My 'Outdoor Adventure' to the New Main Library

(originally posted at jensmith.ca)

Mark June 16th on your calendars, folks! We are finally going to be hearing back from the consultants hired by the Town about future uses for the (now former) library buildings at Bruce Street. It's being billed as a 'public information session', which is Town-speak for "the decisions have already been made", and given that the new library is already open and the old one closed, I'm guessing that decision won't involve maintaining a branch library at Bruce Street.

In the end there simply weren't enough of us who will be hurt by this to override the wishes of the majority. But more on that later.

Apparently June is 'Walking Month' (who knew?), so in order to promote more physical activity - and, perhaps, to counteract the criticisms that the new library is too far to get to easily from downtown - the Library has been encouraging people to walk, bike, or take transit to 'Main@Main':

"Make each visit to the Main Library an outdoor adventure. Take a hike or ride your bike. Take to the trails or take transit. Take time to play at a park. Walk, stroll or saunter!"

Since I've been one of the ones doing the criticizing, and since it was such a lovely day yesterday, I figured I'd take them up on it. I wasn't going to walk, of course - that's about a half hour each way from my house, and I'm simply not that energetic. So I decided to take my bike.

On the way, I stopped by the old library (which is only about a ten minute walk from my house, BTW). I took a peek in the windows and was rather shocked by what I saw. You see, when the arguments were being made about just how prohibitively expensive it would be to maintain a branch library there, one of the biggest expenses was supposed to be replacing all the shelving and furniture that was going to be moved to the new site. Hundreds of thousands it would cost. Really.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this...

As far as I can tell, not a stick of furniture has been removed. Not a shelf, not a table, not a chair. Hell, even the computers are still there!

Actually, I'm not surprised at all. From the very beginning I had questioned why the Library would want all that tacky old shelving in their shiny new facility. And now we know.

I continued on my merry way, perhaps unwisely choosing to take the Main Street route to my destination. It's not a pleasant route, especially with all the construction that is only going to get worse as they move forward with the rail underpass. In fact I took Child's Drive home, which is really the best way to go if you're coming from the south-west. But I wanted you to see that section of Main Street from ground level so you'd have some idea of what sort of "outdoor adventure" they're asking the seniors in those Millside apartment buildings to go through as they make their way to the new library.

The Main Street underpass is slated to take three years to complete

In the winter this is usually blocked with snow.
And watch your bike tires don't get stuck in the rails!

This is how most kids coming from schools south of the tracks get to Main Street

I take it this is NOT one of the 'trails' they're talking about

Things improve east of the GO station

I am assured that the bike racks are on their way

You will note that I was riding my bike on the sidewalk and not on the street, which is generally a no-no. In fact, I saw six or seven cyclists of all ages on this section of Main and not one of them was on the street - and for very good reason. Between the heavy traffic, the narrow lanes, and the sinkholes that tend to form around manhole covers there, you'd have to be suicidal to try it. And that's speaking as someone who used to commute along King Street in downtown Toronto on my bike every day.

I must say, when I finally got inside the new library I was very impressed. It's beautiful - big, well stocked, lots of cool features like a silent study area and a room where some kids were playing Kinect. My main complaint is that my favourite section - the local history and microfilm area - seems to have actually shrunk (just for the record, I'd be happy to help them develop a proper genealogy section for a reasonable fee).

I also found the place a little... well, bland. But I'm sure it will warm up once they've been in there a few months.

Let me be clear: I've always been in favour of having a new library and arts centre. I think it's a lousy location, but I never disputed the need for a larger, more modern main library. And count me among those who love the design of the new building.

What upsets me - and what upsets a lot of people, especially in Ward 2 - is that our concerns were never taken seriously. If they had been, this 'feasibility study' would have been done as soon as the project was approved - not six months before the buildings were to be vacated. In fact, the effects of removing the library from downtown Milton on the social and economic fabric of our central core and the town as a whole would have been examined and analyzed many years ago, as soon as the idea was first conceived.

