choice and hit “send,” and it will coach you to walk to a point of pick-up.  They will also open the car door when the driver pulls over and make the payment at the trip’s completion as well.  The app will also use social media to provide “reputation-based” security for all participants.

The difference between my idea of  the above MASC service, which I call “trans-seat” (in which people transporting themselves in shared cars can opt to pick up others along the way), on the one hand, and taxis, on the other, is not just the higher cost for the latter and the fact that the latter offers door-to-door service, but the fact that the former uses a “volunteer” driver who is subject to the foibles of all people who drive themselves, while the taxi is driven by a “disengaged,” professional driver.

The “foibles” of voluntary drivers include: being anxious about being late, being subject to “ego” problems that lead to road rage, poorer quality (or  no) insurance; and driver behaviour (including maintenance) that in not as good, since the driver is accountable primarily to himself.  The taxi driver or chauffeur is professional, which means he is always aware that driving is his livelihood and that he is subject to extra scrutiny.  But he also drives more per day and this shows in his knowledge of roads, drivers, etc. to avoid problems and to deal with them more rationally and expeditiously.

There is one advantage for “trans-seat” drivers, vs. people driving themselves in their own car:  they are more likely to choose to drive.  Because trans-seat levels the playing field by making driving more of a chore (finding the car, picking up others along his chosen route) and riding a lot easier and nicer (e.g., always getting a seat, never having to park the car, E.G.), we can assume that those who choose to drive are simply more natural at it; it is less of a chore or trial to be bravely tolerated.

The ultra-rich already know all this.  They avoid driving by having chauffeurs on their payroll to do it for them.  Even before cell phones, they used their rides to do other chores that required undivided attention, knowing that the slightest glitch can cause them to lose time or drop a thought.  In fact, such people have the least romantic idea of driving, knowing that the open, winding road, while exciting, exists today mostly in car ads.

If one admits to thinking of those who drive for a living as being lower than oneself on the soci0-economic status “ladder,” one has to wonder why driving oneself is any more noble.  After all, driving is hardly an exercise in freedom, especially when done at peak hours, when it involves watching the car ahead with one eye, traffic signals and signs with the second, and the GPS/smartphone/stereo/passengers with the third .

If one responds with the rationale that a) it is safer to travel in a vehicle and b) the most responsive vehicle arrangement is OPOCO, one has to just hesitate to realize that, if data moved in the same way, we wouldn’t have the Internet or cell phones.  Our conclusion about needing our own car is just too inefficient (coupled to the fact that car costs keep going up, while telecommunication costs keep going down).  Could we not redesign our people-moving system to mimic the way data and parcels move in our society?   The advantage for moving people is that, unlike data and goods, people can move ourselves, and most people like to walk, as long as they don’t have to do it on roads where drivers are multi-tasking while driving.  That simplifies it and reduces its cost.

If the frugal nature of this doesn’t compensate for the chore of walking and managing a smartphone app, there is always a valet-ride service called taxis.  You can ride and have the vehicle all to yourself, just like the rich folks.

Trans-seat is the future.  Ironically, this is not far off in the future.  And what it looks like will not be that different from the urban citizens of 100 years ago had at their disposal, before it was corroded by the introduction of the most worshipped, but problematic consumer device ever (finding one’s car in a large parking lot or garage is one of the more recent wrinkles).   OPOCO has indeed allowed distance to be overcome (as if it were a plague), but it has, at the same time, spread out destinations such that a 10-minute walk of that time allowed one to reach about as many destinations as a 10-minute drive of today.

You say that the mind-numbing sprawl of today will never disappear?  It already is, as “intensification,”  main-street revitalization, transit-oriented development, and new urbanism are all booming, and off-grid “McMansions” are at the heart of the housing collapse.  Add to that the squeezing out of inefficiently-used automobiles and the higher driving standards that come from fewer people doing the driving, and you have the missing element of how to return to vibrant local communities peopled by those who rank walking above driving, and aim to live more locally.

