Overseas Adventures: Transportation culture in Toronto, Canada

As fans of the television series Parks and Recreation, my wife could not pass on an opportunity to tap into her inner Leslie Knope at a parks conference in Toronto. Since I had never been to Toronto before, aside from a few brief stints at Pearson airport while in transit, I felt like this was a good opportunity to explore another Canadian city. We had such a great time in Montreal back in 2014, I expected to have a similar experience this time around. So we hopped on a plane and and after a five hour flight, found ourselves sweltering in the heat of Toronto's summer heat wave.

Road Trip: Long weekend in Montreal

Let me start by saying that before this trip, I had never been to Canada (my few hours in the Toronto airport during a layover really does not count). My, admittedly stereotypical, impression of Canada was that it was full of Dudley Do-Right push overs and female lumberjacks. So when the suggestion came up to do a weekend road trip, I was definitely interested, especially since it would not be long before we would be moving away from the Boston area and no longer within easy driving distance of the Canadian border. For the trip, we selected the closest major city, Montreal in Quebec and I promptly went to work getting all of my travel documents updated.

Our party for the trip consisted of my wife and me along with two of our friends from my wife's grad school. Early on, we made a decision to minimize costs, and thus turned to Airbnb for accommodations. Since the itention was a road-trip, the TSX, with its rather capacious interior and plentiful trunk space was pressed into service for the journey. Once we arrived in Montreal, the idea was to use public transportation as much as possible to avoid racking up massive parking expenses. Luckily, Montreal happens to be the home of  Bixi, the bike share company that supplies the docks and bikes to bikesharing programs across many cities in North America, including both Boston and Washington, DC. A plan was hatched to make use of Bixi's rather extensive network and to spend some time biking throughout the city, which would turn out to be an adventure in and of itself.

Editorial: Exploring a new city by bike is just awesome

I really did not realize it until this weekend, but many of my best childhood memories of family trips ultimately involved cycling and bodies of water. Whether it was riding along the perimeter of Lake Tahoe as a family on rented bikes or along the sandy beaches of Santa Barbara in a pedal-powered Double Surrey, some form of human power along the wet stuff manages to ingrain itself deeply into my memory. Most recently, I spent a weekend with my wife and some friends, exploring the Canadian city of Montreal by Bixi, their local bike share system.

A city like Montreal, which is extremely cycling friendly (with over 300 miles of bike paths, including numerous dedicated cycle tracks and designated bike lanes, as well as about 5,000 bike share bikes available), is the perfect place to explore on two-wheels. Due to the proliferation of bike lanes, it was possible to crisscross the city fairly quickly and see a huge variety of sites in the limited amount of time we had. When we got to a place we wanted to explore in greater depth, there were bike share stations for us to park the bikes in and continue by foot. Even on the heavy Bixi bikes, the relatively limited elevation changes were manageable and the mild weather helped make the experience an extraordinarily pleasant one. And at CAD $15 for 72-hours and the ability to get anywhere in the city without worrying about parking, it was an inexpensive (if not quite totally hassle-free) option.

From the weekend in Montreal, I feel like there were two important takeaways for me:

1. Cities that want to improve tourism should invest increasingly more in cycling infrastructure and a bike share program.

2. Cycling is an excellent alternative to other public transit options, such as taxis or even light rail because if offers greater flexibility.

As a tourist, having the option and flexibility to get around a new town on two-wheels encourages me to explore a city more and allows me to spend more time checking out local merchants and restaurants. Plus, given how inexpensive it is as an option, it allows me to have a little more money to spend while I am in town. And the ability to come and go as I please and not be constrained by schedules or bumper-to-bumper traffic is a highly liberating sensation. With a big cross-country, multi-city trip coming up soon, I am looking forward to seeing many Mid-west cities by bike, albeit on my own bike this time.

Editorial: Are cars the real Earthlings?

A little while back, I came across this short film from Canada that makes an interesting point about what aliens might Earth if they were to observe us. The gist of the film is that many of our modern societies have built our entire existence around our cars - our infrastructure is designed to accommodate cars, we build homes with garages to house our cars, and we even have spas to keep our cars clean and pampered. In many ways, we have become enslaved by our cars. Of course, as humans, we prefer to think that the cars serve us, but an outside observer could very easily mistake things as being the other way around.

This makes for an interesting commentary about our modern lives. Modern American culture, in particular, values cars as a form of transportation, freedom, and status more so than nearly every other form of road transportation. While some cities have made an effort to shift away from this with city centers that are more pedestrian friendly and the installation of bike lanes throughout in an effort to encourage alternative forms of transportation, most places are still largely the domain of the automobile. That steel and glass cocoon that separates us from the elements and the world outside also ever increasingly isolates us from other road users, leading to incidents from minor run-ins to major catastrophe. The tendency to make us feel invincible and protected perhaps leads to greater risks than one might other take.

Take a break and watch this short film. Then, share with us how you think aliens would view our relationship with the automobile and if you agree with the views of the filmmaker.

What on Earth! by Les Drew & by Kaj Pindal, National Film Board of Canada

Tags: automotive, bicycle, car culture, infrastructure, pedestrian, transportation