Getting Rid of the Gardiner: It's About Time

May 30, 2008 - At a time when city building gets more attention than ever before, it should be of no surprise that the City now plans to remove the eye-sore that is the Gardiner Expressway from the DVP to Jarvis Street. This area east of downtown has long been considered one of the few areas of the city that's ripe for redevelopment and with the West Don Lands and East Bayfront neighbourhoods being built over the next decade, removing the Gardiner makes a lot of sense. The millions that are spent each year on maintaining the highway could go towards something that would be of better use, like fixing potholes or maybe, even transit operation costs. Removing the whole expressway will probably not happen for awhile, but is one of the essential steps in connecting our downtown to the waterfront again. Boston did it, so did San Francisco, and even Seattle will be doing the same in 2012. Isn't it time for TO to step up and become that "world class city" that we always strive to be?

Today, We're All Chinese

May 20, 2008 - The devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China has been making headlines for over a week now. It's especially touching to see the reaction from Chinese around the world, who have banned together to raise millions for the hundred of thousands of earthquake victims in Sichuan. While I'm sure we are guilty of making Mainland Chinese stereotypes (they crouch all the time; their dirty washrooms; the way they talk loudly on the phone), it is great to see Chinese around the world being so patriotic to their home country.

As in all natural disasters, the young, the old, and the disadvantaged are the greatest victims. In this case, school children made up a large proportion of those killed. The lax building code, poor design, and corruption all probably played a role - but the scene of parents mourning their kids near the ruins of school buildings is heartbreaking.

Donate to the Earthquake Relief efforts at: http://www.redcross.ca/china512

A Few More Thoughts About Seattle

May 19, 2008 - A few more thoughts about Seattle:

- The Experience Music Project: not my favourite Frank Gehry building, but I wouldn't say it's the worst building ever. I think the design of the building serves its function well (a rock-and-roll music museum). I do like the multi-colour blobs too.

- The Space Needle: we visited the Space Needle at least five times but we didn't decide to go up to the observation deck till our third day in town. The view from the top is spectacular (you can see the snow-capped Mount Rainier), so I'm glad we decided to go up! I also want to say that the gift shop bathroom isexceptionally clean (we used it multiple times).

- Seattle Center: the site of the 1964 World Fair feels sad and in major need of some revitalization. Aside from the Space Needle and the EMP, the whole site feels out of date and deserted. It could be the time of day/year that we were visiting but we were not impressed. Even the monorail feels old and in major need of an overhaul (the train may have been futuristic in the 60s, but now just feels ancient). At least there's now a public process in place to improve Seattle Center.

- International Fountain: kinda cool, but again, so much more could be done to improve this public space to make it more people friendly. I wish they would hire me to help them plan for this site. Anyway, while sitting around the fountain, someone's (will not mention any names, but you can guess who it is) nose mucus (aka booger) landed on my hand "accidentally". It was like the largest piece of booger I have ever seen in my life (it's like the size of a raisin). Anyway, now I will forever link the fountain to this incident. Thanks :)

- Pike Place Market: I really like public markets because I think they have more personality/character than your Loblaws or Dominions. The seafood stalls with the giant crabs were really cool. We also saw the first Starbucks, before it conquered the world.

- Seattle Central Library: a weird looking building that works and doesn't work in several aspects. I like the ramp design where you can go up several levels without going up stairs or elevators (and the fact that all the bookshelves continuous). I'm not sure if the building fits that well as a public space - libraries should serve more a community function but instead this library feels insular, isolated and strangely out of place.

- Boeing Factory Tour: it was super cool to see how planes are assembled though I wish we could get closer. I still can't get over the fact that when you sit on a plane, only about 30 cm separates you from the 40,000 feet below.

- United and US Airways: I was super duper impressed that both airlines did the job that they were supposed to do by 1) getting us to our destinations on time; and 2) not losing our luggage (I sorta expected them to and packed accordingly). Our flights on US Airways were just terrible. Our flight to Charlotte was scary with lots of sudden drops. I was ready to land half way through our flight. I was glad B was there or else I might have really panicked. Also, for a five hour flight, you would think they would at least serve water a few times, but nope, we got drinks once. No movie, no water, no blanket, no nothing. What did the flight attendants do the whole time we were on the plane?

That's it from our little Seattle adventure. Overall it was fun and not overly exhausting like New York was last year. We did everything we wanted to do, plus more (mainly cause there wasn't that much to do to begin with). I think we've done enough US cities for awhile, so for our next trip, let's aim for somewhere out of this continent!

Riding Transit in Seattle

May 17, 2008 - Bernard and I were originally going to rent a car for our trip to Seattle. We read that Seattle isn't the most transit friendly city in the world and the fact that we need to go up to Everett for the Boeing Factory Tour, we should really rent a car. After some research though, we found that it would be super expensive for us to rent one (not to mention the high gas prices), so we decided to take on the public transit system in Seattle and take the bus everywhere on our first three days in town.