 

Citizen Engagement and Lobbying

Ottawa’s mayor celebrated one year in office this morning by chairing the second meeting of the Governance Renewal Committee, which was created right after his inaugural, at his request.  The first time it met was less than two weeks before.

Today’s meeting was to deal with an ambitious plan to set up a sweeping lobbying registry to make the activity of influencing the City more transparent.  The representative of the Federation of Citizens Associations (FCA), Bob Brocklebank, opined that it would be more appropriate for Council to study the state of citizen involvement more broadly before coming to any conclusion about what it is about lobbying that needed fixing.

The plethora of citizens — and the absence of professional lobbyists — was due to the Mayor’s proposal to include volunteers representing community associations in the bylaw’s requirements for both registration and the filing of reports on each encounter with a councillor of senior city official.

Even though the mayor presented an amendment at the beginning of the meeting, the 13 presenters, according to practice, came ahead of committee debate and vote on the report, so the presentations took place, five minutes per, plus councillors’ questions.   I came 12th, speaking as a former community relations officer for the old Region’s planning department, as well as a representative of several community groups “lobbying” over city policy.

I agreed with Mr. Brocklebank that the cart was getting ahead of the horse.  I recounted my advice to community leaders during my career that they should, in every presentation, describe their own mechanisms for democracy: who they represented, what members’ dues were, how many joined, and how many participated in the association’s activities in other ways.  This displayed their credentials to speak for these other people; to show that they could make a difference in the next election if they felt they were not being heard fairly.  My experience was that councillors always considered these matters before giving “weight” to their expressed concerns.

Too often citizens representatives lost out to developer interests.  The latter work full time, and meet with councillors, one-on-one during business hours, out of the public eye.  Besides that disadvantage — which the lobby registry would address — these groups did not rate their importance high enough, I felt.  Communities do have financial interests in these matters, since city decisions can make many tens of thousands of dollars difference in its citizen’s  home’s value.  [This connection is why these groups were previously labels "ratepayer" groups (referring to paying taxes -- although tenants pay indirectly through their rent)].

My first recommendation was that, if these groups were to be excluded, then the city should set up a separate registry for them, in which they would document their “bona fides,” their claims to legitimacy.  As one councillor pointed out during a question to another presented, some citizen groups are really fabrications of lobby campaigns, and council should know which they are.  I also wanted these associations to “up” their game by asking members for much higher dues and fighting more effectively for their interests.  Condominium boards — of which there are about 800 in Ottawa — can draw on hundreds of dollars a month from a membership that can’t opt out, while “community associations” ask for at most $10 a year, which is not only voluntary, but is usually not part of a concernted membership campaign.  I was on the board of the Glebe Community Association for 11 years (1995-2006) and was very involved in canvassing, usually getting 50% of doors I knocked to join each year.  The monthly newspaper, quite independent from the GCA, also helped make it pretty much the most effective and more representative in the city.

My second recommendation was to shorten the time allowed for filing reports to the registry.   The “15 business days” translated into at least three weeks, too long to allow participants to use the transparency before the issue was resolved at council.  Such a deadline only encouraged procrastination.  It should consider what that reporting requirement would mean for this very issues, which was holding the hearing only nine business days after it tabled it.

My third point was the complete lack of attention in the draft bylaw to the workings of the registry.  Previous speakers questioned the Council budget that provided no FTEs (full-time equivalents) for its operation.  That would obviously not provide any staff just to help with registering lobbyists, let alone filing their — or the councillors and senior staff’s reports.  How would the transparency be provided without yet more staff?  Citizens and lobbyists would want access on a short-deadline basis, while university researchers would value more comprehensive access to whole sets of data, over immediacy.  And then there are the growing legion of bloggers, high-school students, etc.

I also commented that councillors would help to understand the process if they were to give their reasoning for their vote on each matter.

