PDP #233: Tracking the Trackless Trolley

Vancouver and Toronto have at least this in common - they're now the only two cities in Canada with a network of wires strung above their streets. While in Toronto they power streetcars, here in Vancouver that's how the electricity flows into what is now the country's last operating fleet of trolleybuses, thanks to the city of Edmonton's short-sighted abandonment of its system last year. They're great vehicles to ride, though they take a bit of getting used to: when one is stopped, say waiting for a streetlight to change from red to green, aside from the hum of a few fans it is entirely silent. You really can't appreciate how horrifically loud an internal combustion engine is when all of a sudden you don't have to hear it anymore. Given that Toronto abandoned its own trolleybus system back in 1993, this is the first opportunity I've had to actually experience one.

In this photo, trolley #2262 is waiting to turn off Seymour Street onto West Cordova in downtown Vancouver, bound ultimately for Phibbs Exchange.

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A Brief of Five Vancouver Bridges

Vancouver is a city profoundly influenced by its geography. Unlike Toronto, where the only real discontinuities in the landscape are the ravines carved by the glaciers as they went by, modern Vancouver is very much the triumph of engineering over natural obstacles. I found that most evident in the bridges here. There aren't that many significant bridges in Toronto, and they're rather utilitarian; they carry roads above the Don Valley and the other major ravines and not much else.

In Vancouver, the situation is different: the major bridges here span equally major bodies of water, and at least some of them were built to be more than just things that keep the traffic from falling into the waves. In the days I've spent here so far I've gone across a few of them, and found that they each have their own positive and negative qualities - observations that I'll share with you from five bridges in total, proceeding from west to east.

Lions Gate Bridge

The Lions Gate Bridge is the most picturesque of Vancouver's current bridges, and is the most involved to reach by foot from downtown. It spans Burrard Inlet, linking Vancouver with the hemmed-in suburbia of the North Shore - specifically, it links the North Shore to Stanley Park. Between the southern end of the bridge and the traffic lights at West Georgia and Denham, there's nearly three kilometers of open road with deep, seemingly unbroken forest on both sides. I did this walk my first day in Vancouver, a matter of hours after stepping off the plane, and it was like I'd gone into some other world. It was one of the things I'd planned out before I arrived - if nothing else, it would provide a crackerjack platform for skyline shots.

Approaching from the south, the towers of the Lions Gate Bridge don't reveal themselves until you're close by, thanks to the equally towering trees of Stanley Park. It carries three traffic lanes and two sidewalks shared between bicyclists and pedestrians. I didn't see any bicyclists as I crossed, and only one or two other pedestrians. There are no consistent "lanes," but regular reminders that bicyclists should be using the inner half of the sidewalk and pedestrians the outer.

Frankly, I didn't appreciate the degree to which crossing the Lions Gate Bridge would terrify me until I'd already started, and at that point I was committed; I wasn't about to hike back through Stanley Park in defeat. Nevertheless, the sidewalks are only nine feet wide, with no real separation from the high-speed traffic lanes except a roughly knee-high barrier and, at intervals, the steel cables that keep the bridge suspended. On the other side, the only thing standing between me and the deceptively calm waters of Burrard Inlet was a barrier fence about five feet high. Unlike Toronto's Prince Edward Viaduct, the Lions Gate Bridge doesn't have suicide prevention barriers - for that matter, none of the Vancouver bridges I went across seemed to. What the Lions Gate does have, at the southern end and at intervals across the span, are yellow boxes that contain crisis hotline telephones.

That the Lions Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge posed one significant problem, in addition to the narrowness of the pedestrian walkway: whenever a vehicle motored past, it felt like the whole damn bridge was shaking. By the midpoint I was wondering what my chances would be like if a major earthquake tore through while I was still on it, and after passing the northern tower I walked the rest of the span at a pace just short of a run. I've never been so glad to have real, solid ground beneath my feet as I was when I made it to North Vancouver.