Instead, we were thrown a bone. We're lucky it was an election year - otherwise they wouldn't have even bothered with that. But at least now our Ward 2 councillors will be able to make their token 'Nay' votes and tell us with pride that hey, they fought the good fight. Just don't ask them why they approved the bloody thing in the first place.

Having spent spent much of the past six months in seemingly endless debate with both councillors and residents who are unwilling to see the Town spend money to keep a branch library at Bruce Street, I can honestly say that, while I continue to disagree with them, I have a much better understanding of their perspective. You see, from their standpoint the new library is a net gain for the town as a whole. While some people will have reduced access, even more will have their access increased, so obviously it's a win. And from a purely linear point of view, ignoring all the physical and psychological barriers between here and there, it really isn't that far at all.

If that was all there was to it, their perspective would make perfect sense. If Milton was a single, homogenous entity with one part exactly like every other part, then it really wouldn't matter where we put facilities like libraries as long as they were evenly distributed. If 'downtown' was simply wherever the planners or the mall developers decided it was, then we could just call Main and Thompson 'downtown' and turn the old one into a tourist attraction.

Unfortunately, real live towns just don't work that way. And that's what I can't seem to get them to understand.

On the Buses: Some Personal Thoughts on Transit

(Sorry about the long absence, folks. I figure since my Ward 2 blog has considerable overlap with Sprawlville, I'll start cross-posting some relevant articles from JenSmith.ca here for the next while.)

I was pleased to see that the Champion finally got around to reporting on the transit debate that went on at last month's budget meetings. Although overshadowed by the hospital levy, Rick Malboeuf's motion to slash over a quarter million dollars from the Milton Transit budget was at least as surprising, and considerably more controversial.

As I reported at the time, the motion took everyone off guard and forced engineering staff and transit committee members to leap to the defense of our much maligned bus system. In the end, Malboeuf agreed to set aside his motion on the condition that Council and staff investigate the possibility of cuts over the coming year.

I had the impression that most councillors agreed just so they could move on.

The article has sparked a debate over at the Hawthorne Villager forum. I left a few comments, but I gave up after one person left a post about how someone would have to put a gun to his head to get him onto a bus full of the great unwashed, and how he failed to see any reason why he should choose suffer the grotesque inconvenience of waiting five minutes for a bus when he can jump in any one of his three (three!) cars any time he wants and pull up right to the door of his destination.

The overwhelming sense of entitlement and classism was making me a little queasy, so I decided to make a strategic withdrawal. If I had left a response, it likely would have been to question why someone happily spending thousands of dollars a year insuring, maintaining and fueling three cars - not to mention his tax dollars spent on new and existing roads - would find it so onerous to have to shell out $40 or $50 a year in taxes to provide transit for those who want or need it.

Alas, it would have gotten me nowhere.

I'm going to set aside the practical arguments for and against transit in Milton for a later post, because I want to address what I found most disturbing in all these discussions: the attitude that transit is only for students and tree-huggers or, worse, poor pathetic lowlifes who can't afford any better.

As an old Toronto girl, this attitude strikes me as particularly bizarre. I grew up in what were, at the time, the suburbs of Toronto, and the TTC was simply how everyone got around. My father was a fairly successful lawyer, so we weren't exactly short of money - and yet he took transit downtown to work just about every day of his career. So did all of his friends and colleagues. Even after my parents moved out to Bolton, he would drive to the King GO station and take transit to the office.

We had one car (nobody had two, of course) and my mother used it to run errands and drive me and my sister to skating or wherever. Certainly never to school, unless it was really raining cats and dogs. I walked to school until about grade 4 when I started taking the trolley bus. We moved to North York when I was in grade 6, but I continued to attend school at Avenue Road and Lawrence. I would take a bus, then the subway and then another bus to get there, often with my father part of the way if we happened to be leaving at the same time.

When I moved out of my parents house, I lived downtown and either took the TTC or rode my bike wherever I went. I didn't get my driver's license until I was 23 and living in Ottawa, but even then the car was never my primary mode of transport (my sister didn't learn to drive until she was 40).

