ACCOZZAGLIA

Wow.

That my “Join Cycle Jarvis” piece produced some polarizing reactions wasn’t utterly surprising. Dropping the word “union” from Cycle Toronto’s name aside, I brought to light a few points which largely haven’t been confronted with an open, public discussion. And by “public”, I actually do mean “beyond dues-paying members of an opt-in club.”

As an urban planner focussing on citizen economics, this has eaten at me. As a bike messenger, this has eaten at me. As an advocate for cycling and active transportation, this has eaten at me. As a past board member with experience in governance, this has eaten at me. As a woman, this has eaten at me. As a lifetime cyclist, this has eaten at me. As a motorist since age 16, this has eaten at me. As a bicycling survivor to a vehicle impact, this has eaten at me (especially after this morning’s hit-and-run vehicular homicide of a 35-year-old bicyclist, again, struck down in my neighbourhood — just as Jenna Morrison was struck down a year ago, just as a 38-year-old woman had her pelvis crushed last week by a GFL truck, and just as a fellow bike messenger was struck down in the downtown core earlier this month).

I think you get the idea.

Maybe these and other experiences — some of which are intersectional — place me as “militant”, as one commenter to my last piece suggested it. That is, by the way, a splendid way to spurn wisdom, experiential knowledge, and specialized education from the conversation. It also discourages conversation. Moreover, I disagree with the suggestion, and I do so respectfully.

What was surprising were the many positive comments posted to Twitter. I say “surprising” because I generally have self-confidence issues with my capability to write. Most of the negatively disagreeable comments and down-votes, meanwhile, seemed to migrate their way to this blog.

Despite its name and the media-digestible image it presents, Cycle Toronto doesn’t begin to represent Toronto’s bicyclists, writ large. With up to a million adult cyclists riding in Toronto alone, as city staff member Dan Egan recently observed, a 2,500-member, pay-in club cannot begin to speak for every one of them, much less purport that it’s a centrist, sane, or even preferred advocate for those million cyclists.

It’s safe to say that the social diversity of bicyclists is as great, if not greater than those who opt for motorized vehicles over self-propelled mobility. It’s a diversity which I still hold is lost upon Cycle Toronto.

I won’t get into the habit of replying to comments with formal rebuttals like this. If anything, perhaps “never read the comments” is no less sage advice when it’s on your own blog. Still, a couple of points are worth reviewing.

Meslin: a voice for dues-paying cyclists

A prolix comment by Cycle Toronto’s founder Dave Meslin was at times patronizing. I don’t think he intended it this way, but it’s being checked as supercilious anyway. Meslin’s comment was considerably longer than the blog post.

I’ve been told that should this happen — comments out-wording the original post — then it’s a form of flattery.

While Meslin’s work as a community organizer in Toronto is at times laudable and inspiring (the Fourth Wall exhibit was a brilliant project and successful experiment for participatory citizenship, and I was grateful to attend the kick-off), it became clear from his meandering thoughts he was disdainful that another bicyclist could critically confront the relevance of his creation, Cycle Toronto.

[A word of basic advice: if one can't clearly voice an argument as a comment — or can't do so in clear, point-by-point form — then take the comment to your own blog. What not to do: appropriate another's blog by grandstanding and "teaching" someone how politics works, doing so as if they're five years old.]

To wit, Meslin’s comment included an unsolicited, 101-style primer on political organizing. He reductively positioned cycling advocates who have direct political involvement as citizen-cyclists as “militant”, “radical”, or “partisan” from his, I guess, world view of normativity, the mainstream, or fence-sitting — a world view which, I’m deducing, is broadly shared by the core of Cycle Toronto’s board of directors and staff.

Meslin’s didacticism was insulting on a few levels. It read as if I’d just fallen from some turnip truck and that my plea as a cyclist to lead a holistic planning approach for active transportation is somehow extreme.

