The incredible awareness of Durham Chair Roger Anderson

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Pond and wind turbine in Pickering

In a rare sign of semi-consciousness, the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority announced yesterday a $100 million region-wide initiative that included things like GO Transit improvements, bike lockers, bike racks on all local buses, and more. Naturally, none of this information appears yet on the GTTA’s “temporary” web site, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Oh, and they don’t have any funding for this vision, either. Still, it seems that a faint pulse yet beats in the Authority’s barely-warm body.

In reaction, Roger Anderson—Chair of Durham Region and past president of the Association of Municpalities of Ontario—is quoted in today’s Star as saying, “I understand the quick-win scenario, but if you’ve got $1.8 million to spend I think you can find something better to spend it on than bike racks.”

Maybe Chairman Anderson isn’t aware that his region is home to one of the best urban-parkland rides in the GTA in the form of the Pickering portion of the Waterfront Trail (the subject of an upcoming post on this site), including the grandly-named Millennium Square, where the picture at the top of this post was taken.

Maybe he’s not aware that Durham Council passed a resolution in 2004 to establish a regional Bicycle Plan, declaring in a subsequent newsletter that:

Cycling is a viable mode of transportation, which provides environmental, health and economic benefits. As a transportation alternative, particularly for short distance trips, cycling is environmentally friendly, promotes a more active lifestyle, requires less infrastructure than the automobile, and compliments the use of transit.

Maybe he’s not aware that the resulting study published in 2005 noted that, “There is some opportunity to increase “Bike-n-ride” behaviour by providing cycling-friendly public transit measures such as safe and secure bike parking and bike racks on buses.”

Maybe he’s not aware that some adults use bicycles for both recreation and transportation, even in Durham. Tellingly, a search for “bicycle” on Durham’s web site turns up a lot of links about kids (“Children like to […] try to balance on a 2-wheel bicycle”) and helmets (“Get into the helmet habit”), but nothing about bike lanes or other facilities other than the above-mentioned newsletter and study.

Maybe he’s not aware that he’s a dinosaur.

Maybe he’s just not aware.

Inspiration in a soft solid

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Take the Risk

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I opened up my first package of Degree anti-perspirant, but I sure wasn’t expecting a motivational message. It’s been four days since I let my underarms take the risk and the only thing they’re doing so far is sweating a bit more than usual.

Risa, who’s a long-time Degree user, assures me that there are no such messages on the women’s product. Does Unilever think that men need more motivation than women, or just that we’ll buy any crazy thing that talks to us in the morning? Thanks, I think I will take the risk and buy a different brand next month. Something that doesn’t bring Successories to mind.

Bike Train II: The long way home

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View north along the Welland Canal

Well, I did it. As I’d threatened to do earlier this year, and just four weeks after reiterating my vow, I rode back home to Toronto after taking the Bike Train to Niagara Falls.

As on my previous Bike Train adventure with Risa, the ride to Niagara was a joy. We were a little late leaving Union Station and about 45 minutes late arriving at Niagara Falls, but it was still better than driving. Especially when I looked out the window between naps and saw the stop-and-go traffic on the QEW.

From my perspective as a two-time rider, the Bike Train has been a resounding success. VIA Rail and the other partners are seriously stupid if they don’t expand the program next year, running more frequently and to more destinations. And don’t make Bike Train founder Justin Lafontaine load and unload the bikes at Niagara Falls any more!

Ride Details

I’d originally planned to ride from the Niagara Falls train station to Niagara-on-the-Lake and follow the Waterfront Trail from the very beginning back to Toronto. But I decided earlier this week to cycle west to the Welland Canal and ride down the Welland Canal Trail to Port Weller before continuing along the Waterfront Trail to Toronto. Taking this road less travelled taught me three things:

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Wildlife sightings in the Don

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Great Blue Heron stretching in the sun

It’s amazing what you can see during a lunchtime walk. I’m going to exercise my somewhat questionable bird-identifying skills again and proclaim this one to be a young Great Blue Heron. He stood on this rock in the middle of the East Don River in the Charles Sauriol Conservation Reserve for at least five minutes before starting his hunt for food nearby. More remarkable than this single bird though were the two deer that had been standing right beside him in the river. Naturally, both deer fled before I was able to get a clear picture. If you squint you can see one deer and the heron (both circled) in the shot below.

A Great Blue Heron and a deer face off in the Don River

Is the Taste of the Danforth in decline?

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I wrote an article on Monday for Torontoist about this past weekend’s Taste of the Danforth street festival. The main thrust of the story was that the Taste seems to have lost its focus, becoming just another corporate branding orgy like every other. Some of the comments following my post (and also after BlogTO‘s Taste wrap-up) are illuminating, with the vast majority expressing disappointment with the event. While hardly a scientific poll, it’s the kind of thing that should worry the organizers.

Even the people who half-heartedly defended the festival couldn’t come up with much more than that the event was “pretty meh” and probably “less corpo than the Beer Festival.” These ringing endorsements would look wonderful on next year’s promotional posters. “Taste of the Danforth: We’re slightly less corpo than the other branding orgy in town this weekend.” Or “Taste of the Danforth: Toronto’s meh-est street festival.”

So how does a festival which lives primarily by word of mouth deal with such near-universal bad reviews? If the people moved to comment online at Torontoist, BlogTO, and Chowhound are any indication, returning visitors will be fewer and farther between in future years.

I walked the festival twice this weekend and noticed two things: the crowds, while still huge, were noticeably thinner than last year and the year before; and many more people were expressing their disappointment at the supposed bargain prices ($5 for lemonade?), the crowds, and the general atmosphere. The task of navigating the huge event has become an ordeal to be endured, rather than an experience to be relished.