I concluded by saying that I had found the other presenters and their concerns to have been first-rate, a virtual blue-ribbon advisory panel that came for free, even though each had only five minutes to share an impressive body of experience.  But there is no standing advisory committee on governance [this committee is considering the status of the existing 16 advisory committees after the Mayor halted the process for renewing their mandates and memberships, a prelude, many suspect for their disbandment.  Surely this committee was able to see the value of such advice.

My conclusion?  The bylaw needs more discussion and thought before it is adopted.

“Eyes on the Street” examined

I recently spoke at the e-conference for World Town Planning Day on Jane Jacobs’ oft-cited phrase, “eyes on the street.”  The theme of the e-conference was “Going Public: Making Spaces in Our Communities,” and Jane, in her first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, did as much as any person to express what made public places work.

She was, of course, talking about the natural surveillance any good place provides to its habitues and users,  just by virtue of attracting the eyes — and ears — of others.  We looked out for each other, to express the quality in terms of safety and security, but we also provide each other interest, by being willing to chat, or to play games together, or just to offer a subject for the mental storymaking of other strangers intrigued by the parade of life, as Australian David Engwicht suggests.

I came to conclude that “eyes” depended on there being “fabric” that links the place to humans.  This fabric consists of desire lines, places nearby that we can see which we want to get closer to, directly and immediately.  This is where “eyes” and “walkability” intersect.  Just as our city “streets-as-traffic-sewers” might reflect the architectural adage, “Form follows function,”  I suggest that “Feet follow fabric” is the antidote.

The most dramatic research on this fabric is that by Donald Appleyard and Mark Lintell (1972) which showed how three similar blocks that differed only in the amount of motor traffic that drove through them had much different patterns of neighbouring, in which the high-traffic-volume blocks had little of it, but the low-volume-traffic one had a rich network (in the form of many trips between neighbours and activity on front lawns and on porches).  So relevant is this work to today’s world that Appleyard’s son, Bruce, himself a professor of planning, is bringing out an undated reissue of the book.

Cars, ironically, are devices designed solely to be used in public places.  But those in their cars, first, aren’t able to see as much as pedestrians see (or cyclists or transit users), both because of traveling faster, and because they are distracted, as it were, by the heavy responsibilities of piloting a heavy, fast vehicle.  Second, their activity represents the number-one impediment to walkability, or reaching an destination of interest quickly, often contending with congestion and road work.  Motor traffic is the number-one degrader of fabric.

Car dependency itself even hurts what Harvard political scientist, Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone 2000) calls “civic engagement.”  He points out that each 10 minutes of extra daily commuting time correlates to a 10 percent decline in community involvement.  Cars may be thought of as a device to save time, but more often than not, they are more often used to allow people to live further from their jobs, from schools, and from activity centres.  Further, their vehicle “shells” both isolate them from serendipitous encounters, but prevent the driver from engaging in activities that transit users and passengers (and often walkers) can.

Jacobs identified several design features that maximize “eyes”: flanking buildings that face the street, clear demarcations between private and public property, and busy sidewalks (p. 35).  The latter didn’t mean only lots of walkers,  but also other activities, such as outside displays of merchants, which, to her, provide the most active form of ground-floor activity, a point she made in a 2000 speech in Washington, D.C. (I transcribed it from video).

But the most intangible quality was the sense of “proprietorship” felt by people, usually those living and/or working along that specific block, or at least nearby.  I pointed out that this “sense of ownership”  provided a sense of responsibility.  This consists of three features: 1) knowledge of the area such that conditions that change are clearly noticed, 2) concern for the health of the public area, based on feeling dependent on its health, and 3) efficacy, a can-do attitude about taking action to make improvements, alone or with others.

