My Little Underground

It’s weird how different cities take such different approaches to transit. I recently came across the fact that my family’s hometown of Birmingham, England, is the largest city in Europe without a subway. On the other hand, my current home of Kitchener-Waterloo’s light rail system makes it the smallest city in North America with any sort of rail transit system. And some Scandinavian cities have more of a commitment to transit: Oslo has more subway stations than Toronto, despite being only about a quarter the size.

So I was curious about what city has the most subway stations per capita in the world. I Googled it, and discovered there are all kinds of complications to the question: How do you define where a city ends? What part is served by the transit system? What if the subway also runs into neighbouring communities? But then I found that none of that matters, because there’s a clear winner: Serfaus, Austria. It has a subway system with four stations, serving a town of 1000 people. 

Okay, you've probably already guessed there has to be more to it than that, and indeed there is: Serfaus is a ski resort, so it often has far more than the local population to move around. And it's not a full sized subway: more like a “people mover” you might see at an airport. Interestingly, it doesn't even have wheels; it floats on compressed air. And it pulls itself along by a cord, like a cable car. Which is fitting for a ski resort.

The idea is to get people from the parking lot at one end of town to the base of the ski hills at the other end. That allows them to maintain a car-free community, which is nice for that little mountain retreat ambiance. Though as one tourist page points out, it does mean that a lot of visitors miss out on most of the village entirely.

So, Serfaus being a ski resort means that their money and transit needs are far beyond that of a normal thousand-person town. But on the other hand, it’s not like they get a million people at a time show up to ski: it’s still a pretty bold choice given the number of people they’re moving around. This has me wondering what other formats a town can take on. For instance, could there be some universe where my hometown of Woodstock (population, 46,000) has such a system? Maybe: I also came across Aubagne, France which is approximately the same size, and has a light rail system. Though it should be noted, it’s on the outskirts of Marsaille, so it’s not totally analogous. But having said that, it’s hard to imagine a satellite community here being so concerned with public transit.

And that brings up the problem that sinks many urban planning solutions imported from Europe to North America: we have cities built around the car. You probably could have a city of that size built around public transit, but it would have to be a really densely-populated place to have everyone in range of a small transit system. It would be very expensive in the suburban wonderlands that most small towns in Canada are. Trying to imagine a densely-populated small-to-midsize city is about as hard as visualizing a village with a subway.

London Stalling

I've mentioned before that I'm amused at the differences between my own Kitchener-Waterloo and London, Ontario. Both are similar size and close together, yet there remain distinct differences. We're seeing some of those differences played out right now, as both communities are going though the process of building new transit systems, with KW building the "Ion" Light Rail system, and London planning a Bus Rapid Transit (buses in dedicated lanes) system. They're at very different stages, though. London is still in the planning, while KW's is nearly finished.

We should keep in mind that when it comes to transit, KW has an unfair advantage: it's several communities that have grown into one (a conurbation, as the urban planers call it) so it's evolved into a long, thin community with a few urban areas more or less lined-up. Thus, it's always been fairly obvious how a single transit line would link the community.

London, on the other hand, has a layout that's more typical of Canadian cities: a small urban core, with lots of suburbs stretching off in all directions. So it's not immediately clear how transit lines can serve the whole city. They've gone for two lines; one in an "L" shape, and the other in a "7" shape, with the two "corners" meeting at the centre.

Looking back at our effort to get the system built, I have to say that I'm amazed at how easy it was. I know some people would be furious at hearing it called "easy", but stepping back and seeing that we accomplished this in an unprecedentedly-small, largely-suburban community in a time of constrained budgets, all in about a decade with no major roadblocks, that's pretty impressive.

London's plan has run into some problems. I'm not that familiar with the project, but what I find disturbing is that two big opposition groups are downtown businesses and property developers. That's troubling because they should be leading proponents: the system would bring more people downtown, and raise the value of land near stations. One has to wonder which groups are going to push the proposal forward if these two groups are not on side.

And although it's still early in the process with no shovels yet in the ground, setbacks now could cause an avalanche of problems: Submissions have already been made for approval and grants from higher levels of government, and changes to the plan would mean re-submitting and starting the process over. At best, that would introduce a year of delays; at worst, it would mean they'd be applying for massive public transit grants from a new Conservative government.

I'd like to claim that the difference in the two communities' experiences is the result of our being a little more forward-thinking and open-minded, but I don't think that explains it. We in KW have a kind of benevolent apathy towards civic government. Sure, people complain about local government, but they don't do anything about it. That seems unusual these days. In other communities, the voters periodically elect a human tantrum, while we just rubber-stamp the same folks over and over.

And that's the approach we've taken towards transit too. You heard people complain, but it never developed into anything meaningful. There were a few attempts at mounting political movements against it, but they didn't seem to get the quality personnel behind it, and they didn't really threaten incumbent councilors and mayors. Ultimately, it was hard for opponents to gain traction when the politicians supporting the LRT plan kept getting elected.

In contrast, complaints about London's transit plan have reached a critical mass that will make it hard to continue. I mean mass in a more literal sense, seeing as the latest meeting took place at Budweiser Gardens, the city's hockey arena. While attendance was nowhere near the venue's 9,000 seat capacity, it's still a far cry from the community centre spare rooms where Waterloo's transit meetings took place.

But it's also reached a critical emotional mass, which will be a big problem for proponents. An idea like this inspires some, terrifies others, but leaves most with a mixture of reactions: neither good nor bad enough to act. Something like that might pass if the support is passionate enough, since there are only a few who will fight it. But if you get just enough emphasis on the downsides, you push the conflicted majority onto the no side, or at least, onto the skeptical side. And for a big project like this, skepticism is enough to sink it.

