Raise the Hammer

Part of the problem here is that cars are a lot more than a means of getting from A to B. Car culture is everywhere - TV, movies, the Fortinos parking lot(a genuine mecca of car fanatics some nights), college road trips and old-time war movies. That car was the holy grail of high-school dating, your apartment for 2 months when you lost your job and now stands proudly to demonstrate that you are, by far, the coolest of your co-workers.

Walking and bussing just don't have that kind of cultural significance...you don't go for a cruise for fun on a Sunday afternoon on the 5E Deleware, and you can't sit for hours with the guys at work talking about shoe mechanics.

What's the alternative to this? Bike culture.

Once you stand out as a cyclist, you have friends everywhere...the guy manning the cash register will rant about his stolen bike, and random guys downtown will brag about the deal they got on theirs at a garage sale. In Hamilton alone there's bike co-ops, mass bike-rides, bike racing (mountain, road, cycross, cross-country, and possibly soon track), mountain bikers and BMXers jumping off concrete structures downtown and even once-or-twice-weekly games of bike polo. Cafes sport their own cycling teams, north-enders repair bikes on their front lawns for extra cash and intrepid welders put together their own tall-bikes and recumbents out of old frames. There was even a Bicycle Opera at one art crawl.

Almost none of this was put together by any government program, or with much funding (the university does give a little to MacCycle and RecycleCycles, but that's about it). Nor have any big bike manufacturers or many of the dealers in town taken much initiative. It is a genuine, grass-roots community movement, and it can be witnessed anywhere from Victoria to Halifax, or San-Fran to New York. As anyone who's gotten into the world of cycling knows, it becomes something of an addiction, as well as a community.

Alternative transit takes off where it is more than a form of transportation - where it becomes a part of your life. Maybe that means throwing parties on buses and subways (you'd be amazed at how many police got called in when this was tried on the TTC a few years ago), or maybe it means a more comprehensive network of walking/cycling paths like the waterfront trail. I suspect, though, that the initiative will have as much or more to do with people like us than any decision makers at city hall.