She was, of course, referring to security, the absence of fear of being robbed or attacked, by denying the potential perpetrators the chance that their acts will not be noticed and reported, often so quickly that they will be caught red-handed.   In the area of safety — freedom from fear of being injured — eyes have less of a role, since, over time, drivers feel less scrutinized, partly because they travel faster, partly because they are further from their own area where they would be recognized, partly because cars are  now enclosed and glass is tinted, and partly because they are fairly successfully claiming a greater and greater level of personal freedom and privacy.  Reporting dangerous driver behaviour to police with a license plate number and vehicle description will produce nothing more than an official chuckle.  But if the driver is a local, the informal local network will whip into action to send at least a warning.   Tighter driver accountability would bring a much greater level of walkability to our cities.  Today, those not in cars are told to be cautious, even though they are not endangerers as motorists are.

The “eyes” are both those that are in the public area, and those inside the nearby buildings.  The proprietorship attitude makes looking outside onto what is going on a natural thing.  Both the home owner and the shop owner traditionally find excuses to actually go out onto their stoop to sweep and to pick up the mail.  They will also let their ears guide their eyes and they body to a good vantage point to find out what discontinuity — siren, shouting, emergency braking, or even a crunch — caused the noise.  Likewise, in quieter hours, those in the public areas — as well as neighbours — might notice things being not quite right inside one of the buildings, e.g., spousal or child abuse; a break-in.  Because these are co-proprietors, they are less likely to appeal to “authorities” but to use the local network to “investigate.”  Never underestimate the power, in such circumstances, of the “raised eyebrow.”

Even though walkers are at the top of the scale for their eyes being available to provide surveillance, a lively place becomes more successful if those eyes can dwell longer.  This happens by partaking of a number of activities: window shopping, sitting and watching, engaging in conversation with an acquaintance, engaging in games or reading and book or newspaper, or even the now-ubiquitous activity of communicating with one’s “smart” phone or portable computer or book reader.   Even though the eyes might be fully engaged in the activity, the ears and other senses remain alert.

Ray Oldenberg’s seminal 1991 book, The Great Good Place, lovingly introduced the idea of “third places,” which provide free exchanges and companionship that “first places” (our homes) and “second places” (our workplaces) can’t provide because of highly defined and rigid assigned roles.

“Eye-deas” that her concept have germinated include: Oscar Newman’s “defensible space” (the lands around social housing projects, “traffic calming” that slows down traffic and makes places more inviting, “patio-ization” of restaurants that add tables and chairs for patrons in the public area (usually paying the city a fee), revival of main streets and heritage market areas, redesign of streets and parks based on CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design), commemorative bench programs (private parties pay for a bench with a memorial plaque at sites planners recommend needs them, and the “broken window theory” that spurs property owners and municipalities to quickly repair vandalism or remove graffiti, as the best way to discourage future similar actions.

How can we measure and use “eyes” to design better public places, and to “repair” existing ones?  William “Holly” Whyte, who wrote the seminal Organization Man in the 1950, undertook research of public places in New York City for the rest of his life.  His PBS show and accompanying book, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, used hours and hours of observation and high-speed movies (for later analysis by slowing the motion down) to understand what features of NYC’s many plazas worked and which didn’t.  In 1988, he wrote City: Redicovering the Center in which he extended his work to the city streets, showing meticulously how street hawking and chance encounters between acquaintances supported economic goals of cities (which was the subject of three later books by Jacobs).  He coined the term, “triangulation” for the phenomenon of an encounter between two friends, which expands when a person known to one of the conversants passes and is roped into the conversation and introduced to the second party.  This can be repeated many times as the original “introducer” leaves, but the new person ropes in a fourth person.  This is the way personal and business networks, even in the age of smart phones, are nurtured.  On the issue of “undesirables,” Whyte said, “The best way to handle the problem of undesirables is to make a place attractive to everyone else.”  Which is the opposite of what business interests do to discourage vagrants.