It's a beautiful bridge though, and well worth its place as a symbol of the city and region - if you squint, it's rather reminiscent of the Golden Gate Bridge, though it's greenish and not International Orange. I just consider myself fortunate I crossed when I did; before it went through a full deck replacement ten years ago, the sidewalks were all of four feet wide.

Burrard Bridge

Note: Blogger refused to upload this photo and that of the Cambie Street Bridge, which is why I've had to take recourse to Photobucket thumbnails. Apologies for the discontinuity.

The Burrard Bridge is the westernmost of the three bridges that span False Creek and feed more or less directly into downtown Vancouver. Easily visible from Granville Island, the Burrard Bridge carries Burrard Street - yes, I know, what a shock - into Kitsilano, and it's both older and far more solid-under-the-feet than the swaying, suspended wonder that is the Lions Gate Bridge. Given the greater degree to which it's tied into Vancouver's urban fabric, it makes sense that the Burrard Bridge sets aside plenty of room for non-motor vehicle traffic; in addition to the wide pedestrian sidewalk on the western side of the bridge, bicycles have their own, physically separated, dedicated lanes on the western and eastern sides. It's a good thing, too. Vancouver completely lacks a municipal expressway system of any kind, and so during rush hour its streets tend to get a bit busy. Speaking as a pedestrian, it's totally luxurious.

For me, it just sucked that I couldn't legitimately access the eastern span with only my feet, because that way lies good views of the city and Granville Island. It's also solid; it's a steel truss bridge with more in common with the Prince Edward Viaduct than the Lions Gate Bridge. The barrier at the edge of the sidewalk is approximately the same size as that on the Lions Gate, though a bit beefier - it's made of stone rather than metal - and the crossing didn't set off any of my "you've really screwed up now, boy" senses.

The Art Deco style, in my opinion, really makes the Burrard Bridge worth experiencing. There are two observation platforms on the west side of the bridge, set within the towers; while the southern platform was closed off when I passed, the northern is still a great place for views of the West End, Kitsilano, Stanley Park, the North Shore mountains and the widening sweep of English Bay.

Granville Street Bridge

Of all Vancouver's bridges, I feel the Granville Street Bridge would fit the best in Toronto; as a product of the 1950s it's not only completely devoid of architectural value - on my first day here, when I went over to Granville Island, I overheard a couple of guys talking about the bridges and how boring this one was - but pedestrians seem to have pretty much been an afterthought in the design process. It carries Granville Street across False Creek, though Seymour Street and Howe Street both split off it on the downtown side in an elevated interchange that's rather reminiscent, to me, of the Los Angeles style - streets completely separated from the ground and the "street life," doing their own thing up in the sky.

Like the Burrard Bridge, it's a solid bridge - if you go to Granville Island you can see just how solid, because it's built directly overhead. Note, though, that there's no direct access from the bridge to the island as it's elevated ninety feet above. Nor is it decorative: the sidewalks are just sidewalks and the railings and lightpoles are stark, ordinary metal. The views of Granville Island, False Creek, and the surrounding city make up for it very slightly, and the spiderweb of trolleybus wires overhead help somewhat, but not too much.

The sidewalks are where the Granville Street Bridge really came up short. As you can see in the photograph, there's no barrier between the sidewalk and the road. At all. I don't know what it was, but the Granville Street Bridge was the place where I found it most plausible that some dude could come up behind me on the sidewalk and shove me over the side. What a wonderful Vancouver experience - come for the weather, stay for a screaming dive into beautiful False Creek!

Cambie Street Bridge

Though it's officially known as the Cambie Bridge - so says the commemorative plaque at the north end - this bridge seems to be widely known as the Cambie Street Bridge for the extremely valid reason that it carries Cambie Street. It's the third and easternmost crossing of False Creek, and from here the eastern shore of False Creek - just before the glittering silver geodesic dome of Science World - is clearly visible. It's also the newest of the crossings, having been opened in 1985. Like Science World, it's a beneficiary of Expo 86 - appropriate, given the "transportation and communication" theme of that particular World's Fair.

