Wal Mart, Google and bike lanes

Now that the decision has been made to remove two major sections of Red Deer's pilot project into bike lanes a full year early, people have asked: "What happens next?" 

The short answer: What will happen, will happen; the best you can do is adapt.

The long answer is more complicated. It involves the way people decide to live their lives, and the futility of thinking anyone can engineer the behaviour of large groups.

The current conclusion is that changing large group behaviour simply can't be done. So building bike lanes to encourage more cycling -- purely as a social experiment -- is irrelevant. On the flip side, seeking to marginalize alternative means of moving through the city -- as a cost-saving or even a safety measure -- won't work, either.

Check the opening essay in this week's Maclean's. It's about how Wal Mart changed the retail industry in Canada, and how it might save the economy of India. There are interesting thoughts there, but the conclusion is backwards.

City councils and advocacy groups all over Canada tried to ban Wal Mart from their regions. They failed. Maclean's calls that a triumph of Wal Mart's business strategy.

I say that's wrong thinking. Wal Mart succeeds because it gives customers what they want. They recognized what the large group was going to do anyway, and made their decisions easier.

That's the big-picture premise of a 2009 book by Jeff Jarvis titled: What Would Google Do? You can look up Jarvis' considerable credentials yourself; that's what Google is for.

His idea is that companies like Google, Facebook and Ebay didn't create the revolution into online billion-dollar profits, they simply made it easier for people to do something they would have done anyway.

You can't stop that sort of change. The mighty government of China can't even do that. But you can make huge profits by joining in.

Here's how that relates to urban cycling. The change in group behaviour here is small, but irrevocable. People ride bikes because they decide to ride bikes; because it makes sense to them.

Ninety per cent of Red Deer car trips are one person per car. The vast majority of those trips are five kilometers or less.

For a growing portion of Red Deer it makes more sense to walk or to ride a bike -- economic, environmental and health-wise. There's profit to be made (and tax money to be saved) assisting the inevitable change in that 90 per cent figure -- which you can't avoid, no matter how loudly you yell at city council.

Red Deer is growing by 10 per cent every five years. That's logarithmic growth, which only accelerates, and is already faster than the city can build new streets, especially in the city centre.

City planners know Red Deer will soon be unable to carry its traffic, if we continue our current behaviour. It will be gridlock. So they (being engineers) are trying to encourage alternatives.

Good luck. Changing behaviour can't be done. You can only profit from assisting the choices that people have already made and will make as time goes by.

We will have gridlock. Or not. Would it help if we made it easier to walk, or cycle through Red Deer instead?

To the end of violence

The lead article in Monday's Advocate (Seek peace, not revenge) was a bit of a jolt for me. You wouldn't think routine news coverage of Earthdance in Red Deer would disturb anyone's morning coffee, but Lorinda Stewart's honest and heartfelt accounting of what goes into the souls of victims of violence shook up memories that sometimes refuse to stay buried.

Stewart's daughter Amanda Linhout was kidnapped, terrorized and tortured for 460 days in Somalia. Our son was attacked, beaten and left on death's door on the streets of Red Deer. For both our families, time is measured by those events -- things that happened before then, and things that happened after.

Lorinda Stewart's account of the places she went to is common to all who experience violence. Degrees may vary, but I have no doubt the dark night of the soul settles on all who must face outrage and injustice. Rage, desire for revenge, questioning the goodness of both God and humanity, all these things arise. 

At night just before sleep and at the gray hours before waking, thoughts bubble into consciousness that cause you to question your identity. Is this who I am now -- a person who wants to punish, perhaps even kill? Am I losing my mind?

Stewart, to her credit, found her way out of the darkness, as every person must who wishes to be a human with integrity still intact. She declares the way to regaining peace is through forgiveness of the people who did these unspeakable things to her daughter. I can attest that the way is not easy.

I believe that the darkness never really goes away. Maybe it's always there, in all of us, waiting for an excuse to be released.

But as Stewart found, as I found, as many other people far more brave than me have found, it's not darkness or light in your heart that defines you. It's what you choose to do with it.

As angry as I was, I decided to volunteer at Potters Hand kitchen for about three years. I don't know how many times I walked home after a 14-hour day wondering if I had cooked a good dinner, served it and washed up afterward for the person who tried to murder a member of my family. It turns out, after all those dinners, I hadn't. 

