LETTERS

THE ROAD RULES

Did you know that there were over 400 pedestrians and cyclists that were injured in accidents with cars last year? Drivers, bikers and walkers should obey the rules of the road to make sure that everyone stays safe. Hamilton's VISION 2020 Web Site: "Random Sustainable Thought"

It takes a couple of good snowfalls to uncover Hamilton's allegiances. The New City is good for cars, bad for pedestrians.

You've seen the proof: parents forced to push strollers in traffic because sidewalks are impassable. Imagine what risk calculations the elderly man made before deciding he is safer walking on the road than on the icy, snow covered sidewalk.

These daring acts of desperation are facts of life for people walking in a winter-world of cars.

The lack of attention to pedestrian concerns during the winter has only added to an ongoing insult that has become a crisis in slow motion. Between 1986 and 1998, 6,760 pedestrians and cyclists were injured by cars and 120 killed (1998 H/W Collision Report). Current city policy regarding snow removal (or lack thereof) from sidewalks guarantees more avoidable injury and death.

The politicians' refrain that it is "up to individual owners to shovel" the sidewalk in front of their residences or place of business is unfortunately no answer. This piecemeal method yields little in actual results. Imagine the uproar if this method was applied to roads. Yet this is fobbed on to pedestrians as a response to complaints.

Remember too, that the choice to trudge through snow and ice carrying bags of groceries isn't always a choice: not everyone owns an automobile to make the trip to the supermarket. Those raised with cars might never know the amount of human-powered energy it takes to get from point a to point b and back without the aid of 2000 pounds of metal and rubber. Know that for some, a big snowfall might very well translate into being stranded at home for days.

Pedestrian rights must be upheld as essential to the health of the city. In case you hadn't heard, car addiction is killing the planet by burning up fossil fuels and contributing to global climate change, not to mention carnage on the highways. Cars also contribute to poor air quality which results in an estimated 90 to 321 premature deaths per year in Hamilton-Wentworth with a further 300 people hospitalized (http://www.airquality.hamilton.on.ca/health.html). In other words: the city needs to encourage pedestrians.

City workers do a great job clearing the roads. They could do a great job on sidewalks. It comes down to priorities: if the City chooses to, they could hire people to do the job of ploughing sidewalks along important routes. It is the only way to ensure accountability and get the job done.

Maybe the New City should focus on re-reading "VISION 2020- The Sustainable Region," the region's blueprint for a sustainable future, accepted by the New City in December.

Sadly, all indicators regarding transportation reveal a steady slide in non-automotive transportation use since the VISION was adopted.

The goals of VISION 2020 regarding transportation are "To develop an integrated sustainable transportation system for people, goods and services which is environmentally friendly, affordable, efficient, convenient, safe and accessible..[and] to encourage a shift in personal lifestyle and behaviour towards transportation choices that enhance personal health and fitness, save money, and have the lowest environmental cost."

Nothing could be more VISION 2020 than pedestrians doing their thing year round.

Pushing pregnant moms into snow-banks where there should be sidewalks does not a happy future make.

Clearly, you have to walk the talk.

VISION 2020

Getting Around

An integrated public transportation system serves the entire region in an affordable, efficient, and accessible way. Clean forms of transportation predominate. Public streets are designed and managed (including signals and regulations) to accommodate comfortably and safely, public transit, cyclists, pedestrians and automobiles as complementary forms of transportation. The integrated transportation system gives access to all basic needs. Public transit provides all citizens with easy access to activity areas, as well as to neighbouring communities and cities via convenient and frequent inter-urban transit. Most people can walk or cycle to work because jobs and housing are near one another. Major roads have minimal noise and pollution impacts on adjacent lands, and follow routes that cause little damage to the natural and human environment.

Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko
January 23, 2001

THE STRANGE AND WONDEROUS TRAVELS OF Dr. GOTTNO CARR, ESQ

…During the third month of my travels I came to a place that had the most rude and dangerous system of transportation imaginable.

Each compartment had two couches, enough to seat 5 or 6 people, but generally they contained only one person and if I attempted to gain entry through a customary signal indicating a ride was required, rarely did I meet with anything but contemptuous glares, let alone a ride.

The cost for this system was (in our money) equivalent to over $7,000 a year.

It soon became apparent that each car was operated independently of the one before of behind it, and they often collided with each other: indeed, in the eight years my hosts had lived in the city, there had been 289 people killed and over 34,000 injured by this insane system of conveyance.