It shows. While it's not much to look at in architectural terms either, the designers of this bridge recognized that it would not be used solely by drivers. If the Burrard Bridge's reservations for pedestrians are luxurious, the Cambie Street Bridge's sidewalks are beyond reproach: though shared between pedestrians and bicyclists, they're fully fourteen feet wide, and separated from traffic by a small railing, an addition with incredible psychological value. It's the only one of the major bridges directly accessible via SkyTrain - Olympic Village Station on the new Canada Line is adjacent to its southern approach. When I went across the clouds that had made my trip across the Granville Street Bridge so waterlogged had lightened considerably, and there were a few other people chattering and taking photographs of the views from over the side. I'm always thankful when I'm not the only one. It makes me seem far more normal.

On the northern side, while the routes for drivers are rather direct, for pedestrians and cyclists there's a bit of choice. Different paths peel off at different elevations, circling up, down, and around like miniature highway interchanges to put you on the ground at the right spot. It was rather well done.

Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge

This fifth bridge is, technically speaking, not in Vancouver at all - it's actually in the District of North Vancouver, part of Metro Vancouver, in Lynn Canyon Park - but is easily accessible by TransLink's 229 bus from Lonsdale Quay or Phibbs Exchange. The Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge is a purely pedestrian bridge, nearly a century old, strung one hundred and sixty-four feet above the rushing waters below. It links the main entrance, ecology centre, and cafe site with the extensive hiking trails on the far side of the canyon. I definitely recommend a trip across the bridge and a hike around on the other side; it's nature pure and untrammeled over there, like you're walking around on another planet, entirely unspoiled. In fact, Lynn Canyon Park has in fact been other planets on television - if you've ever watched Stargate SG-1 or Stargate Atlantis, the feel of the place will be familiar. For my part, I wouldn't have been surprised to stumble across an overgrown DHD.

A few words of caution, though: this bridge is narrow, and it sways. For me, getting across was a simple matter of grabbing onto the big woven steel cable and not letting go. Still - what a view!

HOLD ON--!

PDP #232: Giant Monumental Crab

I've been in Vancouver for a couple of days now, and one thing I've noticed that really sets it apart from Toronto is its apparent dedication to artistic endeavors: sure, Toronto has its murals and its sculptures too, but in Vancouver they're practically on every block. Yesterday I crossed the Burrard Bridge to Kitsilano and stumbled upon one that may well be the most inspiring of them all. It sits in a pool outside the building in Vanier Park that houses the Museum of Vancouver and H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, and was placed in 1967 to commemorate the people of Vancouver's victory over the Giant Enemy Crabs from outer space - they were, you see, able to attack their weak points for massive damage. Rumors of the involvement of a strange, poofy-haired man with an improbably long scarf are, I'm sure, nothing more than rumors.

I have it on good authority, though I haven't been able to corroborate it yet, that the design of the building itself is inspired by the Crabs' starship.

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I Shot An Error Into the Air

One of the more sinister inventions in the world of finance, in my opinion, is the idea of compound interest: when interest itself earns additional interest. It's a pretty sweet deal if you're the one to whom the money is flowing, but in most cases it's flowing to a loan shark or a credit card company, and someone can easily be driven into the depths of financial despair by compound interest if they're not careful.

Vaguely similar to that, and extremely damaging in its own right, is the concept of compound mistakes. Here, one poor choice has the potential to snowball, closing avenues that could have led to better choices and taking the subject of the decision further away from what might have been considered the ideal. Whether you're talking about a building or a plan of action the foundation needs to be solid, and if whoever's in charge makes an ill-advised decision early in the process, that decision will echo and, depending on the nature of the project, make it difficult to alter course.