But for one's own health, it is better to do this, than to give in. It is better to build a network of community care for people who unjustly suffered severe injuries in the whole province than to seek revenge on the person who caused the one case known to you.

Stewart and Lindhout raise money for the Global Enrichment Foundation to support and educate Somali women so that they may become able to break the cycle of violence in their own lives.

It is easy to do good when all in life is good. It is a powerful thing, I believe, to do good to find a way out of darkness. For this, I am happy for Lorinda Stewart. It is better, in the light.

It's not easy being an Oilers fan

An artist's concept drawing of the new arena for the Edmonton Oilers. It sure looks world class, 
but class does not extend to building it with the tax dollars of Albertans 
who will never afford the ticket price of an NHL game.

It's not the easiest thing, being an Oilers fan these days. Well, perhaps not the most fanatical fan, but everyone needs a favourite team, and the Oilers have been my team since before they entered the NHL. For a long time now, that's meant tempering expectations with patience. Next year always seems to be a better place.

But with the lockout begun, this year doesn't look to be like the next year that last year promised.

There being no NHL season to distract us, we spend our hockey energies watching the Oilers owner Dary Katz in his game of nerves with the City of Edmonton, on the building of the team's new arena. In this contest, I'm backing Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel and his council. 

The city has already pledged plenty of city resources and money into the project, with no guarantee that their ratepayers will see a return on money already invested. So Mandel and city alderpeople are balking at another $6 million subsidy the Oilers owners group says had always been part of their agreement with the city.

The $475 million project to replace the aging and inadequate Rexall Place hinges on an unrealized promise of $100 million in backing from the province. We have had three provincial premiers who have categorically declared that's not going to happen. But, as governors the world over have famously said: what's $100 million?

Supporters of public investment in professional sports facilities will tell you $100 million is far less than the tax revenue the province would reap from income and business taxes from all the economic activity that surrounds a pro sports franchise, plus taxes on booze and gambling returns that flow on game days. The same argument is applied to the host city -- and Edmonton's city council agreed to the tune of $125 million.

A world-class city needs a pro sports team, the theory goes. And what big shot businessman wants to invest in a city where you can't buy luxury box seats, and write them off as a company expense?

Mandel and council are confident a majority of taxpayers support them this far, if grudgingly. Well and good. Being world class is a laudable goal.

But I don't buy the economic arguments, and neither should Alberta taxpayers. CBC Radio has already reported in various NHL cities about how bar and restaurant owners are laying off staff, since their revenues are expected to drop during the NHL lockout. Those are real jobs, real lives affected.

They compose a valid local business argument, but it's not evidence of loss for either the city, the province or their general taxpayers.

Economics dictate that all money in an economy is always eventually spent. Even money sitting idle in savings -- think of the mountains of cash held by big corporations -- even that must eventually be spent. There's a law somewhere that dictates that. If I perish with $10.82 to the good, my heirs will jointly spend it. You can't take it with you.

Therefore, even though restaurants, bars and stores that sell overpriced NHL jerseys will suffer, the money they would have gained will be spent -- and taxed -- elsewhere. Economic activity around NHL hockey will drop during the lockout, but activity in a hundred other areas will gain.

If this game between Katz and city council goes badly wrong, the Oilers might leave town. That would leave fans like me in a sad quandary (I can't even think about being a Flames fan without some degree of pain). But it would not hurt taxpayers like me in the least.

On the other hand, putting my tax money into the pockets of millionaire team owners and millionaire players is a dead loss. There's zero profit to be made, and that's money that could be better spent making Edmonton and Alberta world class in other ways.

Either outcome in this game makes it even harder to be an Oilers fan. But on the whole, I'd rather the team supported itself through ticket sales, TV revenue and merchandizing, than tax dollars.

Not enough maturity on city council

Here's a photo emailed to me from Saturday's bike parade,
taken an hour before the event began.  It was intended to be 
"evidence"that Red Deer does not have enough cyclists 
to warrant safe passage in the city. The photographer 
was also upset the start of the parade was 15 minutes late.

As of last Saturday's bike parade on the city's new lanes, less than two weeks had passed since the last of them had been painted. By then, changes-on-the-go were already being made. Timing of traffic lights were being altered to make one-lane streets flow more smoothly, some confusing line configurations were improved.

