The author of this blog has allowed me to tell you about our movement. I'm a member of the Urban Transit Guerrillas (the UTG) in Toronto.
We are an underground movement that attempts to get people out of their cars. It is a daunting mission. We do so because urban transit needs riders to justify its demands for money, but ridership only goes up once enormous amounts of money is spent.
Toronto's transit system has languished because of this Catch 22 problem, and we of the UTG have decided to force the matter by sabotaging the motorist's experience. We are NOT violent, but we are determined. Typically we make the motorists life HELL.
What do we do?
We capitalize on all those many nuisances a car driver will deal with in the course of their daily commute. For example, some of our members may work on road construction sites, narrowing lanes for work that will only be starting the next day. Others push cross-walk buttons as often as possible during rush-hour.
One of our most popular (and effective) activities takes place along the busy highways running into and out of the city; originally, one of our members managed to talk his buxom stripper girlfriend to walk with him along the median between east and westbound lanes during rush hour. Brother, that tied up traffic for miles!!
She has since left him, but another member has stepped up to the mission; a transvestite who loves the attention. Lately however, we've found that even a bald old poop with a moose-horn hat can snarl traffic.
We also have autophiles among our membership. Many have rare and/or antique automobiles that they argue thay can't enjoy because the motoring experience has been overrun by way too many cars. Rarely can they take their valuable cars for a spin for fear that some snoozer on their cellphone will smash into them.
For awhile, we had infiltrated the nerve center of the traffic light co-ordinating office, and managed to set traffic light timing so that a driver just kept missing the green lights as they proceeded along some of the major streets. Unfortunately our man retired. We're looking for new talent.
We have many honorary members as well. These people are professionals when it comes to souring the driving experience, like all of tow truck drivers, parking police, parking lot attendants, taxis, etc. You get the idea.
Our American counterparts, collectively know as the Transit Rebels, are having a trickier time since Homeland Security harrasses all underground movements. However, they still make headway. They have better success getting their recruited truck drivers to clog roadways.
We recognize the value that the car is capable of adding to modern life, but we also know that excess is NOT best, when the most expensive luxury ladened car is still no more than an noisy, polluting chair that its frustrated occupant has chosen to drag around because s/he wont consider alternatives.
Urban transit is like any other aspect of social existence: it requires our cumulative energies to work. To neglect this because 'I don't want to stand on a crowded bus full of smelly people' means that for all the taxes you pay to live within a city full of conveniences, an inordinate amount will need to go to support the added infrastructure for your car. While some amount is necessary, huge snaking roadways are a sinkhole for cash.
Eventually, urban densities will squeeze out the real estate hogging needs that your ton and a half of metal requires; we can already see that in London, England. Also, there's the matter of those walks to and from the bus stop that your doctor has been telling you you need in order to lose a couple of pounds.
So if you have a bus or subway or commuter train stop close by, but you still insist on driving, remember, we're out to get YOU.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
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8 comments:
Go UTG! Your kind of civil disobedience is an under-used resource.
If you need help, ask the drivers from Tennessee to come for a visit. They accomplish so effortlessly all the things you're having to work at. Put up a sign at the border that says "Free Pork Rinds and Pabst" and we'll be there pronto.
More seriously, traffic problems in Canada must be difficult to bear. During the trips I've made there, I was surprised that Canadian drivers in general were more impatient than Americans behind the wheel--as I say, I was truly surprised because Americans often drive like it's the last lap of a big race and they're in second place. When I was in Toronto, I often got a good honking from the car behind me if I wasn't moving as the light turned green, not when it turned green. Anything UTG can do to interrupt the unobstructed flow of traffic will probably really tick off drivers--hopefully into mass transit.
I nominiate the collective oil industry as honorary members of Transit Rebels. Fuel is $3.19/gal. here in Omaha, NE. Our prices are usually about average; I can only imagine how bad it is in parts of the country where gas tends to run high.
I don't think that your Canadian group is involved in this, but in my city in the U.S. there is tons of traffic on some freeways and streets occasionally, and the response is to go where you need to go earlier. Perhaps you're having too much fun to realize this, but the public transportation buses are held up by the antics that you have described here just as much as the other vehicles are.
You guys could do something actually useful by getting yourselves an education in chemistry and engineering or some useful science that would be part of what I assume your goal to really be, which is to bring into market some sort of cleaner alternative source of fuel and energy.
The best way to respond to the needs and wants of society is not by trying to manipulate them, but to efficiently serve them. So, trying to create a demand for something that apparently has a low demand (the urban transit system for example) is really a case of the tail trying to wag the dog. I think that your larger goal is based on a well-intentioned concern for the environment. But the most important and unjustifiably squandered resource on the planet has been human potential. Imagine how much of it is being wasted under socialist regimes and under a diversity of third-world oligarchies all across the globe. How many potential Einsteins or Wrights Bros. are not under the yoke of either anarchy or government oppression?
The best way for the free to respond to that problem today has to be to energetically advocate for liberty and civilization. For starters, you need to read this. If you really believe that a great response centers around trickery and deception then all of us are in for a disappointing outcome. If someone is "learning" this stuff from you, they are likely to wind up spending their time fooling themselves for the most part rather than actually becoming productive.
Gosh, sirc_valence, I hardly know where to start.
First, I'll thank you for the time you took to write your comment.
Much of America is largely small town and rural, with many towns below the 100,000 population. This was pointed out to me by an expatriate American acquaintance.
He told me that many state capitals are less than that, even as little as 50,000.
In Canada, while we are one tenth your size in population, most of that population hovers around the southern border in larger communities. In many ways we prefer to be urban. Greater population density equals greater traffic in cities.