It was no wonder when I discovered that each lone passenger was responsible for steering the car, and drivers often could be seen talking on portable phones, smoking cigarettes, drinking or eating while operating the vehicle, and I am told, some even drank alcohol before going on the job.

I was incredulous, still, when my hosts explained that not only were they dangerous contraptions, but they polluted the air so badly as to damage the lungs of their children and elderly, alter weather patterns and increase the temperature on the planet!

Unlike our trains, these vehicles were not fixed to a railway, but skittered and moved crazily over a flat surface sometimes covered in snow and ice so as to make transportation almost impossible.

And when I needed to get to a morning appointment, it seems that the planners have put all these deadly vehicles on the same road at the same time.

And rather than look to alternatives (I explained our system of trains and buses to them, to no avail it seems: never had I received back so many blank stares) the inhabitants tenaciously held to their belief that this was the best and only way to get around!

I need not convince you further of the horrific state of affairs here; I shall leave for a more suitable place as soon as I can save up to buy my transportation.

rk

NEW CITY BENEFITS SAME OLD GROUP

Hamilton Spectator FORUM, Thursday, August 16, 2001

We were promised drastic change in spending and priorities. We got more of the same -- taxpayers footing the bill for urban sprawl.

By TOM MUIR

As an observant spectator of the local political scene, I am interested in how the demands for "drastic change", made by the Spectator and business interests during the recent municipal election in Hamilton, are being met. My interest has been piqued by recent Spectator editorials praising City Council for its first budget, and Mayor Wade for his leadership. However, the Spectator did not provide any critical budget analysis, or other information, as evidence to support their praise.

Based on this lack, and a few facts, I beg to offer another report card. All residents of the New City should be keenly interested in seeing that drastic changes are being made in spending patterns, taxpayer costs, development priorities, and fairness. This is because it's your money that's being spent, and your future that's being mortgaged.

Let's start with a little history. We can only see if things have changed if we know what they were in the past.

The old Region of Hamilton-Wentworth was always a big spender, and consequently has high taxes to match. Consider:

How did Hamilton spend its money? For decades, a great deal of money has been spent on roadways, and to subsidize urban sprawl and developers.

These are some of the past practices that have nailed taxpayers to the wall, but what do we see now? I'm afraid that these spending practices continue in a variety of forms, and the future looks even worse!

These financial burdens - all buried in the taxes - are noted in the budget as part of repeated warnings about the fiscal pressures severely limiting the City's ability to deal with emerging issues and risks, and giving no affordable scope to introduce new programs and capital projects.

There exists an "unaffordable" capital funding shortfall in 2001 of about $63 million. The shortfall from 2001 to 2010 is $305 million.

So faced with this against the wall situation, can we see the New City Council make any change at all in these practices, not just drastic change? Sorry! Almost none of the roadway projects were deferred except at the last minute. The budget debate shows no scrutiny of these projects, despite the appearance of items that don't appear essential or look like slush funds. For example:

In contrast, there is no money for:

As well, Restore the Core took a big cut, as did the parking subsidy for downtown. The budget documents also reject funding requests from the Regional Cancer Centre, St. Joseph's Hospital and Hamilton's public hospitals. The reason given is lack of money.

The budget debate had barely started when the Federal court decision that the Red Hill expressway can be built without a federal environmental assessment was announced. The Spectator stories reported the following comments.

"A great day for Hamilton and the future" says Mayor Wade; "fabulous" says the airport operator (despite the fact that the Red Hill portion of the expressway doesn't go anywhere near the airport!); the City "must find the money" says the Chamber of Commerce, to which Mayor Wade replies, "we will find a way". Instant money for road construction! What happened to the fiscal crisis?

We must remember that Mayor Wade was the Chairman of the Transportation Services Committee of the former Region for about 15 years and as such is directly responsible for the big hole taxpayers are in, and which will be dug deeper for the foreseeable future paying for roadways he supports no matter what the cost.

The Red Hill route will cost more than $300 million including debt costs, of which 83% falls on the taxpayer. The budget indicates that these annual debt charges amount to an almost 5% tax increase. Staff warn that this extra debt will be of concern to our credit rating agencies.

The City's budget director says the expressway has really taxed the community and that there is no debt capacity left. The City's debt is now $200 million and is forecast to increase to more than $400 million. the predictable shortfall in the cost share assigned to developers, and the long run costs of operation and maintenance will be more millions.

But the Mayor and some Council members say that this is okay, right?