But before the project had even been fully installed, city staff were being inundated with hateful and abusive messages. One city employee let slip to me that people opposed to the bike lanes were using homophobic references -- on city answering machines -- to register their wrath. I understand that very few complaints referred to the substance of public safety and civic development. It was mostly just wrath.

Reacting like a lifelong newspaperman, I asked why nobody called the paper to make it public that city staff were being abused and bullied. "I want to keep my job," was the reply.

This is the level of discourse in Red Deer? These are the opinions that cause city city councillors to run like bullied children on  a playground?

I was surprised at how quickly city council folded in the face the long-expected blowback that always occurs when progressive decisions like this are made. Councillors Buck Buchanan, Chris Stephan, Dianne Wyntjes, Frank Wong and Tara Veer made the majority in a 5-4 vote to remove the sections of the pilot project that had no doubt caused the city the most grief.

They are also the sections that provide the most safety and connectivity for cyclists, but those concerns came second in these councillors' minds.

Stephan was at pains Monday to say that he is not "against cyclists" but the city has a $200 million debt, and since there are apparently so few active cyclists, well, safety and connectivity are less important.

That's politician weasel talk. The city's capital debt is a well-managed, well-planned mortgage on important projects that have very little to do with bikes. None of the money spent on bike lanes would have reduced that debt. 

In truth, infrastructure for cycling has been shown in North America and the world over to be a huge cost saving for cities who show the courage and vision to use them well. They cost a fraction of the money spent building and maintaining streets and sidewalks (which also get very little use). They reduce traffic congestion, and help make cities cleaner. 

Cycle commuters have been shown to be more productive, less-stressed workers. They take far fewer sick days, keeping a tighter lid on the cost of group health plans for employers in those cities. They slow the growth of need for parking space on very costly downtown land.

There really is no valid economic argument against encouraging more people to walk and bike. Driving is more expensive by far, for everybody -- including the city budget.

This morning, I needed to be at Eastside Auto Pro (40th Ave. and Ross St.) for a 7:45 a.m. appointment. In the space of roughly 45 minutes needed to complete my appointment, I saw 12 cyclists. Nine were on the soon-to-be-removed bike lane, two were on the sidewalk, and one was in the very centre of the driving lane.

A mature leader makes a decision and sticks with it until the decision can be fully judged. If the decision was wrong, changes are made with specific improvements to propose -- including built-in timelines. Council did not show much maturity Monday night. That's disappointing.

Greg Neiman is a former editor of the Red Deer Advocate. Email greg.neiman.blog.gmail.com

Measure the cost of extremism

Protesters in Karachi, Pakistan, who may not even have access
to the internet video that offended them.
This photo is from Monday's edition of Pakistan Today.

In every group, in every family, you will probably find individuals who fill the room with eggshells. Walk softly, be careful what you say, don't sit in certain chairs, consider closely what you laugh at; someone might be offended and cause a scene.

Muslim extremists in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India and other countries already have closed down freedom of speech in their regions for all people -- even those who simply wish for peace. They also use violence and threats of violence to extend their powers beyond their borders, trying to control what people in free countries can say, see and hear as well.

Because they say they are "offended."

The internet video "Innocence of Muslims" can indeed be offensive to Islam, just as countless movies, books, plays and instances of ordinary speech can be offensive to Christians, or to the holders of any faith. The degree of offense taken that began the riots that shut down Western embassies in a number of countries does not justify the violence and killing that hateful clerics foment. Religious leaders can be violent and hateful for political gain, and the world should recognize when religious leaders tell violent lies in the same manner that we recognize the lies of anyone who promotes hateful acts as a means of exercising power.

I'm glad I am not a cabinet minister who must decide when and where to close an embassy in a country that has lost the ability to act rationally. It's hard enough in families and groups to decide when the cost of interacting with individuals with hateful spirits becomes too high. Higher than the cost of watching when people who should know better isolate themselves in their perceived grievances.

But isolation is just part of the plan for the clerics who incite riots over "insults" that occur thousands of miles away. They want to keep their minions poor, ignorant, under control and expendable. That's why if Canada must close embassies in countries run by religious thugs, we should not be cutting aid to their victims.