His comment normalized Cycle Toronto as an ideal future to which our political roads as cyclists must somehow ultimately lead, and suggested that other diversified approaches may simply not be ready for prime time to appeal to some vague notion of centrism:

Any successful movement has to have multiple ‘wings’ or ‘arms’ that can implement different styles of advocacy. Take the environmental movement. On one side, you’ve got the far radicals like Earth First or the Earth Liberation Front who promote direct action … If anyone thinks we need a more radical cycling group, that is prepared to be more militant, or more partisan, or more ‘political’, or whatever, they should start one. And if anyone thinks we need a more moderate group, that doesn’t organise rallies and shout into megaphones, then they should organise one too. And/or, they should get involved with Cycle Toronto, as a voting member, join a subcommittee, join a local ward group, run for the Board of Directors, and try to shift the policy direction from inside.

This presents a problem: when hands-on involvement, ad hoc coalition-building, direct volunteerism, self-driven participation, and the facilitation of direct social engagement collide with Cycle Toronto’s traditional approach to organizing (a “pay to play” quasi-democracy), then only those from inside it are ushered to speak and be heard as votes of legitimacy — and under the organization’s rules. Those who aren’t inside it are urged to either join by becoming a formal member or go build a different clubhouse.

This is a hallmark of perpetuating a social provincialism which adversaries encourage to tear diverse groups apart from one another: a divide-and-conquer. It also means that anyone who can’t afford to join Cycle Toronto will never manage to find their way inside the board of directors to try to change things from within. On this, it’s an exclusive club.

Contrast this traditional model with, say, the entirely voluntary and inclusive approach to direct political participation facilitated by WiTOpoli — formally, Women in Toronto Politics. WiTOpoli is an approach to social participation facilitated by direct volunteerism, affirming intersectionality, and developing working coalitions to change political climates.

To affirm bicycling as political, despite the vacillation expressed by Cycle Toronto (and rationalized by Meslin’s comment), is to affirm that people are the cornerstone to active mobility. Active mobility is a cornerstone of both civic freedom and economic health. In short, one cannot ride a bicycle inside a city without that act being a consciously political one. Sorry.

Spinning Cycle Toronto as a mainstream or “centrist” organization is especially troublesome. Per Meslin’s argument, Cycle Toronto purports to function as a linear middle between two opposing schools — that this balance Cycle Toronto strikes is exactly where it (and we all) ought to be in order to reach the goals of, well, one of those schools (never mind that there are more than two schools, but anyway).

School #1 advocates a fairly reasonable, even conservative approach to holistic, multi-modal transportation development. It’s one in which planners, very experienced bicyclists, and active mobility advocates have brought to the table for several years in case study after case study (and often don’t need to fetishize the usual cities of Amsterdam or Copenhagen to evince their case).

This goes well beyond bicycles. Its approach is only “radical” in that this holism demands a broad, coalition-based commitment. It involves a shared understanding of its several and interlinked benefits. And, yes, this school asks others to have faith in that evidence-based knowledge to compel a mono-modal city to stop being mono-modal as a precondition for extending its economic and social health.

(In Meslin’s parlance, there are actually Earth Liberation Front-type bicycling activists far, far to the left of this school, but he seems to be conflating them with this school. Still, proscribing that direct brand of activism only encourages multi-modal adversaries to point at Cycle Toronto and say, “See? Even this bike group demonizes those cyclists! Cyclists are extreme! Don’t give them the road!” It seems woefully simplified, but that’s how a lot of people arrive to their quick rationale.)

For school #2, there’s a deep animus toward that multi-modal holism. It’s a guttural revanchism, injecting pure adrenaline into the failing heart of a socio-economic model centred around a singular mode of mobility which the 20th century proved cannot survive. Its bloviations are what keep most people distracted and preoccupied from listening to school #1.

On one hand, Mayor Ford’s caucus hopes cyclists will vanish from Toronto’s arterials. On the other, to use Meslin’s simplification, hands-on cycling activists, often working informally and volunteering their own time, may be too “radical”.

