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.

Car Parking is a Fascinating Subject

Some years ago, when I was active in Ottawalk, I developed a position paper on car parking.  Essentially, it said that the parking of cars should not be provided as part of various land uses.  In this way, parking of a certain minimum quantity becomes a requirement.  If some of these spaces are not ever used, or some are used only a couple days a year, you have underutulized spaces, and this is part of sprawl.

Further, parking spaces that are ancillary for one building use (for visitors, owners, employees, customers) cannot be used to park cars that were driven by others not visiting the particular land use.  That means that underutilized spaces cannot be rented out to ‘neighbours.’

As this thinking grew, I found myself reading stuff on the subject, including the excellent — and groundbreaking — book by Prof. Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking (2005) .

Most recently I have found the site and blog by Prof. Paul Barter, of the Univ. of Singapore.  His latest entry, http://www.reinventingparking.org/2011/02/revolution-of-parking-in-bogota-part-2.html, is provocative.  It recounts a blog in Spanish from Enrique Penalosa, well-known former mayor of Bogota, Columbia).

I wrote several paragraphs of comments, but lost them when I tried to post them.  It was an attempt to agree with most, with extra reasons, and to disagree with a couple:

Parking should not be ‘ancillary’ to other land uses, but be its own land use.  That means that parking lots and structures should be seen as a business that must pay its own way.

However, since no one likes to look at parking lots — even though that situation provides some of the security for those parking cars as naturally accrues to those parking on the street — such land uses should be either underground, with park space (‘people parking’) on top or it should be above ground, in surface lots or structures, with other users around the perimeters on all sides facing the public realm.

I disagreed that parking is a poor use of the street realm, unless it is converted to people space, for seating, walking, or street commerce (I am not in favour of segregated bike lanes).  Taking away parked cars to use the space for moving traffic is regressive.  It is just what happened in most cities since the 1950s, as there was a shortage of space for “traffic.”  It is important not to convert to people uses that cannot be supported by sufficient volumes of users.

Street parking actually provides an important function for pedestrians, buffering them from the moving traffic.  Further, for occupants of cars, parallel parking provides a ‘sanctuary’ (the sidewalk) along one side of the car, whereas nose-in parking, which predominates in off-street parking, eliminates that, leaving children and the elderly in danger when the adjacent parking space is being accessed by another driver with very imperfect visibility and anxiousness toward other moving vehicles.

Off-street parking suffers from other problems: 1) it is less fully utilized, as empty spaces are harder to see from the street and many parking spaces are reserved for particular individuals, and therefore not available to be shared; 2) they take more space, since the underutilized access lanes cannot also serve through traffic, as parallel parking on the street does, and it is harder to accommodate some spaces that are shorter or longer for different sized vehicles; and 3) pedestrian safety is compromised by the movements of vehicles across bordering sidewalks, usually at speeds far above the speed of walking by drivers more concerned with their own safety than that of the pedestrians.

By making parking a separate land use, there is not only a higher likelihood that parkers will pay a suitable amount for it — and thus parking will be added to their internal ledger-sheet of car costs, and it will not be ‘bundled’ with rents or prices of goods — and it will not be oversupplied.  As Shoup pointed out, if parking is free, there is no economic model in the world that can define a demand for it.   Demand is determed by price (and price also determines supply); but no price has to produce an indeterminate demand.

And in the case of parking for cars at the owners’ homes, the requirement that each home or apartment be provided with one, two, or three parking spots means that the housing becomes more expensive, and if car populations decline — as might happen if carbon- or road-pricing is introduced — we will have a lot of parking land that becomes surplus, but still causing sprawl by its continued presence.   And for low-priced housing, whose occupants often can’t afford cars, it become a factor making that housing unnecessarily more pricey.

I foresee a city of the future where all cars are owned by companies licensed by the city who provide them on a shared bases, both like rentals and carsharing (one user at a time using it) or shared occupancy like ride-sharing or shared taxis, which could grow to be an adjunct to transit for low-density areas, but on a relatively high-frequency basis.

Such an arrangement would not only greatly reduce the city’s car population (making road congestion relatively impossible), but would allow for integrated road/congestion pricing, and real-time charges for parking (which would, in my mind, be done via parallel parking alone, which is in the public (shared) domain.  It would also add a much higher accountability for drivers in terms of their behaviour on the streets.