I was especially taken aback by the fact that the best gyros restaurant on the strip was serving up noticeably inferior product at their booth, presumably because it was outsourced for the event. Their normal delicious gyros was available in the virtually empty restaurant a few steps away. Even the merchants seem to be turning their back on the Taste.

All of the anecdotal evidence above suggests that the Taste of the Danforth is already in decline. There are basically two options for the future: the festival can continue down the current path for a few more years, milking its reputation for every last dollar until the whole thing inevitably implodes (can it be long before they start asking for financial support from the City?); or they can attempt to re-invent the Taste as something that people will actually enjoy once again.

My first suggestion would be to dump some of the high-priced corporate tents and beer gardens in the middle of the street and put in some chairs. People need to sit.

Lower Don trail reopens this weekend

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Cyclists rejoice! One of Toronto’s long-lost cycling routes is resurfacing this weekend when the Lower Don path south of Queen St. will reopen after 16 months of construction. Those attending the official ceremonies on Saturday morning should expect dignitaries, celebrities, balloons, a marching band, and…oh, wait a second. It turns out that for the reopening of a major bike and pedestrian path, all we get is some burly guy in an orange safety vest and a hard hat pushing aside a portable barrier. But the lack of an official event shouldn’t prevent cyclists from clinking their water bottles together in celebration.

Although the path may continue to look like a bit of a moonscape until landscaping is completed later this year or next, it’s already a huge improvement over what was there when construction began. The most visible upgrade for pedestrians and cyclists will be the elimination of the dingy, dangerous metal-grate underpass that seemed barely a couple of centimetres above the river most days. The ominous steel trap with bike-eating gates at both ends has been replaced by an at-grade underpass that can only feel palatial by comparison.

The bike path improvements are part of a much larger project that includes flood protection for downtown, access to a new park, and improved habitat for the three-headed fish that make their homes in the Don. You can get an appreciation for the size of the project from some of the pictures posted on Don Watcher. Many cyclists (myself included) weren’t happy to lose this important path for over a year, but the improvements may be worth the wait.

As for the marching band, there may be some kind of ceremony later this year after the pathway is landscaped. There will almost certainly be a media event when Don River Park opens on the other side of the tracks. That’s scheduled for sometime in 2008, but I can’t see it happening on time.

See Toronto Region Conservation‘s latest Lower West Don Newsletter (PDF) for more information about the flood remediation project. Don Watcher, who recently celebrated his second blogiversary, has done the most extensive reporting on the construction progress that I’ve seen.

A version of this article appeared on Torontoist.

Chernobylesque Part 2

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A baseball player is dwarfed by the remnants of Lakeview

Last month’s foray into a Chernobylesque landscape came courtesy of the Portlands Energy Centre near the Leslie Street Spit. Today’s comes from a visit on Saturday to the demolished Lakeview Generating Station in Mississauga, where baseball games in the nearby Lakeview Park are conducted in front of a rather surreal backdrop. Business as usual on one side of the chainlink fence, chaos and destruction on the other.

The piles of rubble from the demolition still loom over everything else within sight, completely dominating the landscape every bit as much as the station did when it was still standing. I guess the cleanup is going to take a while yet.

I look forward to the day when the PEC looks like this. Mississaugans, many of whom waited years to see Lakeview look like this, may soon be looking forward to the day when Lakeview’s rumoured replacement is demolished too.

Memories of the monorail

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The Toronto Zoo monorail’s abandoned Canadian Domain station

For people of a certain age, memories of the Toronto Zoo begin with riding the old monorail. Only it wasn’t the old monorail back then—it was the super-futuristic monorail. The line was abandoned following a 1994 accident that injured about 30 people, and the train’s power supply rails and portions of the guideway were removed a few years later. But if you know where to look, most of the route remains visible as it snakes through the grounds of the zoo.

The abandoned station above is in the Canadian Domain, midway between the grizzlies and the enormous bison enclosure. The guideway remains intact under all that foliage at the edge of the platform even though the vegetation gains ground every year. Other sections are still in pristine condition, almost as if the next train is only minutes away. Watching the monorail be consumed by nature is a small preview of what the world would be like without us.

The Toronto Zoo monorail guideway disappears into the woods

Take a Google Maps tour of the monorail starting here. The train ran on the track in the center of the map curving down to the right. You can trace the remnants of the route three-quarters of the way around the zoo before it finally peters out, passing by two abandoned but still-standing stations along the way. A third remains in service near the main entrance, used for the monorail’s rather pedestrian replacement, the Zoomobile.

The really surprising thing about following the train’s route in Google Maps is just how much of it goes through what are still completely undeveloped parts of the zoo in the southern portion of the grounds. It’s easy to forget just how enormous the zoo is—at 710 acres, it’s seven times the size of the San Diego Zoo. The monorail used to be the only way to see to the bison, which are kept in an enclosure that itself is probably larger than many zoos.

In addition to visiting the Canadian Domain station in person, you can catch a glimpse of the other lost station if you take the Zoomobile ride: look down and to the right as you cross over a bridge after the Americas Zoomobile stop. Pay attention transit fans, this is what the Sheppard subway could look like after sitting unused for a few years.

Oh, and of course, an abandoned monorail isn’t the only thing to see at the zoo; the animals are worth a trip too.

A version of this article appeared on Torontoist.

Suzuki and a half

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Suzuki and a half

Unfortunately, this was the best picture we got of this litte curiosity zipping along the westbound 401 this morning. It’s an old Suzuki (Swift, I believe) pulling the rear portion of a similar car that has been chopped in half and converted into a cargo trailer. The writing on the back of the trailer/half-car reads “Suzuki and a half.” Very impressive work.