In my mind, the most accurate measures of a healthy number of “eyes” is the presence of children, the elderly, and those in wheelchairs.  They are our most vulnerable and have the highest need for eyes.  They are part of the PED-CIVS group (poor, elderly, disabled, children, ill/infirm, visitors, and “simplicits”) that constitute the half of the population that planners forgot exists when doing their work.  They may not have the best or most informed eyes, but they easily become what attracts the eyes of others.  And their presence near the curb clearly inhibits drivers, assuming things are arranged so they can be seen.  To use video of public places, much improved since William Whyte’s day, along with software that can analyze not just what people are doing, but what they are (probably) hearing and seeing, and we’ll move along our knowledge of the dynamics of public places and what they mean to us.

The way to improve “eyes” is not to harden the roadway corridors by further separation by mode.  Rather, it is to soften them.  Hans Monderman, the late Dutch traffic engineer, took the woonerf concept — no curbs, meandering vehicle path — from residential streets to the main streets (“shared space”).  There he removed not just the curbs, but many of the signalized intersections that establishes the idea of “rights-of-way” that are designed to keep pedestrians and cyclists out of motorist’s way.  He pointed out that these all establish a “false sense of security” and speeds so high that vulnerable roads users who are struck are almost certain of dying.  Rather, road users should all defer to each other in a kind of “dance” which requires slowing down and lots of eye contact.

The other major change in culture of streets and transportation is the replacement of private cars with shared one (taxis, rental cars, ridesharing, and the newest, carsharing).  The present regime, OPOCO (one-person, one-car orientation), causes the car population to be much larger than necessary, considering how little time each one is on the road (1.5 hours a day) and how many seats in those on the road hold a person (1.2).  It is hard to say which of the two main problems created by OPOCO — road congestion or sprawl — is worse.  But neither will be addressed by “green cars.”  But MASC, metered access to shared cars, as I term the merging of the various forms of shared vehicles, will.

MASC will: a) inhibit the choice of using a car, as there will be fewer of them available, dampen demand by the shifting costs from “sunk” (fixed) to variable, and require a longer walk to get access to a vehicle), b) increase scrutiny of driving, thanks to the self-interests of the companies that own them (and need to know the identity of the driver for every kilometre the car is being driven), c) improve individual health indicaters via reduced collisions, reduce drivers’ stress, and greater fitness from using more human exertion in travel, and d) improve environmental conditions, including air quality, green-house-gas reductions, noise, and general urban grime.

And crime, as the increase in “eyes” will jump appreciably, especially through reduce “imprisonment” of the PED-CIVS.

Getting at the meaning of “hearth health”

Last week, I participated in an information event for fellow seniors on transportation choices.  A full house of 150 people registered for the seven panel speakers and keynote speaker at a large seniors’ residence that also provided the lunch.   One of the speakers was a representative of the local health integration network (LHIN) for eastern Ontario (known as the Champlain district).  She spoke to this new agency’s mandate, and more specifically about “Aging at Home.”  This refers to the emphasis on providing services closer to where seniors live to allow them to live at home longer, rather than face the higher costs of the delivery of health services in hospitals and long-term care facilities.

Another speaker was from the Council on Aging and its new participation in a national and international campaign to get cities to sign on to a program of “age-friendly” communities.  This also is geared to making the senior years more active by removing barriers those with declining abilities, which for our event means making it easier for people who don’t drive to get around.  Is there enough quality in the alternatives to driving for this shift to occur humanely?

The title of my blog, ‘hearth health,’ has another meaning to what I intended in this context.  What I intended was to look at ‘hearth’ as the place each of us feels most connected to, a more symbolic meaning than the physical space in front of a fireplace (or ‘heart earth’ the two words that, overlapped, make up ‘hearth’).  It is part of living locally, of making shorter, if not fewer trips, and of people surrounded by things and people that have more meaning to the individual.

But these references to health care offer another meaning of ‘hearth health,’ in the sense that rather than focus on the health of one’s hearth, one is talking about health care that is delivered closer to the hearth’s of the recipients, if not right in it.

My mother-in-law died a year ago at the age of 100.  She never learned to drive, even though she was widowed 38 years before her death and continued to live in the far suburbs of New York City.  She started needing some housekeeping help at about 94, after she fell getting off a tour bus, and never received physiotherapy for her back, so she developed a stoop and lost much of her ability to bend over or to reach high places.  Her stamina was also affected.