Hello? This is drastic change?

Other recent actions confirm that nothing has changed around here. The previous regional Council approved an expansion of the urban boundary, without any study, involving untold cost to service, and against the advice of staff. This decision benefited one or two developers in a big way just before the election. It also continues the policy of encouraging urban sprawl at the expense of the downtown and at great cost in roads and other infrastructure.

Subsequently, the New City Council voted $250,000 to hire outside consultants to defend the decision at an OMB appeal, because their own staff were summonsed to testify to the advice they gave, and against the City decision.

Add in one final insult. The water and sewer budget, financed by water rates which are just another form of tax, is not on the table at the same time. These rates were recently increased by 15%, and more similar increases are in store for the foreseeable future, in large part to make up for the Council spending spree on roads and Freeways financed by raiding the capital dollars needed to maintain the water and sewer infrastructure.

A similar question remains today - does it really make sense to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on yet another roadway when you don't have resources to provide and maintain basic community services, and to save the downtown? The Mayor thinks so, as do some other Council members. Don't they know or care that paved roadways in southern Ontario went from 7000 km. in 1935 to more than 35,000 km. in 1995, and all we have achieved is gridlock?

It is infuriating that none of the big money decisions ever surface for the budget discussion. Instead, we have debates that leave the public to quibble about the crumbs. Whether we should charge more for hockey, raise transit fares, increase parking fines, close libraries and swimming pools, raise the cost to seniors, increase user fees, reduce services, cut road salt use, and so on.

All the big decisions, the ones that continue the same development path we've been on for 30 years, financed with a great yoke of debt and taxes placed on the community, have already been made. These remain unchallenged at the Council table, which instead debates the peanuts.

I can only conclude from these facts that while we do have a New City, New Council, New Mayor, and New Budget, nothing has really changed. Roadways, subsidies, debt, and decisions, that all benefit a few local developers, and promote urban sprawl, are still what's nailing this communities' economic coffin tightly shut. Tom Muir is an economist who lives in Burlington, but grew up in the Hamilton east end. He is a volunteer member of the Burlington and Halton development charges advisory committees.

LET'S CYCLE INTO THE FUTURE

By RANDY KAY

Look around. Can you imagine a city street without cars? It's not easy given the design of North American cities built to serve automobiles, where people no longer walk but drive everywhere, where a suburban home's most prominent room is the garage.

With cars prying into our lives more and more it seems hard to picture a place where children move freely, where street life is quiet and open for interaction, where people go to meet, eat and play in a downtown, where cyclists are accepted as an integral part of the transportation mix, where mass transit is used by a majority of people.

As a society we have stopped thinking of streets as interesting places to be. We have learned, as a result of traffic design, that streets are for moving privately owned vehicles as efficiently as possible from a to b. As a result, we get ugly, unliveable downtowns, lots of smog, noise, and far too many deaths and injuries.

But there are glimpses of a better way.

Car Free Day, an annual celebration of the potential for a safer, cleaner and more liveable world is one such glimmer of the possible.

Cities in Europe have been celebrating Car Free Day since September 22, 1999 when 66 French towns, 92 Italian towns and the canton of Geneva came together to coordinate the first Car Free Day. Since then, participation in Car Free Days has grown to include over 1000 cities in 33 countries.

This year Car Free Day coasts in on Sunday September 22 in Hamilton.

Transportation for Liveable Cities (TLC) has been pushing car free day into traffic for the last two years in Hamilton.

An afternoon rush hour parade of roller-bladers, cyclists, wheelchair users, and pedestrians followed by a parking meter party on King Street (CFD 2000); a sidewalk clinic at King and MacNab for people seeking to go car-free or car-light and a locally produced video about Car Free Hamilton shown at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (CFD 2001).

This year people looking to escape the car-trap they are in will celebrate Car Free Day 2002 by temporarily reclaiming street space on King William Street, between James and John, beginning at 4:00 pm.

There will be drumming by Luna Tico drummers and Drum Call!, live music from Steve Sinnicks; DJ Skywok with DMS and Jesse Miller spinning techno and house, and the friendly bike mechanics from Recycle Cycles spinning your wheels in a Free Bike Clinic. Also on hand: children chalk drawing, a free speech video corner and lots of fun.

While there, let your imagination roll down streets where music flows, where concrete is transformed to green grass, where quiet outdoor chess games replace grease and oil stained parking spaces, where new statues and fountains rise, where people rest in former parking lots now treed parkettes, where café dwellers have front row seats for a parade of diverse and unexpected street life void of revving engines, squealing tires and clouds of exhaust.