 

Championing the ‘Transit Captives’

Yesterday I joined several other seniors to fight for our proposed reform of seniors transit fares.  It is tough to explain the point that seniors should pay less because we cost OC Transpo less, rather than the usual point that seniors need a break financially.

Seniors, as people who avoid rush-hour and whose limited incomes, failing senses, smaller households, and lower travel demand make car-ownership less practical, are at the core of what Transit planers call “transit captive,” those who don’t have a car to use and have little choice but to use transit.  (Younger ‘captives’ might have the choices of walking and cycling, but seniors who can walk to transit stops often can’t walk as far as younger people to displace transit trips).  Seniors avoid rush-hour transit service, although free to travel at any time, to ensure getting a choice seat and avoid the frantic crowd at those times, which often translates into “toe mashing” of those seated in what is now called “cooperative seating,” the centre-facing seats that are exempted from the first-come, first-served seating rule.

Facing us was Mayor Jim Watson, a man who religiously attends public events and prides himself on knowing the grassroots of the community, especially seniors.  He had championed a different senior-transit idea in his campaign — expanding the Ride-Free Wednesdays, a program that that we, the Ottawa Seniors Transportation Committee and the City’s own Seniors Advisory Committee, had campaigned for two years earlier to two additional partial weekdays.  We had seen the ride-free-Wednesday as nice, but wanted the next improvement to be half-price ticket and cash fares. Our two groups had successfully shepharded the half-fare through the Transit Commitee and Council the previous Fall. Mayor Jim Watson, though is a newcomer (returning to local politics after seven years in the provincial cabinet).

What happened yesterday must have been disconcerting to the mayor, as all five presenters who mentioned the seniors’ issue squarely supported our (and the previous council’s) plan — to cut seniors’ cash and ticket fares in half all the time but keep Ride-Free Wednesdays — while the committee had received a motion, obviously worked out in advance, to support the mayor’s approach of expanding ride-free Wednesdays to the period after noon on Mondays and Fridays.  The concession in the motion was that the expanded free hours would be only a one-year program, to be done in consultation with seniors and analyzed before it would be made permanent or any other changes made in it.

As it turned out, the staff did their job of providing numbers, but only the bottom-line relative costs.  They said our fare-halving proposal was going to cost $4 million on an annualized basis, vs. less than a third of that for the expanded ride-free proposal.

The first presenter was the chair of the SAC, and he clearly pointed out that Council had already made a decision the previous fall, and that staff’s response had been positive or at least muted at that time.  Now, five months later, staff’s cost estimates had climbed three-fold and the alternative from the mayor’s campaign was seen as far cheaper.   No response from staff (as delegations cannot directly address staff)  but the mayor was not shy about explaining the facts of political life to the audience: “the election” caused the political will to change, and the old Transit Committee chair was defeated.

The second presenter was the OSTC delegate, who referred to the committee’s research that showed that the ticket and cash fares paid by seniors was the highest in the country.  She also made the point that the half-fares proposal gave seniors more freedom of when to ride.  The mayor replied that free rides, as well as the monthly passes, gave them even more freedom of the financial kind.

The Mayor at this point showed his consternation at this second group lining up against his campaign-tested idea.  “Who do you represent,” he demanded.  She started to answer, but then deferred to me, sitting at a mike near her, “on deck.”  I explained that is was about 10 seniors in the urban and rural parts of the city, plus representatives of 10-12 agencies that service seniors and had a stake in improving transportation for their clients.  I also pointed out that we were part of the venerable Council on Aging of Ottawa.

I followed with the self-assigned task of putting it into a wider context.  Although I know that the die was cast in the pre-meeting negotiations over the wording of motions entered into the record before the delegations were heard, I forged ahead, knowing that at least I had submitted my comments in advance so the councillors could see them before the meeting started, but I knew I would have to ad lib, as they were too long to fit into my five-minute allotment, and I had rethought some points after hearing other points raised.  (It is sad that the four citizen members yet to be named in March or early April, were not a factor, made more significant since none of the councillors  represents the older urban suburban where most of the short-ride, off-peak users live.)