At 96, after falling on two consecutive days and having an ambulance dispatched both times to take her to the local hospital, we were contacted by the hospital and given the direction to quickly find her a nursing home, implying that she perhaps should have already been living in one, and being clear that they had little choice but to keep her in the hospital until she could be placed, without ever setting foot in her apartment again.  It was a change she accepted, but not very graciously some days, as she did not like the confining environment of a nursing home.

This is as much a financial motivation as a service one; seniors should be provided just as much support as they need and no more, and it should be provided economically.   From the seniors’ point of view, independence is very important, along with being close to friends and family.  And unless you are a social butterfly, your closest friends will be neighbours.  Relocation late in life is very disruptive.

Our Ottawa Seniors Transportation Committee is very interested in the cost of travel for seniors to get health care, which the participants in our event all rated as their most important category of trips.  It has been a long time since doctors made housecalls, but in later life, trips to doctors’ offices can be very problematic (our committee has been looking at the high cost of parking for these appointments).

The LHIN supports local agencies trying to provide this transportation to those who don’t have cars or don’t drive, plus other trips that make it possible for seniors to continue living in the family home or at least in a smaller place independently.  They cannot provide operating budgets, but have recently bought vans for these agencies, reducing the costs to local agencies to drivers, other operating costs, and the booking support.

The increasing use of information technology (IT) for tele-work and tele-shopping and tele-banking are already helping, not to mention the growing use of the Internet for linking to past friends as well as current ones and finding new ones.  But ‘tele-health’ is still in its infancy.   Can seniors buy accessories for their home to allow their vitals to be transmitted while talking on a video line like Skype?  Or could government see to the creation of places equipped for this, perhaps with a nurse present, allow for seniors to ‘see’ primary physicians and specialists remotely, without having to visit an office in a far-away hospital, medico-dental centre, or health campus, all within a block or two of walking.

There is also the need to get the message of location-efficiency to this older cohort, the one that, in their youth, were the first to embrace wholeheartedly the automobile as a good and essential appliance for life.  Rural areas have stronger support networks, but they also have greater distances to cover to reach essential services.  And the suburbs, although closer to services, are poorly serviced by transit or taxi service, and these neighbourhoods lack a full spectrum of housing types, so as one ages, one rarely can find locally the smaller residential options that remain close to friends and the familiar merchants and professionals.

At our follow-up meeting yesterday, I approached the LHIN representative and suggested this new meaning for ‘hearth health’ as a way to describe what was needed in their approach to the quickly growing seniors demographic.  I was suggesting that health care provided closer to seniors was really ‘hearth health.’  I was also serving my own agenda, advancing the importance of ‘hearth’ to all health issues.

Stay tuned.

 

Ottawa Transit Retrenches

It’s been a challenging year so far for OC Transpo, the transit authority for the Ontario portion of the national capital.  They were told by the new mayor that recent annual fare hikes that were four times the rate of increases in the cost of living — intended to get revenues up to 50% of all costs — would end with a ‘modest’ 2.5% increase during the next four years.  On average.  Tickets have been approved to go up a nickel a ticket (adults require two of these for a ride), or 4 percent, but the many passes would have increases closer to the target, staff seeing no need for pass prices to be rounded to the nearest nickel.

Governance of the authority also was changed, from a committee of Council, to a commission.  Although there are still nine councillors on it (one being the mayor), there are four citizens chosen by the councillors.  They were just named and approved last week, and now await Council approval.  I had submitted my name, but, like most of the other 170 applicants, didn’t even get an invite to an interview.  The final selection gave me a better idea of what they were looking for: three are lawyers and the other an MBA strategic planner.  Despite asking for bilingual capability, only one speaks French.  The media criticism in January that they should be from the parts of the city without representation was partially heard, as two are from central area, whose councillors showed no interest in sitting on the commission.  As to being transit users, one only is a regular user, while one lives beyond the service area.  Ho Hum.