In London, opposition is large and well organized, and has taken the initiative. Aspiring politicians are seeing it as a route to the top. Again, this has roots in the particular politics of the city; While Kitchener and Waterloo's civic politics are relatively quiet, London has been very antagonistic and divided for a while now. An expensive and highly-visible issue is the perfect situation to bring out more rancor. At this point, even if they get a good number of politicians on the pro side, I’m guessing both sides will dig in enough that the issue will stagnate.

Train In Vain

Do you remember Consumers Distributing? If you're too young, or too non-Canadian, I'll explain that it was a catalog-based retailer. Their "stores" were little more than small warehouses with a few desks out front where you could order items. Then a sales person would go back into the warehouse and find they were out of your item and they'd have to order it.

Anyway, Consumers went under some time in the early 90's, and their stores became so many bingo halls. But I always thought that was such unfortunate timing. After all, who would be better positioned to take advantage of e-commerce, than a company who already had an ordering system and network of warehouses? If they could have just survived that early-nineties recession, they could have beat everyone to the market and ensured years of prosperity, instead of ending up as a retail footnote.

I'm reminded of how cruel business timing can be when I look at this:

This is a plaza near where I live. As you can see, it's seen better days. A number of businesses have come and gone, and it's mostly closed now. Its parking lot is small and hard to get into, it's off to the side of other shopping areas, and it's not the most prosperous neighbourhood to begin with.

The sad part is what you can see in the front of it:

It's a half-finished light rail station. Yes, this sad-sack plaza has suddenly become prime real estate, because it's right outside one of the stops on KW's new transit system. We've recently seen several other development projects started or announced near other stations, as they transform eyesores and vacant lots into hot properties.

So just think, if any of those businesses could have just hung on for a few more years, they'd be looking great right now, with a big source of foot traffic dropped right in front of them  Instead, it will fall to new businesses to take advantage. Someday soon, the closed stores will be filled by over-priced coffee shops, whose patrons will be unaware of the ghosts of short-lived nail salons around them.

I'm Not Sure What To Call This Post

Right now, Kitchener-Waterloo is planning a new light-rail transit system, and it's time to give the thing a name.  Apparently the name we've been calling it, "LRT," just doesn't cut it, nor does simply calling it "the train."

So a local PR firm was hired to come up with a name for the system.  They returned with three names for discussion and public input: Ion, Arc, and Trio.  That has me wondering: if you pay consultants extra for a name, will they create a name that doesn't sound like it was made by consultants?  With all the efforts our society puts into good presentation, you'd think we'd have developed the art to the point of being able to sound natural.  But maybe that's only for the underground, independent public relations firms.

At the other end of the bad-names-we're-about-to-be-stuck-with spectrum, Ottawa's new football team needs a name.  To refresh your memory, for many years their team was the Rough Riders, a name widely ridiculed for being just a space and a capital away from being the Saskatchewan Roughriders.  Then their recent short-lived team was called the Renegades.  Apparently the new team is not beholden to either of those names, though they may feel pressured to choose another name beginning with "R".  Well now it comes out that the new owners are leaning towards "Red Blacks."  See, one aspect of the new team that is surely not up for debate is the red-and-black colour scheme, which has been used by pretty much every team coming out of the nation's capital. 

Unsurprisingly, the fans don't like the new name, and are letting the owners know it.  But rather than rethink their preference, the owners are brushing-off the controversy with the (admittedly correct) claim that people would find fault with any name they pick.  No other name is taking the public's imagination (they don't want to be saddled with the Rough Rider jokes again, and the Renegades name wasn't around long enough to connect with people) so Ottawa football fans may well be stuck with a team named after its colours, dumbed-down to the point of not even using conjunctions.

Between these two incidents, we have the two sides of naming problems:  Trying to please everyone pleases no one, and the people whose job it is to please everyone are so out-of-touch they can't sound natural anymore.  And people with enough power that they don't have to listen to anyone, made worse by a society where complaining is so epidemic that we no longer have any way of communicating that ideas are truly bad.

On The Buses

Walking home today, I walked past a bus stopped at a red light.  It was one of those buses with an ad completely covering the side of the bus, with even the windows covered with that perforated one-way poster material so people inside can still see out. 

Sometimes those whole-bus ads are well done - the most memorable being a bread ad where the bus was made to look like a giant loaf of bread.  More often though, it's a real estate agent with their picture blown up to humongous proportions.  I don't really get those ads: how is seeing a big picture of the agent going to make us want to use their services?  They're reasonably good-looking people, but not exactly supermodels.  It would be like a restaurant ad that doesn't show you what the food looks like, but does include a photo of the chef.

And if I was going to have my picture blown up so my face is the size of an SUV, I'd want it to be a really nice picture.  I'd find a photographer with the 20 gigapixel camera, and personally Photoshop the result to remove any blemish that would end up being an inch or more across.  But somehow real estate agents are okay with fuzzy, washed-out photos that look like they were taken with the first generation of camera-phones.

This ad, however, was a much nicer ad for a new condo development.  As a downtown resident, I have an interest in new urban development in the city, so I was interested in where this new building would be going.  The ad didn't say where it would be, so I had a good look at the artist's rendition of the structure to see if I could recognise the location.  As I'm staring at the picture, it occurs to me that it's directly over one of the bus windows, so there's probably someone inside wondering why some weirdo suddenly stopped walking down the street and started staring intently at him.