I started out referring to the route optimization process that staff were asking the commission to endorse with the  budget to save almost $18 million a year.  It includes the standard that at least 90 percent of users of peak-hour routes should live within a five-minute walk of the closest stop, compared with a ten-minute-walk of off-peak routes.  Staff ‘optimization’ plan takes the “at least” to mean “no more than”.   In other words, those seniors lucky enough to live close to their closest off-peak service may find it eliminated or rerouted to a street further away.

One councillor asked staff if their optimization changes would double walking distances for seniors, and they said no, even though two of their three examples given eight days earlier for route ‘optimization’ (where more than 90 percent were within a 10-minute walk) were doing just that (route 18 in Overbrook had its ‘kinks’ removed, and route 148 along Pleasant Park in Alta Vista would be elminated, sending users to either Smyth or Kilborn).  In any case, I was referring to the existing standard, not a new one.

I pointed out that OC Transpo’s website shows that the average ride distance is 10 kms an hour.  I suggested that off-peak trips were far shorter, probably around 5 kms, compared to what guessed was about 15 kms for the average peak-hour trip, since commutes are considerably longer than trips to shopping and for recreation, especially in the suburbs, where most “choice” transit riders live: owning both a car and an unlimited-use transit pass.

And yet fares were the same.  I added this injustice to the fact that peak routes offered both higher frequencies and higher average speeds (transitway’s lack of mixed traffic, faster speed limits, and longer distances between stops).  And finally, there was the fact that off-peak trips usually facilitate trips of shorter duration than a full workday, reducing the amount of effort travelers feel the trip is worth.  In sum, off-peak users, are expected to walk twice as far, to a route that run slower and with less frequency, to make trips that have less intrinsic value.  All this for the same cash fare (although a majority of peak users get a discount by using passes).  Not really a fair fare.

I pointed out that the vaunted seniors pass, priced at 40 percent of what the Adult pass costs, did not really constitute a fare reduction but only a recognition that seniors, when the pass was first created, travelled only 40 percent as often in a month and thus would not buy passes unless it was based on a break-even point close to the reality: 17 rides vs. 38 rides a month.  Even with that price adjustment, the passes still don’t overcome a problem that seniors have: our monthly demand for transit varies month-to-month in a non-predictable way — in contrast to what full-time workers have.  How many seniors have bought one for a month that turned out to involve little transit use?

I then tried to explain why the expanded free-rides plan would cost more than staff have predicted.  I suggested that seniors had exceptional flexibility as to when to ride, along with a good nose for savings, thanks to growing up during the Depression and war/post-war periods, and would simply ‘steer’ their use of the system to the 1/3 of the week the mayor’s proposal would make free.  Voila!  OC Transpo would not get any revenue from these people.  And a good number of habitual pass buyers, who would realize that their, soon-to-be $37 pass (a 13.8 % rice increase over two year since ride-free days started) would be devalued by 33% by the 2 1/3 days of free access a week.

I compared it with my compromise: a pure half-fare system — one that dropped the existing Ride-free Wednesdays, which I considered suffering from the same problems as the expansion to Mondays and Fridays — and suggested that OC Transpo would get more revenue without trying to manipulate  seniors times-of-travel — presumably to to fit the agency’s times of demand shortfall.  A senior could get half fares with the mayor’s plan by simply moving half of his or her trips to the free days.  But, once one has caught on to this manipulation, why stop there?

I concluded with the point that seniors have worked a lifetime to earn the freedom from rushing and having to follow schedules (except for taking pills and getting to medical appointments).  We naturally favour the freedom of the half-fare plan to the lack of freedom and contrivance of the having 1/3 of the week offer a ‘free ride.’  What other user group has to watch time of day, and day of week?  I don’t think very many seniors, who are also emphatically tax-payers, believe there is any such thing.  It’s very simple: our trips cost less to provide, so we should be charged less.  The per-trip fare system ignores wide variations in distance and time-of-day/week demand.