But what is currently seizing the commission and its customers is the “route optimization” plan that is now in the approved budget, and is promised to save $18 million a year.  Only three examples of cuts were shown at budget time, but now the ugly details are on the table.  The principle is that 90 percent residents in the urban service area should live within a 5-minute walk of the closest stop for peak-hour service, and within a 10-minute walk of off-peak service.  Of course, walking speed is the same regardless of who is doing it and the weather conditions (-:}

These are walking distances only at residential end of trips, not those at the destinations ends, which are more than half (since a good many trips are from destination A to destination B, rather than always going directly home from the main destination).  There is also no sign that destinations are prioritized any more than users are.  This is unfortunate, since so many users are ‘captive’, the not-so-euphemistic term used in the ‘biz’ for those who don’t have cars.  I call them PED-CIVS: poor, elderly, disabled, children, ill/infirm, visitors, and ‘symplicists,’ the last being those who choose to live frugally and with small ‘footprints.’ Unlike their ‘choice’ counterparts, they use transit for more than getting to a job that doesn’t provide free parking.  That means getting to the basic convenience outlets — grocery, pharmacy, hardware, bank, library, laundromat — several times a week.  These trips are usually outside of peak hours.  So that means that these folks: a) are expected to walk further, b) get service that significantly less frequent, c) take trips that are significantly shorter (their site says the average is 10 kms), d) travel slower (the faster transitway is rarely used by their routes), and e) represent demand that doesn’t cost OC Transpo much, since buses are rarely full during off-peak.  My pitch to the commission for half-fares for seniors played up this point, suggesting that seniors cost the service less, and thus smaller fares were simple justice.

For instance, my wife and I, who are both elderly and simplicists and my wife is also a bit infirm (arthritic knees), purposely moved in 2006 from the Glebe, where we lived 300 feet from a stop on Bank Street for two routes, to Sandy Hill, within 200 feet of six routes (and 500 feet of a seventh), and the same distance from a double-car Vrtucar station.  That has worked fairly well for four and a half years, even though two years ago, a smaller ‘optimization’ plan cut in half the route we used to get to the Ottawa Hospital’s General campus, requiring a new transfer at the no-man’s land of Hurdman Station.

Now, the new changes will eliminate the only remaining two-bus alternative to reach the hospital.  The 16 will end at Main & Lees.  And the buses we use to get to the east and west along Rideau have been reduced by two: the 5 moving north to St. Patrick, which is a speedway with no commercial uses, and the elimination of the 306, one of the last ‘communi-buses’ that serves the two seniors residences on Porter Island near New Edinburgh.  Two of our seven routes is reduced to five (but one surviving one is rush-hour only, one of the rare ones that travel in both directions each peak period).

I have emailed fellow members of the Ottawa Seniors Transportation Committee inviting them to analyze the many changes from the view not only of conglomerations of seniors residences (although it is provincial policy to support “aging in place,” which translates to seniors staying in poorly-located-for-transit housing) but also the kinds of destinations seniors frequent, such as seniors activity centres (the largest, Good Companions, is served by a different communi-bus that is also being eliminated, and the one near us will lose members as it no longer will provide access by those living in Alta Vista.

I plan to attend all five of the open houses, in an effort to learn more about how people depend on the service and what grief the changes will cause them.  More later.

 

Cancer Survivorship, Clubhouse Style

I am about to end two years of finding inspirational and informative speakers for the monthly morning lectures at Abbottsford House in the Glebe, here in Ottawa.  I usually ask people I already know, but for February, I asked the head of the Ottawa Cancer Foundation, Linda Eagan, who is still far from becoming a senior.  She is a veteran of fundraising, and has been touched by cancer. I heard her talk at a Council on Aging Lunch-n-Learn last fall.