In an invigorated, liveable downtown, King William would be a great car-free destination due to its scale and selection of unique shops and restaurants. A car-free atmosphere would only enhance the character of this street and perhaps inspire movement to restore the rotting facade of the Lister Block: decent affordable housing and independent shops in the Lister would help cement the core's future as a people place.

Author Katie Alvord (Divorce Your Car) provides some existing models: "Car-free and car-restricted zones can create inviting public spaces like Boston's verdant Southwest Corridor, Boulder's thriving outdoor Pearl Street Mall, or the networks of auto-free streets gracing European cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Closing out cars can make terrific space for people and is often great for business. Several Tokyo shopping districts ban cars on Sundays; when people regain possession of these streets, says one report, an air of carnival prevails."

In Europe, local merchants' approval rate is 60% in support of Car Free Day. Why not Hamilton?

The return of two way streets on James and John is also a sign that good things can happen in the city to improve opportunities for cyclists and pedestrians to co-exist with calmed (slower) traffic. Off road multi-use paths like the Bayfront or the Rail-Trails also beckon as beautiful alternatives to ugly and congested main streets for recreational as well as commuter cyclists.

Streets become people places when we reassert our right to have a place to meet and play, where cars are scaled back, slowed down and in some instances outright banned.

David Engwicht has written about streets in terms of our right to street space. In Reclaiming our Cities and Towns he observes that "At the moment there is an unspoken assumption that the streets of the city belong equally to everyone and therefore there is a divine right for people to drive where they want to, when they want to."(114)

What this observation points to is hinted at in the oft used street protest chant: "Who's Streets? Our streets!" In terms of roads and traffic, "traffic reduction and street reclaiming have at their heart a redemocratization of our streets, a handing back of control....[leading] to much more efficient cities and neighborhoods...stamped with their own character and personality." (Engwicht, Street Reclaiming, p.183)

Theorists can argue over the finer points of how, when and where to create decent streets for vibrant exchanges, but on Car Free Day people are free to conduct their own experiments.

In a world where we don't blink at the 849 deaths that occurred on Ontario's highways in 2000, the safest year ever according to the Ministry of Transportation, where each day there are now more than 2.78 million vehicles on highways in the Hamilton and Toronto areas, of course it is difficult to summon up images of a world not infested with cars.

All the more reason to work harder to build alternative vision through action. If the people lead, the saying goes, the politicians will follow (which begs the question ‘why have politicians in the first place').

In Toronto, Car Free Day is officially recognized and supported by the city. In Hamilton, Car Free Day seems to be resisted by the majority of the pro-road-building council.

A presentation by TLC to council a year ago included a requests for Hamilton to get on board with free HSR on the day, some official recognition of Car Free Day, and since the city is spending millions repairing roads to be ready for an international bike race in 2003, we asked them to fast-track in tandem the modest but much needed (and long-awaited) "Shifting Gears" cycling plan for cyclists who happen to live and ride in Hamilton.

A report returned acknowledging what we knew: that our ideas were totally in line with the sustainability plans in the city's own (and sadly neglected) Vision 2020 documents, but it would come down to budget day.

So here we are in 2002 doing it yet again without official help, with the notable exception of the Hamilton Street Railway who reproduced our Car Free Day flier and made them available on all 180 HSR buses.

Any proximity to a car free or car-lite future of course depends hugely on expanding and enhancing the HSR so that, both in terms of cost and efficiency, public transit becomes a viable option for people currently car-dependent.

Unlike private automobile ownership, Public Transit gives a wider range of people safe independent mobility, helping integrate young, old, low-income, differently-abled and other non-drivers more fully into community life.

A single bus can take up to 40 vehicles off the road, save as much as 70,000 litres of fuel and keep 9 tonnes of air pollutants out of the air per year; given our record breaking smog seasons, more good reasons to increase funding to the HSR and expand GO train service.

City politicians could help by preventing sprawl development which all but guarantees an auto-dependent future of people driving through your neighbourhoods to reach destinations formerly walkable.

Perhaps, as one person who contacted us suggested, if politicians rode the buses they would improve the service.

We are not proposing a multi-million dollar, all-in-one silver bullet to cure the downtown's ailments, so embarrassingly popular with the politicians; instead we offer a grassroots approach to incremental change, seeds for a new way of living in the city. Car Free.