Living in Toronto, I get a lot of opportunities to witness the phenomenon of compound mistakes first-hand. I imagine there are plenty of people who would agree that the plan for Toronto's hosting of the upcoming G20 summit, to take an example that's prominent in the news, was a decision monumental in its maliciousness or stupidity. Every day I run into news that compounds the poor nature of that decision: a tab in excess of $1-billion for security, the virtual shutdown of downtown Toronto in the time leading up to the summit, the economic damage that will result in enclosing the heart of Canada's financial center behind a ten-foot-tall fence. The only saving grace, I think, is the summit's temporary nature - by July 1 the world leaders will be gone, and hopefully so will the fence and the plethora of new CCTV cameras. By, say, 2015, the bruises will probably have faded.

A better example for the danger of compound mistakes is, I think, found in the TTC. Sometimes, when I really think about it, the Toronto subway and streetcar systems strike me as impossible machines: knowing what I know about the back-end stuff, the revenue and lack of support, I have difficulty understanding how they can work at all. Certainly I don't know first-hand any other transit systems that have to work as hard as the TTC does just to stay in the same place.

Although the more immediate cause of the TTC's woes is simple - the provincial and federal governments are completely unwilling to assist it - ultimately, I think, it traces back to decisions made in the 1970s. Fundamentally, the Toronto subway in particular still is a 1970s transit system. Since 1982, the only substantial additions to the system have been the Scarborough RT, the Sheppard Line, and Downsview station - in that same span of time, both Los Angeles and Vancouver built their current rail transit infrastructures from nothing - and while Toronto is having to beg and scrape at the feet of the provincial government for a drastically pared-down Transit Village, Los Angeles is building a new light-rail line and planning a subway extension clear to the Pacific Ocean while Vancouver is set to start building its new Evergreen Line.

Things could have been different. There were plans, even in the 1970s, to ensure the system's smooth expansion into the future. We could have built the Downtown Relief Line starting in the late 1980s, before the system became overloaded to its current extent, but the transformation of what was unused railway land in 1985 to towering condominium towers in 2010 complicates that project significantly. We could have dispensed with the Sheppard stubway and the transfer to the Sheppard East LRT by building light-rail straight through along Sheppard, but we didn't. Instead we're getting an extension of the subway into Vaughan, of all places, and not because it's actually necessary but because of political interest and political interest alone.

You can try to build a mighty tower, but if you're building it on top of a bed of gelatin, it's only going to be able to stand so high before it comes all crashing down. I can only hope the next Mayor is a fan of Tetris, because there's going to be a lot of puzzles for he or she to solve.

PDP #231: New Planet, Strange Architecture

It's been a few months coming, but I've had the time booked off for a while and yesterday I finally landed on Caprica, heart of the colonies. It cost a few extra cubits for one of the FTL liners - I mean, who has time these days to go from Virgon to Caprica by sublight? - and well worth it. Only hours after lifting from Boskirk Spaceport I was free and clear to indulge that which makes the days worth living: just wandering around, having absolutely no idea where I'm going except for extremely vague impressions I gleaned from the Come On, Caprica guidebook.

Not that Caprica City's a bad place to wander around - it's great. It's like nothing on Virgon, and that's the crux of the problem. I don't know if you've noticed, but Capricans have some weird tastes in architecture - like those towers that look like they're made of nothing but glass and would shatter if you tapped them wrong. But they're positively normal compared to buildings like the one I photographed yesterday. For the life of me, I've got no idea what it's supposed to be. It could be courthouses for all I know, or a library, or a temple. That's the thing you really need to understand about Capricans - on this planet, form and function seem to have absolutely no bearing on each other.

The weather's been pretty good though. I heartily recommend.

EDIT: Seems as if it's a library after all. I tell you, those Capricans...

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A Railway to the Stars?