To make this clearly evident, I chose my city because at 2.6 million in the city proper, and as much as twice that in the greater Toronto area, traffic is a BIG problem. Perhaps the best way for you to understand that would be to come visit. We'd be delighted to have you do so.
Once you have experienced 70 mph with cars within 20 ft in front and behind, and transports on one side, and 85+ mph on the other, occasionally you'll have someone jump in in front of you, (barely missing your bumper) and you commute like this for 20-30 miles, twice a day, you may get some sense of the 'fun' of commuting by car.
I could have chosen Montreal, Vancover or Halifax, because they have similar problems. Montreal and Vancouver have bridges to further snarl traffic.
You should also know that in Toronto, we've chosen to make the city for people, NOT for cars, so much so that we stopped the construction of major roadways that were to have snaked though residential areas, most notably the Spadina expressway.
You may think that this was shoved down our throats by some pinko regime, but that's far from the truth: with the exception of the people living in the surrounding areas, NO one wanted these ugly roadways.
You guys could do something actually useful by getting yourselves an education in chemistry and engineering or some useful science that would be part of what I assume your goal to really be, which is to bring into market some sort of cleaner alternative source of fuel and energy.
Good Heavens!! It would seem that to your mind the car MUST be free free free to take up whatever resources it needs, and that the only imposition we should consider would be new fangle devices that better it. Really? There is no room to simply try to minimize car usage, or to employ alternatives like public transit?
The best way to respond to the needs and wants of society ...
Whoa...
I usually get stuck on Americans making announcements about social agendas. I have heard far too often how anything of a reasonably co-operative nature within a society is, in American eyes, almost communism, as it infringes on unbridled freedoms. A good example? No more than 5 sentences after you start that paragraph, you head off into a very American diatribe about 'how much of [human potential] is being wasted under socialist regimes and under a diversity of third-world oligarchies all across the globe.' Do you realize that it is usually some manner of social mechanism that allows bright, though often financially challenged (ie poor) students, to make some headway in higher education?
And once is not enough. You start off the second installment with The best way for the free to respond to that problem today has to be to energetically advocate for liberty and civilization... Don't you suppose that in all of Canada, western Europe and other western democracies, we might have a bit better idea how to make this work, particulalry in light of the fact that our communities rank much higher as desirable places to live than anything America has to offer?
Finally, while it seems you missed the point, this was a satirical take on this issues. There is NO UTG or Transit Rebels. I thought I should put your mind at rest. I'll have to accept that my humour wasn't for general consumption.
What you need is a good demultiplexer, my friend. People might get a little bit further in achieving your aim towards greater environmental efficiency by just getting familiar with the term and that which it involves, rather than playing Captain Planet and the Planeteers by blocking traffic and obstructing your fellow citizens even in a city made "for the people, NOT for cars" (!). Forgive me for thinking that you were a member of "The Urban Transit Guerrillas"; it's difficult to tell the difference between satire and the left's actual activities (please tell me the difference, substantially). Such groups do exist and use the same tactics with the same "education" and political views as those that you espouse. I can give you tons of examples of vandalism, destruction of property, and basically annoying displays of scientific and economic ignorance.
But I don't just want to criticize, I want to help people move in the right direction, and I thought that maybe you could review this essay on a more sound approach to dealing with the challenges that we face in terms of natural resources, at least. I saw no reply, there. You may make that the basis of your next blog post.
I don't think that I'm being inflexible here.
"Do you realize that it is usually some manner of social mechanism that allows bright, though often financially challenged (ie poor) students, to make some headway in higher education?"
If education were less hyper-partisan than it is today and focused more on empircal truth and more on actually useful things then we might make alot more headway in terms of true progress in the world and we would discover that the best social mechanisms in a free society are independent of the state.
In your rhetoric I sense a sort of desire to lable me authoritarian, yet I'm not the one advocating bigger government, less liberty, and more government programs rather than a more sound approach in education and culture.
Now whether you would rather live in a nanny-state than a free nation, that's up to you. I think that the argument is its own rebuttal. As William F. Buckley stated once, to paraphrase: there would be no problem of unemployment once liberty has been extinguished. And I should point out that in a free-market economy, nobody is unemployed who doesn't want to be. Anyway, I think that you would find some benefit from reading and considering the arguments that I make in A DiaLOG Focusing On "Participatory Economics".
BTW, hitting 80 on L.A. freeways is no biggie, so I don't see what your point was with your stunt movie portrayal of what its like to drive in your country.
Political rhetoric aside for a moment Sirc_Valence,
going 80 mph isn't an issue, it is when you're doing it boxed in like a rolling parking lot, where there is no 8-car distance (for 80 mph) between you an those infront and behind.
This is stressful by most people's standards. After tiring of having my wife's fingernails embedded in the dashboard, I decided to opt for the toll highway (407). There I can go 80 without a problem.
Oooh, a Glibertarian, one of those types who really believes that if we just shut down governments and let corporations run everything, why, there wouldn't be any social problems at all, because there's no such thing as corporate wrong-doing, corporations aren't responsible for any of the evils in the world, and a system of hierarchical autocratic rule (as you find in any corporation) is actually more conducive to freedom than representative democracy!
And that "in a free-market economy, nobody is unemployed who doesn't want to be," and that there actually can be such a thing as a real "free market" because everybody has perfect information all the time! Such fun!
Not only that, but it's a smug America-uber-alles Glibertarian.
I guess it doesn't realise that Toronto has mass transit that doesn't share right-of-way with cars, so snarling up the traffic does nothing to the efficacy of the transit systems. Mass transit != only buses! Even the streetcars sometimes have private rights-of-way that don't share road space with the cars.
So if you car-culture-jam the traffic, you could still be putting butts in seats on the subways and GO Trains...
Of course, it's not like an American would ever comment on anything of which they were completely and utterly ignorant and act like they wrote the book, either.
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