So if Cycle Toronto wants to take an implicitly middle approach between these two schools, then this “middle” is nothing better than a capitulation to keep school #2 in check from going altogether apoplectic, while hand-picking only the shiny parts from school #1 to champion those parts as tactical goals.

As we’ve seen with Jarvis, that’s gone really well.

Incidentally, tactical goals also make for great dog whistles. Moreover, the “middle ground” is not the same as a “coalition-based consensus”. Yes, as Meslin noted, Mayor Miller’s government failed to make serious headway on a bicycling network, but like Cycle Toronto, Miller’s government took the middle-ground and, as a result, made very little headway (which has largely been erased by Ford’s successor government).

Also, here’s another pro-tip: this isn’t just about bicycles. As a planner, I know it never has been. To believe, behave, or pretend otherwise will get us as citizen-bicyclists nowhere. Meslin’s world view re-iterates the core of my original posting — that Cycle Toronto’s mandate isn’t really in touch with the several diverse cyclists across both this entire city and its many socio-economic communities.

Meslin also name-dropped in his wordy comment the way an Oscar winner does, but that’s OK. I’ma let that slide.

In short, Cycle Toronto’s membership is but a fractional subset of Toronto’s bicycling population (less than a half per cent of all adult cyclists, probably even less when youth cyclists are included). It is arrogant to behave as if the Cycle Toronto subset speaks on behalf of all bicyclists under the aegis of a “mainstream”. All it does is ostracize the very bicyclists for which it should be advocating.

If you don’t like us, join us. If you don’t join us . . .

Other comments spanned from outright trolling to “if you don’t like how we’re doing it, then join us and play within our rules to change it.”

The short rebuttal: thank you, but no thanks.

Not only is that a bully tactic, it’s also a subtext in which Cycle Toronto is either the only game in town or else the only game which should be considered a “normative” group to which cyclists should coalesce. I don’t understand why someone would pay to join an organization, whose mandate they don’t even support, just to change that organization from the inside — when there are a wealth of other diversified approaches to more directly improve the state of bicycling around Toronto’s many parts. Maybe it’s a boost to organizational ego.

When I posted “Join Cycle Jarvis”, I was aware that at the very least, there’d be some disagreement (if there hadn’t, I’d be somewhat worried). At most, what I hoped for was the beginning of a dialogue unvarnished by a numbing tone of public relations which tends to line a traditionally-structured organization.

In a second comment, the416anthill remarked that:

“Cycle Toronto is made of people. Wish they’d do something different? Join (or start) a ward group and lead your neighbors [sic] and fellow members to take actions you feel are important. Run for the board and, when elected by your bicycling peers, become part of the ‘bloated entity’ of 2 paid staff and a handful of volunteers.”

Thank you. I’ve already done something different. Actually, I’ve done a few things differently.

My desire to confront Toronto’s political state of bicycling in an open, productive, and participatory direction is precisely why I chose to start this conversation. It is why I’m confronting points critically and have begun to address some of the core issues which I feel have set us backwards as bicyclists. But Cycle Toronto is neither the alpha nor omega of this larger discussion.

By speaking up, though, I’ve compelled some of Cycle Toronto’s members to do something different: they are voluntarily defending the organization’s core values before a mixed audience — mixed, in that many of us cyclists aren’t members. I’m finding that those core values don’t necessarily mesh with the core values of Toronto’s diverse cyclists overall.

Speaking up like this was possible without having to wait to raise a hand at a Cycle Toronto annual general meeting (it gets “bloated” when even a fraction of 2,500 members want to speak on a topic at such an AGM). I find this hopeful, as I’m neither a member nor do I concur that being coerced into becoming one is the key, if not only way I have as a citizen bicyclist to effect substantive political and social change for Toronto’s bicyclists. Realizing this also bodes hopeful for the many bicyclists who can’t join the membership ranks of Cycle Toronto because of financial barriers, or for cyclists who pay a short visit to our city and wouldn’t have a reason to join.