Like many Canadians, I question the overall effectiveness of Canada's international aid program. I can't see for myself if the results are worth the expense. But I have been part of an international aid mission that didn't cost a lot, but has certainly done a lot of good for the people we visited.

I also support and admire the work of local groups like A Better World, who work directly with people in their communities, who fight the fires of hatred and hopelessness, with water, food and education.

If you want to be angry with the religious extremists who abuse and misdirect their followers, who send them further into despair and even death . . . well, that's just the reaction of someone who's rational. But we should also feel pity for the people who are consumed by their lies. We should not abandon them.

Greg Neiman is a former editor at the Red Deer Advocate. Please comment below, or email him at greg.neiman.blog.gmail.com

A link you might like

Hello Readers!

New as I am to this technology, I am attempting to place a link to a new article about modern cities becoming more bike-friendly. It's from the Bicycle Times web site: www.bicyletimesmag.com. The article is about Indianapolis and it's mayor.

Go to http://www.bicycletimesmag.com/content/bike-infrastructure-booming-indianapolis if my high-tech attempts to create an actual link fail.

Enjoy, and know that progress is happening everywhere. So it can happen here, too.

http://www.bicycletimesmag.com/content/bike-infrastructure-booming-indianapolis

Ride safe, and eat apples

First, a quick note on the proper use of the bike trails: 

A friend asked me if it is appropriate to drive on the bike lanes, to allow police, fire or ambulance traffic to pass.

I say: by all means, pull over onto the bike lanes for this purpose. Just make sure you're not squeezing some poor cyclist between your vehicle and the curb. Let the emergency vehicles pass -- on streets with bike lanes there should be ample room --  and be glad that this time round, the bell does not toll for you.

Now, on to more daily matters ... like food.

When Mother Nature turns the dial from summer to autumn, it's a full-on race for me to get the apples picked, the garden harvested and yard work done by freeze-up. Maybe it's just a seasonally-piqued awareness, but I've come across a number of items recently linked to food issues and population, and about how my boxes of local apples and garden potatoes are not insignificant parts of a global change in sustainable growth in food supply.

A few weeks back, I found a book called Foodshed, by Dee Hobsbawn-Smith. She's a Calgary restaurateur-turned-writer now living near Saskatoon. She calls herself "dee" in the book, but you can call her "Dee" if you want to. The book's title recalls our understanding of "watershed," how water flows from small creeks and streams, coming together into rivers, adding to the ocean's whole. Her premise is that our food supply works the same way -- and a growing number of international experts on sustainability agree with her.

Foodshed is a listing of 75 Alberta food growers she's met and visited over the years, who make up the next wave of sustainable farming (not to be confused with industrial agriculture). She lists them alphabetically, from asparagus, to zucchini. You shouldn't be surprised to discover that more than half of these farmers are within an easy day's drive of Red Deer. Vegetables, fruit, berries, lambs, chickens, beef, goats, bison, flowers, seeds, grains and herbs -- nearly the whole panoply of a complete and healthy diet -- can be found within easy reach by any of us. More local growers (and customers) are being added to the CSA system of food production every year. That's Community Supported Agriculture, where growers sell "shares" of their production every year, getting paid up-front for the coming year's harvest. The buyer shares the risk and the rewards of the grower's expertise. The grower has an assured cash flow to help make it pay.

This is not news in Central Alberta. But I found a couple of recent links to the issue in this month's National Geographic magazine, and in an archived CBC podcast called Feeding 10 Billion that show how Alberta, if not a leader in this trend, is certainly part of a new look at growing food, to make it possible for people to be have a healthy diet, and for local farm families to make a living on the land.

The magazine reference came in one of their many neat charts, this one talking about the "water footprint" of various crops -- how it takes way more water to produce a pound of beef than practically any other foodstuff, and comparing water use for just about all things agricultural. The reference to food production was in a footnote that said world food experts now recognize that small, local landholders are now key to global food self-sufficiency. Like the local growers that dee lists in her book Foodshed.

That is further supported by the CBC podcast, wherein Raj Patel, who once worked for the World Bank, cited Canadian research into the efficiency of small producers to do a better job of reliably feeding the world -- without the need for genetically-modified seeds, without expensive fertilizers and sprays, and without economic tyanny of transnational corporations. 

