Dodgeville

The Toronto Police issued a press release (thanks to Martino for the link) on Sunday announcing the start of Operation Safe Journey, a week-long blitz against drivers and cyclists who endanger pedestrians. Bravo! But tellingly, the press release also promises to target “pedestrians who fail to obey traffic signals or who fail to yield to traffic.”

If you believe the CityNews take on the crackdown, it’s aimed almost entirely at pedestrians. City’s story typifies the blame-the-victim mentality of the media and the police, stating, “Many of those killed last year were guilty of crossing the street in the worst possible place and at the worst possible time.” Mmm, smells like Rob Ford. Yes, it’s your own damn fault if you venture into the city without a car. You’ve got some nerve, not waiting (and waiting, and waiting…) your turn to cross the street. Don’t you know that streets are for cars?

So as a public service to the Toronto Police, I’m rewriting their press release. This is how it should read:

In 2006, there were 57 traffic fatalities in the City of Toronto. Thirty were pedestrians, with one−third of them over 65. In contrast, 38 people were killed by guns in the City of Toronto in the same period.

These were tragedies that need not have occurred.

As members of our society and as road users, whether as pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists, we share a responsibility for preventing these tragedies.

Motorists must exercise more caution when manoeuvring their 2-tonne vehicles around the city, and remember that pedestrians don’t have crumple zones, air bags, or seat belts to keep them safe in collisions. In fact, in your haste to be the last car turning through the advanced green a full 5 seconds after it stopped flashing, or make that right turn without looking where you’re going, or zip past the bus stopped in front of the crosswalk, you’re putting pedestrians’ lives at risk. Oh, and your premiums may go up a little after your insurance company pays a few thousand dollars to scrape a dead pedestrian out of your grill.

Being in a car does not automatically give you the right of way. Shaving a few seconds off your mad cross-town dash isn’t a good enough reason to endanger someone’s life. Just because a pedestrian isn’t in a car doesn’t mean that she isn’t in as much of a rush as you are to get to where she’s going.

Pedestrians should remember that many motorists don’t see you unless you’re inside a shiny metal box on four wheels. Many of those that do see you consider you to be a nuisance, serving no purpose but to delay them on their appointed rounds. The motorists who do treat you with the respect you deserve risk being rear-ended by all of the other motorists. Please look both ways before you cross the street.

On Monday, March 19, 2007, the Toronto Police Service will embark on a one−week education and enforcement campaign entitled “Operation Safe Journey”. This campaign will target motorists whose aggressive driving habits endanger the safety of pedestrians.

And next week, we’ll be running Operation Safe Shootings, a blitz targetting people who get shot. It’s their own fault, you know.

Of course, what they really wanted to write probably looks something more like this:

Hey Pedestrians! Get outta the way!

Note for the argumentative: I am a motorist, cyclist, and pedestrian, though not necessarily in that order. Of the three groups, motorists have the largest burden to act responsibly because of the amount of damage they can inflict on the other two groups when something goes wrong. Yes, there are irresponsible cyclists, and irresponsible pedestrians, but let’s be honest about where the responsibility lies.

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In a story last week, The Fixer touched on one of my pet peeves: pedestrian signals at intersections that don’t change with the traffic signal unless you press the button. Now I understand that many signals in the city won’t change unless a vehicle is waiting or a pedestrian presses the button. That’s not what’s at issue. The problem here is that when a vehicle is present and causes the light to change, the pedestrian signal doesn’t change to “walk” unless a pedestrian also presses the button. The reverse is not true: if the signal changes in response to a pedestrian pressing the button, both the traffic and pedestrian lights change.

So why not always switch the pedestrian signal with the main traffic signal? Toronto Transportation Services calls these “Semi-Actuated Type 2″ (SA2) signals and gives this explanation in their pedestrian FAQ:

Why do some signals, which have pedestrian displays, show a “Don’t Walk” indication even when the signal is green for the side-street (minor road)?
This situation occurs when a vehicle has been detected on the side-street and no pedestrian has pushed the button. This only can occur at locations where the City’s Transportation Staff has installed a Semi-Actuated “Type 2″ (SA2) intersection. With this type of operation, a pedestrian must push one of the pedestrian push buttons to receive a “Walk” signal. When a button is pushed, a pedestrian will receive a “Walk” signal with sufficient time to cross the major road. If a button is not pressed and the traffic control signals respond to a vehicle only, a green signal will be displayed along with a “Don’t Walk” indication for pedestrians. The length of this green signal could be considerably shorter than the required walk time for a pedestrian because the length of the green signal is variable, based on the vehicle demand only (as the pedestrian push button was not pressed).

We use this type of operation to maximize the efficiency of the intersection. It serves to minimize delay for the relatively heavier volume of traffic on the major road.

It is the City’s practice to always install pedestrian information signs, which describe this operation at these types of intersections.