Maybe the mayor’s contacts with seniors at shopping malls and assisted-care residences brings him in contact with different seniors than us more ‘active’ seniors.  At the same time, I am willing to concede that we need to expand our membership base, if we want to be able to speak authotatively of the wide range of seniors’ travel needs separate from the mayor.  I for one, am a senior living 75 metres from a main street with stops for 7 bus routes and stores for most conveniences within easy walking distance for me.  Getting to hospitals and big-box stores is what I use the transit system for.  I may believe in aging at home, but I see a clear value in ensuring that that home has plenty of ‘location efficiency” (see www. walkscore.com), specifically a score of 83 out of 100.

 

Suburbanites Running Transit

The scenario implied by the above title is one that I raised in an email with a local Citizen columnist, who raises the same point in his column today.  Ottawa Council recently named the eight councilors who will sit on the body that will make most of the decisions on how transit will run over the next four years.

For the first time in my memory, all Councillors making transit decisions are from suburban wards: Stittsville, Kanata South, Nepean east, Gloucester northwest, two from Orleans, and Barrhaven-Riverside.  The chair represents Hunt Club, the area just inside the Greenbelt in the south.  Although the two mostly-rural wards were not eligible for membership ( because their taxpayers aren’t asked to contribute to the 50% subsidy), the areas with most of the intensification sites, main streets, and pre-automobile neighbourhoods — wards 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, and inner suburban wards 16 & 18 — are missing.   Apparently, since Council mainly uses councilors’  preferences in filling committee seats, the urban-ward councilors simply weren’t that interested.

The columnist, Randall Denley, said that was a problem.  It is a problem that has spurred my decision to offer my own name for consideration as one of the four citizen members (to be named by mid-March).

Even though previous Council committees had better urban-ward representation, transit has been designed for some decades, in my opinion, to primarily meet the suburban voters’ perceived needs.  Previous urban-ward councilors obviously did not see it that way, or weren’t successful ridding transit’s governance of that bias.

Part of the problem is reflected in the language those in the transit ‘biz’ uses.  They divide patrons into two classes: the “choice” are those who own cars and therefore have a choice of whether to drive their car or to ride on transit.   The others are deemed to be “captive,” without cars, and have no choice but to use transit.  Of course, only pressure for improvements from the former group needs to be listened to, as only they have an alternative to shift to.

Actually, in my mind, choice is greater for those who have gained ‘locational efficiency’ by living closer to the centre of the city or at least to the destinations they need to reach.  The central areas also have a better choice in modes: better walking and cycling infrastructure (and safety that comes from greater ‘street presence’), more transit routes over more of the day and week, access to car-sharing, and more available taxis (on most main streets, they can easily be ‘hailed,’ rather than summoned by phone, followed by a wait of indeterminate length).

The “choice” suburbanites, on the other hand, have no choice about owning a car, usually one per driver in the household.  Walking, cycling, carsharing, and taxis are also either non-existent or highly impractical.  And the choice of using transit is not that free.

Suburbanites tend to be willing to use only to commute to a job, and only when: a) the commute occurs in rush-hour when service is frequent, and b) parking at their job is charged for, and c) transit is fast and reliable.  These parameters leave out commuting to a job with odd hours or shift work, jobs located in business parks and activity centres with free parking, or a job that is too close to make the fares for fast service seem worthwhile.  Probably 95% of the suburbanites other trips will be done via driving a personal car.  That requires ownership of a personal car, which means that transit cannot charge more than what gas and parking costs the prospective patron, rather than the larger costs of ownership (insurance, depreciation, registration, and maintenance — let alone ownership chores and home-parking costs).

Urbanites, on the other hand, aim to avoid living far from their job and, if they use transit, it is usually a regular, all-day route, which is not fast.  They also use transit for some or most personal travel outside rush-hours.  If they reverse-commute (work in the suburbs), they find that transit service is bad, and use other modes, including ride-sharing.

The result is really two transit systems: rush-hour service that a) goes on smaller streets, reducing walking in low-density residential areas, and b) has no stops outside the community except at major employment centres and transit stations to other rush-hour routes.  These routes not only do not run at non-rush-hour times, but they travel in only the “peak direction,” running out-of-service between each service run and to and from the garage at the ends of each 2-3-hour shift.