Ottawa is lucky to have been offered funds by the Bloch Foundation of the U.S.  who draws on the legacy of the H+R Block tax business, a grant to build a park to celebrate the successful efforts of those who survive cancer, now the majority.  They asked the Ottawa Cancer Foundation to find surplus land that had good visibility.  What they found was a triangle of land bordered by three arterial roads, one of them Alta Vista Drive, whose realignment 20-odd years ago created this land “orphan.”  It is  not far from the Ottawa Cancer Centre at the Ottawa Hospital.  It is an amazing place with inspiring architecture, lots of grass, and inspirational sayings to emphasize that cancer is now being survived by more people than succumb to it.

Linda and her board didn’t stop there.  They looked at their staid offices in leased quarters not far from downtown, midway between the two main campuses of the Cancer Centre, and at the 37 associations of survivors and families working disparately on increasing the survivor rate, and they realized that they wanted to build a building for their own offices, for the many sister organizations, and for the programs they all ran, or would run if they had the space.  [As I recounted here earlier this year, soon after actor Michael Douglas, announced his tumour at the base of his tongue (the same location as mine), I, too am a survivor.  Grateful but smart enough to know that I may not have seen the last of the disease, including for my family.]

Linda talked about the good luck of the foundation in finding two building lots in the 1960′s neighbourhood directly adjacent to the park, right off Alta Vista Drive.  They had been owned by the family of a couple who were about to dispose of them.  Someone in the Cancer-survivor network heard about them and asked the family to hold off for a few months to allow Linda and her volunteers to fashion a proposal that would fit the land.  The sellers saw the resulting plans and not only agreed to sell, but to not ask for a premium for what would be an larger institutional land use.

Although the building is not yet finished, Linda was able to describe to the assembled Abbottforders what their Cancer Survivorship Centre would be like.  She pointed out that the treatment program usually focuses, as it should, on the cancerous growth, and it leaves the patient often left without full understanding of what is going on, and not often supported in the various impacts on their families, work, and community responsibilities.  Linda talked about recruiting and training “navigators” to fill the gap.  She also wanted to have a wide array of resources, such as exercise equipment, written material, and lists of local and web-based resources to meet any need patients felt.  As an example, she mentioned the discussion she had with me about improving the walking link to the pathway system that flanks the nearby Rideau River via the main transitway station at Hurdman, to allow for clubhouse visitors to do long walks based on information from the house’s resources.  [Some patients might even consider walking to their treatment at the Centre from Hurdman (saving a bus transfer, since no direct bus link exists from downtown) through the park, and into the health campus' northern side that has a large swatch of trees and a nice pathway linking the neighbourhood.]

What I found most exciting about her foundation’s work is the research they are supporting.  Dr. John Bell, now based in Ottawa, is recognized world-wide for his progress in research the possible existence of a virus that might attack abnormal cell growth that gets beyond the size that the body can successfully fight — without the toxic effects of chemo and radiation.  She explained to the audience, half of which are themselves cancer survivors, how early experiments with mice have proved to be very successful.  Clinical trials in Ottawa and other cities — first with “faint hope” patients — are being designed now.  Obviously, this disease has met its match in terms of donations from Ottawans to help lead a new promising route to finally putting this disease into the category of the diseases that once were so devastating: diptheria, whooping cough, and measles.

This is a remarkable development, since cancer is not a single disease, but 300, all involving aberrant cell growth.  But the research suggests that this special virus could attack all or most of them.

There is a downside to this research.  It, if successful, could be seen by those diagnosed with cancer as that “magic bullett,” reducing the need to follow the dual practices of early detection and healthful lifestyle practices.  I noticed how different cancer treatment I had received seven years ago was from the more recent treatment I received soon after I was disagnosed with Type II diabetes.  The former was passive, letting the doctors and technicians follow the course of treatment you had approved; while the latter was active, very dependent on my daily choices for eating, exercise, and avoiding stress.  It is therapeutic to be able to help with your own diagnosis and recovery.

It is nice to know that by frequenting the new ‘clubhouse,’ I will experience both.