First of all, I have to say that the transit system is not as bad as most people say and for a system that relies entirely on buses (the Monorail and the SLUT don't count), it's really not that bad (kinda reminds me of Ottawa, except Seattle has a transit tunnel that Ottawa is dying to have). With the arrival of the Sound Light Rail System next year, the system will surely improve. Anyway, a few highlights from my experience of riding Seattle transit:

1) The Downtown Transit Tunnel

The tunnel is currently used for buses in the heart of downtown. Instead of having surface bus routes running through congested downtown streets, the tunnel allows buses to run underground, thereby improving service reliability and avoid the bus congestion that you see in Ottawa. The tunnel was retrofitted last year to allow LRT service to run through the tunnel as well.

It would be interesting to see how the sharing of LRT and buses will work inside the tunnel. I should note that the buses don't travel that fast inside the tunnel, but that waiting for the bus inside the tunnel isn't that much different that waiting for an Ottawa bus on Slater Street for example. Buses still bunch up and it's hard to see which bus is coming up next. However, at least the buses don't get stuck in traffic.

2) The Downtown Free Zone

Transit is free in downtown Seattle during the day! We didn't take advantage of it though cause we pretty much just walked through downtown (it's not that big).

3) Pay-When-You-Leave

During certain hours of the day, you pay your fare when you get off the bus. I'm not entirely sure why they do that, especially since it really does add unnecessary travelling time: people could only exit using the front door, you can't board until everyone has paid. At least there are clear signs on the bus that tells you exactly whether you pay when you board or when you leave.

4) Direct Suburb-to-Downtown Service

Like Ottawa, the city provides direct suburb-to-downtown service on many routes (no wonder they need a tunnel downtown!). What I also liked as a commuter is that even though buses run every 20 minutes or so after rush hour, because of the fact that multiple routes go to your destination, you can catch a number of different buses, thereby reducing your wait time to 10 minutes at most (not bad for an American city). Routes 70-74 all serve the U-district for example.

5) The Orca Card

Seattle just introduced a smart card system for its transit system, but it's still on a trial basis and does not seem too popular with locals. Not all the buses have the system and I only saw 1 person use it the 3 days that I took transit.

Other things I like about Seattle transit: the neat trolley buses, the extremely friendly drivers (maybe we were just lucky?), the time-based transfers (would the TTC ever switch to those?), and the fact that people of all race and class seem to ride transit, which is not the case for most US cities.

We also saw the SLUT (South Lake Union Trolley) streetcars and I really do love their slogan (ride the SLUT, it gets around!). But because the system doesn't go anywhere that we wanted to go, we didn't get a chance to experience the SLUT first hand. We did ride the Monorail between downtown and Seattle Center three times though, but I wouldn't really call it part of the transit system.

Next blog, I'll talk about some of the other highlights from our trip, including an incident involving someone's nose mucus at the International Fountain at Seattle Center.

Blogging Seattle

May 14, 2008 - Bernard and I spent four days last week in Seattle! It was a fairly last minute trip, as we didn't decide to go until just two weeks ago. Anyway, we had a blast and I thought I would blog about some of the things I observed while in Seattle. This blog will focus on my general impressions of the city.

Seattle is the largest city in the State of Washington, but with a population of just over half million people (and a Metro population of 3 million), it is much smaller than most US west coast cities and even smaller than Toronto. The city itself is also not as spread out as one would think - it only took about 20 minutes by bus to go from Downtown to the city's north end. Seattle is also very multicultural, with a large Asian population. The city also has that "Toronto" feel to it - an up and coming city that is getting bigger by day, but still holding on to its small town values. Walking around Seattle actually didn't seem too different from walking around Toronto (though I think it's also because we kept seeing Asians everywhere).

Seattle is also not a dense city. There are not that many tall buildings outside downtown and it certainly does not have the 30+ storey condos that we have in Toronto. Construction seems to be everywhere though, but mainly in the form of office towers. Outside downtown, single detached home dominate, but I didn't really see the kinda of urban sprawl that we have here in the 905 region.

What I really liked about Seattle is its topography - the hills, the mountains (you can see snow-capped Mount Rainier from everywhere on a sunny day), Lake Union, and Elliot Bay are all spectacular. It's not Vancouver, but YVR doesn't have the islands of Puget Sound either. Having said that, with over 225 days of the year being a cloudy day, I really don't think I can live there (it was gloomy and cold the first two days we were there).

Seattle is also one of most educated cities in the US (which no doubt contributes greatly to the city's computer and aviation industries) and also one of the fittest (though we didn't really check anyone out since everyone was still wearing their winter jacket). It is also one of the gayest cities in America (just behind San Francisco apparently)!

In my next blog, I'll talk about riding transit in Seattle!