Getting Cycle Toronto to change in ways which won’t disrupt its organizational apple cart is not what wakes me up each morning. What motivates me is action-oriented intervention by people who can lead by example to make little differences. Little earthquakes, if you will.

In order to be in a place in which bicyclists aren’t in constant peril on roads or in committee rooms, there are three things I want to see happen.

One: going beyond wards

First, I want us to recognize that Toronto’s culture of bicycling cannot be broken down organically by neighbourhood or ward. It must be broken down to the situational conditions giving rise to why cyclists are riding in the first place. Key to creating an ironclad cycling community is to observe and listen to what those cultures are and the barriers confronting each. Not all barriers are physical. Some ride for pleasure. Some ride as commuters. Some practise for light competition. Some ride as guests. Some ride everywhere (and nearly all of the time). Some ride for running errands. Some eke their living by the pedal. Some ride because they cannot afford other means for rapid mobility.

Only a fraction of these cyclists are being acknowledged by Cycle Toronto. What I’ve come to see in its agenda is a homogenizing for which cyclists matter the most. Some of that homogeneity is founded on geography, and some of it is founded on social class.

Given that any sample population of cyclists within a ward rides for very different reasons and will hail from many different social and economic backgrounds (often traversing across several wards within any given day), then it would be reasonable to meet those cyclists on terms most familiar to their riding routines. Listen to those terms. What matters most is why they ride, not where they reside.

Understanding (and accepting) that several cyclists cannot afford to shell out annual dues (or fail to see how doing so will improve their day-to-day riding circumstances) is a first step to recognize their needs will probably not be acknowledged at Cycle Toronto AGMs (and probably not during board meetings, either). This presents a challenge to find better ways to listen and to consider those needs.

Further, to affirm the why of cyclists’ habits is to affirm the many ways cyclists are economic generators and why they become integral to improving the economic prognosis of Toronto. I’ve started referring to this idea as velonomics, and it’s an open dialogue I hope to have with other cyclists in forthcoming discussions.

Two: holism in urban planning

Second, I want us to acknowledge what holistic urban planning means, and to compel urban planners, elected public officials, and developers to heed that holism seriously. In short, tactical planning campaigns like Jarvis aren’t going to solve multi-modal infrastructure barriers. Tactical planning campaigns aren’t necessarily proofs-of-concept, either. Tactical planning campaigns won’t stop needless vehicle fatalities (and that goes for car-on-car fatalities, too).

Yes, as tactical goes, Jarvis comes to mind here, as does the campaign for the Bloor bike lanes. But it’s most reflected by the inconsistency between different patchwork approaches for multi-modal movement without a clear logic behind why, say, Roncesvalles must be so different from Sherbourne, College, or Spadina.

Holistic planning doesn’t begin or end with cyclists, but cyclists are integral to this principle of holism. I turn to brothers Enrique and Gil Peñalosa as champions and leader for such holistic planning. If you want to see how its done, these brothers can show you the way. We are especially fortunate that one of those brothers lives and works right here in Toronto, just as we were especially fortunate that Jane Jacobs once called Toronto her home.

Holism is affirming that the scale of moving about (and the commerce arising from it) must not only begin around the scale of a human being, but is also aware how traditional planning decisions have isolated people from one another — sometimes wilfully (segregating mixed-income housing to far-flung, inaccessible corners of the city), and sometimes obliviously (encouraging people to depend on their own private cars, completely isolated from anyone beyond their car).

Further to this, heeding small details should not be micromanaged by city council, much less coerced by semi-private bodies such as BIAs or resident associations. Holistic planning is concerned with the health of small details, but it does so by planning at the city/region-wide level and allowing the small details to be developed at either the neighbourhood or ward level.