A few days ago, Randy McDonald at A Bit More Detail put me onto the revelation that Joss Whedon's short-lived but fan-favorite series Firefly has been named by the Exurban League as the #2 conservative television show of the last twenty-five years. After having thought about it, it's not that much of a surprise. The idea of personal freedom is generally of extreme importance in the conservative world of the mind, and one of the great themes running through Firefly was personal independence from the centralized government. The vast spread of space provides endless opportunities for a free and personal life - presuming that you have the resources and capacity to maintain a life in the final frontier.

Ideas of frontier independence, themselves influential throughout history, have been successfully married with space-based settings for a long time. Fifty years ago, Gene Roddenberry had begun drafting what would become Star Trek, which was pitched to the networks as "Wagon Train to the stars." Considering the historical preponderance of American creators in the Western science fiction field, it's understandable that attitudes about humanity's reach into space would be informed by the experience of the Old West. Popular culture especially has come to enshrine the pioneers' covered wagons as the quintessential symbol of Westward expansion. American settlement of the lands opened up by the Louisiana Purchase was in full swing by the mid-nineteenth century, spurred by the promise of open country or religious freedom.

In particular, the settlement of the American West can further parallel to pioneering flights into space in that there is no fixed route there. The settlers followed rough trails charted by fur traders or explorers; anyone who's ever played The Oregon Trail knows that the journey west was hard, with dysentery lurking around every corner. It wasn't until 1869 that the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed, and even in 1860 there were nearly four hundred thousand people living in California alone. In the United States, the settlers went first and the infrastructure followed them. Similarly, in the present-day reach into space, our pioneers have braved dangerous environments and been forced to build their havens with what limited resources they could bring with them.

The Canadian experience was rather different. Canada's transcontinental railway came later than that down south, completed at Craigellachie, British Columbia in 1885. Not only did the Canadian Pacific Railway tie Canada together from sea to sea, it played a great role in the settlement of the prairies. Before the railway, non-First Nations populations were rather thin on the ground north of the border. Calgary and Vancouver, large and prominent cities today, did not even exist when the American transcontinental railroad was completed. While in the United States the railroad followed the settlers, in Canada the settlers followed - and, for that matter, rode in - the railway.

For me, the Canadian experience parallels the promise of a space elevator. With a fixed and inexpensive link to orbital space - presuming, of course, that we can find something with sufficient tensile strength and a sufficiently low bulk manufacturing cost in order to build the damn thing - it would be possible for space development to expand beyond the constraints imposed by rocket launches from the bottom of the gravity well.

There's more than one way to space. People won't necessarily take a latter-day wagon train to get there.

PDP #230: Ten Minutes to Noon

This past weekend was marked, in addition to Anime North, by Doors Open Toronto, a two-day event where places normally restricted to public access throw their doors open - hence the name. Among the places I went was the Canada Life Building on University Avenue, recognizable for the weather beacon at it top. more specifically its usually-closed seventeenth-floor observation deck. From there I had an excellent view of the west side and parts of downtown - the parts that weren't blocked by taller buildings. Looking to the east, I got this shot of Old City Hall, reflected in the windows of the Cadillac Fairview Tower.

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Legislative Creep

On occasion I feel nostalgic for the days of the lawspeaker. This was a government office that existed in medieval Scandinavian states, and the man who held it was expected to memorize and speak aloud the law of the land when necessary. Admittedly, this would have been considerably easier a thousand years ago, when - it can be argued - laws were far more focused on issues relevant to the average person, thanks to the nature of governments and the absence of lobbyists. Now, of course, there's no way an average person could memorize the full extent of the law.

The reason why is simple - the function of a legislative body is to create law, and so that is what it does, whether or not it needs to. While medieval governments weren't responsive to the people to begin with, today corporations and multinationals and even other governments have far greater sway in the halls of government than the people it purportedly represents and legislates on behalf of. What this frequently results in is a legislature creating hundreds or thousands or millions of new criminals merely by the stroke of a pen.