“So what’s the big deal?” you ask? Just press the button, right? Well, it’s not always that simple. First, pedestrians don’t always arrive at an intersection in time to press the button. If you’re walking up to an intersection and don’t reach the button before the light changes, you’re stuck waiting for the next cycle. Well, most people aren’t willing to wait and will simply walk across with the green light, even though they’re facing the “don’t walk” hand.

This behaviour raises at least two safety problems. First and foremost, the immediate safety of the pedestrian is at stake. Many drivers, seeing the “don’t walk” pedestrian signal, will simply power ahead with a left or right turn, completely ignoring any pedestrians that may be crossing at the time. I’ve seen this happen many times at my local SA2-signalled intersection.

The second, more insidious, effect of these signals is that they train pedestrians to ignore pedestrian signals. Most pedestrians in Toronto know by now that if they’re looking at a “don’t walk” signal but road traffic travelling in the same direction has a green light, it’s okay to walk across and ignore the big red hand. Unfortunately, this isn’t always true: pedestrian walk signals at many three phase intersections are active for only one phase, and crossing at any other time is a genuine hazard. It can be difficult for a pedestrian to tell whether a “don’t walk” signal is “legitimate” or not.

It’s one thing to bellyache about a problem, and quite another to propose reasonable alternatives. So here are two easy solutions:

1. Allow a pedestrian to light up the walk signal by pressing the button after the traffic light has changed to green. Yes, this will extend the cycle by a few seconds, but it will greatly enhance safety. And it will only slow the cycle if a pedestrian is actually present. I noticed on a trip there last summer that many signals in San Francisco behaved like this.
2. Failing that, just program the SA2 signals to always flip the pedestrian signal along with the main signal and forget about the few seconds potentially saved by shortening the cycle for vehicles only. The efficiency lost will be more than offset by the elimination of confusion for both motorists and pedestrians.

Above all, Transportation Services must remember than pedestrians are traffic too. Just because we’re walking doesn’t mean that we aren’t in just as big a rush to get from A to B as someone in a car.

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I just finished watching the worst kind of call-in show, CityOnLine on Citytv. Call-in shows in general provide somewhat questionable entertainment, and often present such a skewed perception of reality that they are even more questionable as sources of information. Today’s show about imposing a downtown congestion charge on vehicles like London’s was no exception.

The impetus for the show seemed to be a story in today’s Star that Councillor Brian Ashton is going to London to get more information about the effects (both good and bad) the charge has had on that city. There was no indication in the story that Toronto would (or could) implement a similar toll any time in the near future, nor how high a potential Toronto toll would be — Ashton is just gathering information on the subject, not drafting a by-law.

Of course, the show’s host, Ann Rohmer, directed the discussion throughout the half-hour as though council was already pressing ahead with this, and that the toll would be $20/day. She and her guest, Faye Lyons of the CAA never really suggested any possibility that a Toronto charge could be lower than that (or higher!) or even work entirely differently from London’s flat rate once-a-day charge. Naturally, our congestion charge would have to be at least as high as London’s if we’re going to be considered a World Class City.

The callers, predictably, were dead-set against the idea. Most (though not all) callers were from outside Toronto and generally echoed two themes: 1) $20/day was way too expensive, and 2) they hated coming into the city because it was so expensive, too difficult to find parking, and too frustrating to get anywhere because traffic was so bad. None of the callers seemed to make the mental connection between their complaints about traffic and the very problem that the city needs to address.

Also predictably, Lyons was against the toll too. Imagine that, the Canadian Automobile Association against something that may affect their free-wheeling ways. Shocking! While I don’t fault Lyons for presenting her organization’s point of view, I do fault Citytv for not having someone with an opposing view on the panel. And that’s the real prolem with call-in shows: too often they have someone advocating one half of a contentious debate with no one there to rebut them. And let’s face it, the call-in demographic isn’t exactly known for its non-knee-jerkability.

It’s precisely this kind of simple-minded, lopsided presentation that poisons debates and stifles political will to do anything. It becomes so fixed in people’s minds that “wacko proposal X” == “end of civilization as we know it” that politicians aren’t even willing to discuss anything that could even be remotely interpreted as addressing the problem in a useful way. Instead, we end up with half-measures and platitudes that end up solving nothing.

I’m willing to bet that tomorrow’s Toronto Sun front page and/or main editorial will rail against this “cash grab” by Toronto’s “car-hating” council, further eroding the debate among people who don’t take the time to think that their actions may have consequences. It’s entirely possible for intelligent people to disagree, and I respect alternative viewpoints on virtually any issue, but I object to debate by shouting and fear-mongering, which is what proponents of business as usual frequently resort to. To be fair, proponents of change also frequently resort to FUD and name-calling, invoking the end of the world and referring to opponents as “dinosaurs” or worse.