Toronto, as a city, is still functionally planned as at least three, maybe four discrete cities, as evidenced by the vestigial placeholder of community councils — despite the post-amalgamation official plan, and despite several difficult efforts to harmonize pre-amalgamation planning by-laws. So in a sense, holistic planning runs at odds with our current structure of intra-urban governance. This has to change.

Three: using all the tools

Three: I want us to corral together every legal instrument we as cyclists currently have at our disposal to assert our space as cyclists — whether that means “taking the lane”, being highly visible, or looking after one another to stop hybridizing ourselves as “sometimes-vehicles, sometimes-pedestrians.” In addition, there needs to be a devoted effort to focus on making sure that everyone who mounts a bicycle knows which legal instruments which they are both protected by and obligated to know.

Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act, §147, is one place to start. Understanding what it means to be visible to other people, night or day, is another. As with motorists, cyclists putting away and even silencing handsets whilst in any kind of navigational motion must not be something elective. It must be mandatory. No excuses, ever. Don’t do it to keep yourself safe. Do it to keep everyone else alive and safe.

In short, as an experienced cyclist, I am aware of when co-cyclists aren’t aware of these tools. And yes, I have watched quite a few bicyclists pressing a handset to their ear whilst in motion (at least once, I noted that the cyclist had an orange Cycle Toronto sticker affixed to his shiny rear fender — an off-white Linus bike, incidentally).

Get to know the principles of “Ride, Occupy, Survive” in this piece I wrote a year ago. Swear by them, especially the part about getting bright lights on your bike and being extremely visible at night or at dawn and dusk (emphasis intentional). Hold your legal ground whilst on the road. Every time you cede your legal relevance on the road, you give those in much bigger vehicles the latitude to bully you like you’re road chattel. It also emotes the message that every other cyclist is no more relevant or worth watching out for than you are.

As mentioned in my last posting, I’ll be examining these legal instruments with greater detail.

Another concern the416anthill mentioned:

And while small is beautiful, size matters when it comes to being able to credibly threaten ‘political peril’ to your opponents. Cycle Toronto cannot hurt Denzil Minnan-Wong ‘at home’ in his ward. The Ward 34 group has 5 active members. Until Cycle Toronto can influence ward voting as much as BIAs and Residents’ Associations, it will not be able to play political hardball.

I think we’ve already covered this topic. Cycle Toronto puts on a face before all of Toronto, just as Councillor Minnan-Wong does. Like Minnan-Wong does with his ward, Cycle Toronto only represents a fraction of Toronto’s cyclists. And yet, Cycle Toronto, like Minnan-Wong, could deliver — if it so chose — a strong message, city-wide, condemning his behaviour as a once-member just as he delivered a strong message, city-wide, that citizens are to be treated subservient to other citizens the moment they grab a U-lock and helmet instead of car keys.

Cycle Toronto didn’t do that. Whether by vote or by fiat, they didn’t even bother. Instead, as Meslin noted, Cycle Toronto cowed from a Public Works and Infrastructure Committee chair whose vested interests never had the welfare of bicyclists in mind. The PWIC chair never had any interest to work in good faith with bicyclists, and if one was paying attention, this was evident well before the July 2011 vote. He used Cycle Toronto like he would use a condom. There’s no less an indelicate way of putting it.

Also, try not to compare Cycle Toronto with the legal structure of the BIA, whose powers to levy compulsory taxes (“dues”) on members originates with the province — a concept Ontario pioneered in 1970 when Queens Park gave the constitutional power of taxation to private bodies. That’s yet another blog posting on urban history, economics, and planning holism worth going into some other time.

And to finish:

It’s fun to criticize, and it serves a purpose. But criticism alone won’t “steer” Cycle Toronto.

No, it isn’t fun to lay out a critical case. It’s actually hard work, and it comes with knowing that some will needle at you and not the merits of the case. You are correct on the latter: I’m not invested in “steering” Cycle Toronto. Instead, I will leave that to you and your fellow members to review, if at all.

[Editor note: because this is a rebuttal, comments are closed.]