The second system is for those who use transit more extensively over the clock and week.  These ‘milk runs’ in Ottawa (routes #1-18) run along main streets and converge in the centre of the city, specifically Rideau Street at Rideau Centre.  Their frequencies are between 12 and 30 minutes.  The 30-year-old transitway also carries the 80- & 90-series  routes that serve far-suburban arterials that radiate from the city centre, but reach them via a buses-only roads with stops/stations set farther apart, many of them built into suburban shopping malls (Billings Bridge, St. Laurent, Goucester Town Centre, College Square, Orleans Town Centre, Kanata Town Centre, Lincoln Fields, Bayshore, South Keys, and Barrhaven Town Centre) and a few employment centres.

Of those using the all-day/all-week services, they fall into two population groups:  a) youths, who have special routes for their commutes to high schools, but ride regular roues at night and weekends, and b) seniors and stay-at-home moms, who clearly favour traveling in mid-day on weekdays.

The fare structure reflects the division, too.   Those traveling occasional errands, will not have any use for anything except the basic fare, which is $2.50 in tickets, or $3.25 in cash (no change for a $5 bill is offered),  a whopping 75 cents premium for not buying tickets in advance.  Such users don’t need unlimited-use passes because they can’t predict with certainty that they will need at least 38 trips in the following month (the break-even number of trips that a monthly pass is equal to).  Only those commuting to jobs or school can predict that high a level of usage.

If one has children, it is good to know that youngsters up to age 4 pay nothing; those 5-11 pay half-fare, and those older pay full-fare, but have a range of unlimited-use passes at 80% discounts).  Seniors pay full fares, but can save if they expect at the first of a month, to need 17 or more fares, buying the seniors’ unlimited-use pass for a 60% discount.  But they also get to ride free on Wednesday, proposed to extend to Monday and Friday afternoons and evenings. This almost  makes transit free for seniors, who can have the flexibility to ride when they want.

The transit commuter will naturally choose passes, but there are three classes depending on the routes to be used, which reflect more the average speed of travel rather than distance.  There is also a one-day pass, which transforms into a family pass on weekends and holidays, a recognition that service on these days is infrequent and there are many empty seats to fill.  Finally, the transfer is one of the few devices that favour the off-peak, short-trip traveler: they allow unlimited boardings for a 90-minute period, long enough for those going short distances to complete both ends of a trip in one fare.

Poorer service outside rush hours seems to be a good way of keeping the service from appearing too appealing to those suburbanites who buy unlimited-use passes and might otherwise be tempted to use them for other trips.

In summary, urbanites need quite different transit service than suburbanites, thanks to their shorter trips, need to travel at any hour, and residential location close to shops and transit and the higher house and parking costs that characterize urban sectors.

The suburbanite, in contrast, is happy to have a car that he either leaves at home during his work hours to avoid parking costs, or drives on crowded suburban streets to a job with free parking; either way, he like transit (the second group believes that congestion is reduced by his neighbour’s use of it).  The latter wants fast service with  no road congestion or few stops along the way.  They see the premium for ‘location efficiency’ to be less than the cost of driving extra; the idea of not owning a car is not something they see location efficiency making possible, although car-sharing does just that for over 1,700 members (what is has grown to since starting in 2000.

For the proposed upgrade to ‘rapid transit,’ the light-rail plan, the suburbanites get their vision fulfilled — sort of.  They get speed and the comfort of rail service both classes agree on that comfort.  The suburbanites disappointment is that the $2.1 plan will be putting rail only a couple kilometres to the west (and only about half-way to Orleans in the east).  And the tunnels in downtown for three stations, while being close to dense development, will be a 100 feet underground, requiring long rides on escalators.  At least the routes #1-18 will stay on the surface for intra-downtown trips.

If urbanites were to have been allowed to design the next generation transit system, it would have been planned for main streets, like mayoral candidate Clive Doucet’s proposed Carling Avenue line to the west.  The seniors who travl so much along those streets, would love the ride: the smother acceleration and braking, and the sideway movements in and out of bus bays.

Of course, the new citizen commissioners will not form a majority (four of out 12 total), and thus will have a hard time steering the service ‘pendulum’ back to the middle, to a blend of urban and suburban priorities.   It will be up to a nominating committee of three councilor-commissioners to decide if there will be a least one such user on the commission.   It’s rather daunting to think it could be me.