The conclusions of Patel, Hobsbawn-Smith and a growing number of experts are that industrial agriculture works well as an industry (given enough government handouts, marketing boards and tariff supports), but the next wave of the green revolution for a planet of 10 billion hungry mouths will be made of small landholders who have intimate knowledge of their climate and agricultural zones, and of the natural forces that make their land bountiful and resilient through change.

And that if every back yard grew fruit like my apple trees do, Red Deer would be a net exporter.

Ride safe, and eat apples.

Greg Neiman is a former editor of the Red Deer Advocate. Please reply to greg.neiman.blog.gmail.com.

Critical mass, progress cannot be stopped

Across North America, progress in cities has always been a step-forward-step-backward affair. There are people in Edmonton and Calgary who railed against their LRT systems as wasteful expenses -- or who said they support these things in principle, just not the routes the planners had chosen. 

The discussion about bike lanes everywhere is especially acidic. The rancour here is nothing special; it's just part of a repeating pattern.

Harsh opposition to cyclists is not a function of city size, either. There have been campaigns in New York City to remove bike lanes. The mayor of Toronto has been bellicose in his opposition to bike travel, but then again, he is bellicose about nearly everything.

Rather like Red Deer city councillor Chris Stephan, whose voting record has been to oppose just about everything the city does. Now he wants the city to remove our small incursion into bike lanes, because of the flood of complaints he's gotten about them. If enough people complained about a ban on burning witches, he'd likely be against that, too.

Examples of successful support for people's choices in how they move around are not limited to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Paris, Montreal, Vancouver, Portland or Seattle. They went through their growing pains, too, but medium-sized cities like Billings, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Fargo, Eugene, Little Rock, Sioux Falls, Gary -- as far as Anchorage, and many others -- all went through the same process Red Deer is experiencing. And today they are listed among the top 50 cities in North America for being bike-friendly.

Some complainers characterize people who ride bikes as "the other." As if cyclists are an aberrant minority whose choices ought not be considered. We're your neighbours and fellow taxpayers who happen to prefer (or need) to commute by bike from time to time. We are as entitled to safety as anyone else, and we pay our full share for city infrastructure. 

In fact, if you think taxes are too high, you should encourage more cycling, because riding a bike -- including  its infrastructure -- is vastly cheaper and more efficient than any other kind of transport. If it can be done safely.

The emergence of bike lanes here is an expression of a change in attitude and desire of a significant portion of this city. The era of cities built around automobiles is not over -- yet. But there is a significant group that questions why we should need to drive a car for every errand or activity. Significant enough in Red Deer to demand that our legal choices be respected. A critical mass? We'll see.

We're in a state of change. That so many people are so upset with Red Deer's bike lanes indicates the profound nature of the change. But this process must continue, if Red Deer is to grow. Bikes replaced horses in North American cities, and cars replaced bikes. Now bikes are becoming popular and useful again.

Red Deer has not experienced upsetting events, such as Critical Mass, where hundreds of cyclists suddenly show up, clog main arteries for a short period, and then disperse -- sometimes after arrests have been made of both cyclists and drivers. They are part of this process, too. Rather, we law-abiding Red Deerians will quietly gather Saturday at St. Thomas Aquinas at 9 a.m., and enjoy a little bike ride downtown.

Not enough, in my view. But progress has always been step-forward-step-backward. Everyone needs a little patience here, even me.

Greg Neiman is a former editor at the Red Deer Advocate. Please reply to greg.neiman.blog.gmail.com.

I. AM. A. HOUSEWIFE!

In the last municipal election (or was it the one before? When you get old, you lose track of the timing of events), I was assigned to cover the campaign in a series of columns. In a piece introducing the candidates, I referred to Cindy Jefferies as a "housewife." At the time, she was indeed "at home" and I was grasping at the old paradigm of defining people by their work and careers.

Well, all heck and dang-nation ensued. How dare I? Of course, the critics were right. It's not right to characterize people by their careers -- although it is much easier now to refer to Cindy Jefferies as a city councillor who I happen to very much admire.