Right now, the Conservative minority government of Stephen Harper - the best President that Canada has ever had, considering the degree to which he seems to get his marching orders from the United States - is struggling to push a somewhat modified, but still fundamentally made-in-USA copyright bill into law. While it's not quite as onerous in all respects as the version that was thankfully killed in 2008, and does not go nearly as deep into the crazy end of the pool as the United Kingdom's Digital Economy Act, it's still hardly ideal. It will still make it an offense punishable with five years and jail and up to $1-million in fines to circumvent any technological protection measures on information, the so-called "digital locks."

This isn't a law Canadians wanted. The copyright consultations held after the acrimonious failure of Bill C-61 made that clear, and none of it matters. This is a law that is going through because the United States - or, more appropriately, the multinational entertainment giants of the United States - prefer it to the current state of Canada's system. Personally, it sets us down a path we'd be better off not following.

Maybe the biggest issue is that the legislative bodies seem to be devoted so wholeheartedly to creating new law, to delineating the line between order and chaos to an ever-greater extent, and to making it so that every day the boundaries of the law are a bit more rigid than the day before. No surprise, really - we have dedicated chambers in our legislatures for the purpose of creating new law. But if the medieval lawspeaker forgot about one small portion of the law, and did not read it when the time came, was it really a law at all? Perhaps what we need is a new chamber, one dedicated to striking down laws that don't serve the people.

PDP #229: Would You Like A Jelly Baby?

This past weekend saw the running of Anime North 2010, one of the (if not the) largest anime-focued fan conventions in Canada. Though I didn't attend I was in the area on the weekend, and had the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the attendees - many of whom were cosplayers, though the costuming isn't limited to purely anime characters. While I was waiting for the 58 Malton bus I encountered a Fourth Doctor from Doctor Who. Honestly, I still think the Fourth Doctor is the iconic Doctor. I mean, look at that scarf!

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The Great, Competitive Outdoors

One of the great failures of imagination is to assume that the future will be like the present in every respect. While it's tempting for many people - familiarity is, after all, comfortable, and people crave anchors in strange places - it's fundamentally flawed. Change is one of the only constants in life, and if we want to be able to face the future on firm footing we can't loll back and assume everything's going to be like it was before. That is a recipe for being blindsided. What we need to do, as individuals, governments, and societies, is continue to probe the possible futures to ensure that we have the best chances of dealing with what the next years bring.

Recently I received an email inquiry from an interested voter about where I stand on certain positions, one of them being crime. In this case, my position is that we're on a good, smooth course. Toronto has a low crime rate for a city its size, and it's been decreasing steadily for more than ten years. Incidents like the subway robbery in April are plastered across the city media because that sort of thing rarely happens. Still, the future will evolve, and we can't assume that this state of affairs will inevitably continue. Things change; they already have changed.

Case in point - @sciencewisdom on Twitter recently posted this quote by science fiction author Isaac Asimov: "Night was a wonderful time in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Air conditioning was unknown except in movie houses, and so was television. There was nothing to keep one in the house. Furthermore, few people owned automobiles, so there was nothing to carry one away. That left the streets and the stoops. The very fullness served as an inhibition to crime."

What we're beginning to see today are the foundations of a world where leaving one's home is unnecessary in order to complete progressively more tasks, and if remote operation technology becomes more refined and accessible to the public in the years to come, that trend can easily accelerate. It could make the ideal of the "safe city" harder to realize than in the present day. Plenty of people, I imagine, would have no problem at all if they never had to leave their house again.

I believe that one of the things cities should be working on for the future is a program of outdoors development to coax people out of their houses and back into the commons. Toronto's Sherbourne Park, currently under construction and in a voting runoff to determine a final name, will hopefully be a fine example of this, as Chicago's Millennium Park may be - though I'm not sure how well-used it is by Chicagoans as opposed to tourists. As the old saying goes, a man's home is his castle - but one of the reasons castles were built in the first place was to protect from enemies outside. That's not really the sort of thing I'd like to happen again.