Felix Kent, Defector (gift link):

[…] I believed then and still believe that operating a car is too difficult for human beings. This is obviously not true at the level of making a car move. Making a car move is easy. A rat can make a car move. But the level of skill involved in driving really well is not dissimilar from that required to be a concert pianist, if the pianist-centered movies I’ve watched are to be believed. Now imagine that in most parts of the country leading a normal life required more or less constant piano playing. Now imagine that playing the piano badly killed people.

Just about everything we do to make driving a car easier instead seems to make people complacent. The lanes on roads are wider than they need to be to account for lateral imperfection, and then there are wide berms so that someone may drive completely off the road in relative safety. Cars that are enormous, heavy, hulking things do not allow drivers to feel their weight because of myriad assistance features that make it possible to steer with a single finger.

But driving is a skill. Like any skill, it is something people will have varying degrees of success learning. Some people simply cannot drive, whether on a temporary or permanent basis. We can bet the farm on autonomous vehicles which, though seemingly capable in warm and dry urban settings, are an expensive and individualized answer that exacerbates all the other problems of car dependency. It is also a risky bet as, like any technology, current performance is not indicative of future gains. Public transit, on the other hand, is a proven technology that, among other things, strengthens the social contract while giving everyone the ability to move around a city.

⌥ Permalink

Vjosa Isai, New York Times:

Some of the most popular bike lanes were making Toronto’s notorious traffic worse, according to the provincial government. So Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, passed a law to rip out 14 miles of the lanes from three major streets that serve the core of the city.

Toronto’s mayor, Olivia Chow, arrived for her first day in office two years ago riding a bike. She was not pleased with the law, arguing that the city had sole discretion to decide street rules.

Jeremy Klaszus, the Sprawl:

Is Calgary city hall out of control in building new bike lanes or negligent in building too few?

Opinions abound. But with Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen talking about pausing new bike lanes in Calgary and Edmonton (he’s meeting with Mayor Jyoti Gondek about this July 30), it’s worth looking at what city hall has and hasn’t done on the cycling file.

I commute and do a fair slice of my regular errands by bike, and it is clear to me that seemingly few people debating this issue actually ride these lanes. Bike lanes on city streets have always struck me as a compromised version of dedicated cycling infrastructure, albeit made necessary by an insufficient desire to radically alter the structure of our roadway network. Everything — the scale of the lanes, the banking of the road surface, the timing of the lights — is designed for cars, not bikes.

But it is what we have, and it is not as though the provincial governments in Alberta and Ontario are seriously considering investment in better infrastructure. They simply do not treat cycling seriously as a mode of transportation. Even at a municipal level, one councillor — who represents an area nowhere near the city’s centre — is advocating for the removal of a track on a quiet street, half of which is pedestrianized. This is not the behaviour of people who are just trying to balance different modes of transportation.

Klaszus:

Meanwhile independent mayoral candidate Jeromy Farkas, who was critical of expanding the downtown cycle track network when he was a councillor, has proposed tying capital transportation dollars to mode usage.

“Up until now we’ve had the sort of cars versus bikes debate and I think the way to break that logjam is to just acknowledge that every single form of transportation is legitimate,” Farkas said. “When we tie funding to usage, we take the guesswork and the gamesmanship out of it.”

This is a terrible idea. Without disproportionately high investment, cycle tracks will not be adequately built out and maintained and, consequently, people will not use them. This proposal would be a death spiral. Cycling can be a safe, practical, and commonplace means of commuting, if only we want it to be. We can decide to do that as a city, if not for the meddling of our provincial government.

⌥ Permalink

Ads are annoying, right? Getting right in your face and shouting for your attention when all you want to do is something else - when you get an unskippable ad before a video to watch; when you’re reading an article and an ad pops up over the writing; when somebody you had trusted endorses something that you and they both know is bunk. This badvertising is a scourge on modern society and a manifestation of all that’s wrong about suveillance capitalism.

That’s not to say that adverts are evil, or that they have no place. But they must be in their place. When you’re reading in the hypothetical yellow pages, that’s advertising. Or when you’re walking down the high street, looking in shop windows; advertising again. Or a specialist magazine; instagram channel or even so called content marketing. They’re all adverts, but they are in their place. Both the advertiser and the viewer get value out of the interaction - enough that you seek them out yourself.

Now, in some ways technology is the great equaliser of our time: the same tech that allows ever more complicated and pervasive badvertising also allows ever more complete and simple de-badvertising. The good citizen of the net makes technology work for them: they install uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock to protect their web browser, and then set up a Pi-hole to reduce badvertising outside of the confines of the open web. The better citizen sets these same protections up for their family, and supports and contributes to the development of better tools. And they pay for services when to do so is not just to feed the beast.

Now, while this equilibrium persists on the net, in real life the badvertisers have been taking advantage of just as many technological improvemements: internet control and management; high intensity LED illumination; pervasive video, animation, and sound; smartphone and facial tracking and many more advantages alike. Our cities are being turned into a dystopian nightmare - as shopping moves online: MORE ADVERTS to sell you on existing shops; when there’s a funding crunch in local government: MORE ADVERTS to bring in the revenue; when that isn’t enough: MORE ADVERTS just for the sake of it. And with all this new technology, these ads aren’t just some posters or billboards, but rather aggressive and intrustive screens that sap the real life from the city; replacing it with an artifical reminder of the corporate landscape you live in.

Blocking ads may work online, but unless you spend your life in VR goggles, one cannot apply technical solutions alone. But don’t tell yourself that you can’t block adverts in real life - just think about how the ads got there. The good citizen in real life fights the planning applications for new adverts; they tell their local politicians about the damage badverts cause; they fund campaign groups to tell others the same. Make a conscious decision to avoid adverts, and enjoy your life more. Do the science that explains to advertisers exactly why these badverts don’t help them sell. Technologists too: use the benefits of modern technology to multiply your effort, shut down the adverts sooner.

Above all else, don’t take advertising as a given. It’s your choice, and you can help choose no for your city.