Karma has a way of being circular, and I can no longer define myself by an active career. By my own previous definition, I am now a "housewife." My wife Joyce brings home the bacon, and I fry it up and serve it when she gets home. I cook, I clean, I put up jam and pickles. I do the "small" shopping, since Joyce does not fully trust me to do the "big" shopping myself. It's her money, after all, and I can be distractible. She also insists on doing the laundry, despite my protests that as a former professional photographer, I know to separate black and white clothes into one pile, and colour clothes into another. 

I keep a list of things that need to be done, in case I forget and have an afternoon nap.

But most days now, the home is my responsibility. Keeping house does indeed fill your days. I find that although I am on my feet and moving around far more now than when I was "working," I have less time for real exercise. At least I used to ride my bike to work. So I am grateful to the Primary Care Network for their ongoing Trek program. 

Which reminds me: I need to get my Wikki Walkers team registered. Better put that on the list. You should join, too. Go to http://stepsout.com/rdpcn/ and sign up for a virtual hike of the Rocky Mountains.

This week, our church's ladies Bible study group met at our house. Apparently, there's a rotation. So the house (well, the main floor and bathrooms anyway) were clean. There was a nicely-appointed fruit and cheese tray, and a dessert. There was be coffee, tea -- even homemade beer, if anyone asked for it. 

I looked forward to the accomplishment of doing it right. A self-grade: dusting was a bit insufficient, I forgot to put fresh towels in the main bathroom, and I messed up the alternate dessert: almond butter squares. But the rest was good. Make it a B, and leave room for improvement.

From now on, if I'm asked to fill out some survey form or other, and there's a box where you list your occupation, I'm writing in "housewife." After all, anyone could just say "blogger."

Greg Neiman is a former editor of the Red Deer Advocate. Please comment below, or email greg.neiman.blog.gmailcom

Can't Let It Slide

Hope you had a great long weekend, and are ready for another school cycle. Here's something from my Can't Let It Slide Department.

There are four unsound complaints about the bike lanes that keep cropping up online and in the Advocate letters column about Red Deer's new bike lanes. They have even been used by some of the Advocate's own columnists. Let's debunk them now, so we can move on to a more useful discussion about safe and efficient transit in the city for everyone.

-- People weren't consulted -- This is simply not true. The consultation about bike lanes and transit in general has been going on for years, and has been one of the deepest and widest public consultations on a city project that I've seen in my many years as an Advocate editor. And I've seen (and commented) on a lot of them. Anyone who says they woke up and was surprised to find bike lanes on the streets must be an incredibly deep sleeper. Besides, the very existence of these lanes is itself part of the consultation process. Sheesh.

-- Bike lanes waste tax dollars -- Any time somebody doesn't like something City Council does, they scream "they're wasting our tax money!" and think that makes them credible. It doesn't. The roads and streets of Red Deer must have cost over a billion dollars over the years, and this year's investment in safe travel is a small sliver of a tenth of a per cent of that. Making travel through Red Deer safe, efficient and pleasant is not a waste of money. If safety and efficiency do not result from this and if the experience of getting around in our city is not enhanced, then the city will need to make changes. But don't whine about your taxes every time you have to learn something new.

-- The hiking/biking trails are enough -- They aren't, and people who need to get to work on foot or by bike know that. If trails were indeed enough, we wouldn't be having this discussion now. We'd be talking about congestion on the trails, because everyone would be using them instead of their cars. There are large gaps the recreational trails don't cover and there need to be safe on-street "bridges" across them. Half a bridge is no bridge at all. Besides, to complete their argument, it must be asked, with the thousand kilometers-plus of streets in Red Deer, cannot motorists begrudge even a couple of meters-wide strip in some small portion of the city? Neither side of this argument holds water, so let's dump it entirely.

-- Cyclists are too small a minority to make lanes worth trying -- This pilot project is not just about the present, it is about the future. Red Deer isn't inventing anything here; cycling, walking and public transit are big concerns in every city that wants to grow. Not everyone in Red Deer drives a truck (or can afford to). We are getting more diverse every year, and that diversity expresses itself in the way people choose to move. Saying that people who walk or ride aren't worth even something as small as this pilot project shows a reactionary side of Red Deer culture that is frankly not very pleasant to see.

Judge this project on its merits, not on whether it forces people to adapt to change.

Greg Neiman is a former Advocate editor. Please leave your comments here, or email greg.neiman.blog.gmail.com