Back to the show. One caller from Oshawa said that he was last in the city to see the Lion King (which closed over three years ago) and another $20 on top of his $350 theatre excursion would keep him from visiting the city as often. I’m not sure how much more infrequent his visits could get. Another complained it was already so expensive to drive in from Mississauga, find parking on King Street, take a cab to the Hummingbird Centre, watch a show, cab back to the parking lot, and drive back to Mississauga. Could I suggest to both of these callers that it would be better, for both their wallets and the city, if they parked their cars at a suburban GO lot and took the train into the city?

I can live with the obvious bias toward a particular viewpoint built into today’s show, but it was made almost laughable when Rohmer asked Lyons to expound the intricacies of such topics as tax impacts on businesses, quality of life for condo owners, the London economy, Toronto’s international reputation, and doctors’ incomes. Naturally, as a PR person for an automobile association, she was fully qualified to answer these questions as the expert witness of the half hour.

In discussing the potential impact of a London-like toll, both Rohmer and Lyons either didn’t say or didn’t know that London’s toll is 90% reduced for people who live within the congestion zone. This would have been an important point to discuss during the hand-wringing about the impact of a charge on people who live within the zone. But hey, why place information and reason in the way of the spitting-mad fury of callers? It’s about good TV. Entertainment. And a reasoned debate is not good TV.

Anyway, when they totalled up the calls at the end of the show, about 1300 of 1400 poll respondents said they wouldn’t pay $20/day to drive into downtown. Which is kind of the point behind a congestion charge, isn’t it?

Citytv’s mangling of the debate aside, a congestion charge does present an interesting problem for Toronto. Unlike London, we don’t currently have the transit infrastructure to handle an increased load of commuters. GO and the subway are pretty much at capacity during peak hours and we don’t have enough streetcars and buses to significantly increase capacity there either.

A congestion charge could help fund new transit expenditures, but we’d need to have the increased service in place before we impose a toll so that people will have a real choice about how to get into the city. Unfortunately, I don’t think that our esteemed council would be willing to make a real investment in transit without the revenue to pay for it up front. Toronto council doesn’t seem to subscribe to the belief that you have to spend money to make money. A more appropriate tagline for our council would be, “you have to spend money to spend money, and spending money is not allowed.” In short, there’s probably no political will within Toronto to allow a congestion charge to work properly. Hell, there isn’t even enough political will to paint a few bike lanes on the road.

But what if somehow, the political will emerges? How should the toll be implemented? I think it’s clear that a flat rate of $20/day is way too high for Toronto. World-class aspirations aside, Toronto is not London. It’s also unfair to charge someone who pops downtown for ten minutes to pick up a radio the same amount as a courier who drives around the core all day long. The Sunday Star had a good article about a local company that has developed an alternative to a flat rate system like London’s. It can work more like the hated but well used and very profitable 407 electronic toll highway, with charges based on distance driven and time spent in the congestion zone. It would provide a fairer distribution of the cost than a simple flat rate does.

There’s also the question of what exactly constitutes “downtown” or “the core” of the city, where the charge would apply. At a block away from Broadview & Danforth, I consider myself to live outside the core, in the East End. But virtually everyone I know who lives north of Lawrence or east of Victoria Park says that I live downtown, and I’ve stopped correcting them. People clearly have different ideas of where “downtown” stops in this city. Most people in my neighbourhood would bristle at the suggestions that we live downtown and that we should be within the congestion zone. But Danforth Ave and its commuting alternatives are at least as gridlocked as any streets further downtown and would benefit immensely from better traffic management. I, for one, think that my area should be included in the zone.

So if all the pieces fall into place and Toronto implements a congestion charge, how should it happen? Off the top of my head, I think it should be a multi-phase process over the course of two or three years:

1. Decide clearly whether you expect this measure to be a revenue-generating or quality-of-life issue. It should be the latter. In fact, the goal should be to collect as little money from as few drivers as possible while tolls direct the majority of people onto transit, foot, or bike.
2. Spend real money to quickly build up surface transit, GO, and the subway (in that order) to handle increased passenger loads. In particular, the province should start running GO in both directions on all lines all day long. It may be inefficient at first, but it’s really the only way to build sustainable demand on these lines.
3. Implement and enforce transit priority all day long on all downtown surface routes. If this means delaying left-turning cars on Spadina or hiring more police officers to hand out tickets to drivers flouting the Bay or King transit lanes, so be it.
4. Implement tolls in the city centre first. Give drivers a choice of buying a transponder to get a more fine-grained charge based on their actual time/distance in the zone or paying a higher daily flat rate whenever they cross into the zone. This would accommodate both daily and infrequent visitors.
5. Expand the toll zone section by section, with fees set appropriately for each area.
6. Look into demand pricing — set a higher toll during peak hours and lower it when demand for road space isn’t as high.
7. Re-evaluate the program and adjust it as necessary.

I think that would give us a good start down the road to a sustainable city. With any luck, increased reliance of more people on the TTC and GO will create the political will to spend more money on those services. And that’s got to be a good thing.

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