Even after I married and we moved to Milton, I rarely drove. My husband would take the GO train downtown every day, so unless I felt like getting up very early to drive him to the station I was without a car most of the day. Which was fine since we still had a grocery store, banks, parks, the video store, and everything else I needed within blocks of my house. When my son was a little older and I got a part-time job up on Steeles, I just caught the bus at the stop right across the street from me.

It was only after we got the second car that I started relying on driving more and more. I was working from home so there was no need to commute by transit, the grocery store and several other amenities moved out of downtown, and it just became too easy to choose to drive.

My point is, I'm no angel. Like many people in Milton, I drive far more than I should. I do try to walk or bike as much as I can, but there's always an excuse - I'm in a hurry, it's too cold, it's too hot, I need to go to the Superstore anyway so I might as well drive. And it's taken its toll - I'm 35 pounds heavier now than when I moved here.

The difference is that I recognize all this as being a Bad Thing. Sure, as semi-affluent North Americans we're entitled to own two or three cars at a time and drive the block and a half to the mailbox and back instead of getting off our widening asses to walk. We're also entitled to throw out our clothes and dishes and buy new ones every week instead of washing the old ones if we have the money, but it's no less wasteful.

My father didn't ride the bus because it was cheaper, or faster, or better for the environment, or because he didn't have a choice. He took transit because it made sense, and because back then most people would have considered driving in your car by yourself to the office every day to be the height of wasteful self-indulgence.

I'm determined to get rid of that second car this year.

My Two Cents on the Boyne Survey: Part 1

After explaining why I never go to those public consultation meetings in my last post, I decided to go to one of those public consultation meetings tonight. Just to check it out.

The project in question was the Boyne Survey / Education Village development, which is to extend across the south of town from James Snow Parkway to the far side of Tremaine, and all the way down to Brittania Road. The area involved is larger than the entire town of Milton was when I first moved here fifteen years ago.



This was the second public consultation meeting, so we are well enough along in the process that the issues discussed were more a matter of how rather than whether the subdivision was to be built. Still, it was an interesting exercise, and the folks running the show did indeed seem interested in what we had to say.

Before going to the meeting, I took a drive around some of the new developments to check out the good, the bad and the ugly. In this way, I had a better idea of what some of the features being discussed actually looked like in a new development setting.


This is what they call 'Mixed Use Retail'. These are made to be similar to traditional storefronts with apartments above and parking in the back, and are a welcome change from the now ubiquitous 'big box' retail development. The problem with this particular one on Holly Ave. is that it's only on one side of the street. Maybe they just haven't gotten to the other side.



This is a bad retail / residential design. This retail complex includes the only grocery store in the area, and yet it's about as unwelcoming to the surrounding houses as it can get because all the stores have their backs to the street. You could walk into the complex between the buildings, but it really doesn't look like they want you to. They want you to drive in off of Thompson like a good little commuter.



This is what they call a 'community park'. It's a nice idea - a central gathering place with a roundabout and houses facing onto it. I went to a Christmas tree lighting there once. Only two problems: it's huge (almost as big as the Milton Fairgrounds), and there's pretty much nothing in it but grass, saplings, and a couple of wooden structures at either end for the mayor to stand on and flip a switch.



This is one of the two buildings that comprise New Life Church. They sit on a huge lot which is, as you can see in the background, completely cut off from the surrounding houses by a fence.



This is an interesting and different approach to townhouse design, again emulating older urban plans with garages in the back facing onto an alley. But the scale is wrong. It doesn't look like an alley - it looks like a street.


The issue of scale is something that came up more than once in our discussions, and I think it may hold the key to the fundamental difference between new developments and older ones. Driving through Hawthorne Village and (worse) the Sherwood Survey, I noticed that almost everything is bigger than where I live. The houses are bigger, of course. The streets are wider. The parks are bigger. The stores and parking lots are bigger. About the only things that are smaller are the house lots and the trees.

The result is a certain... wrongness... that is difficult to quantify or even really complain about. After all, if a park is good, a really really big park is better, right? Except that it'll take you ten shadeless, featureless minutes to get from one side to the other, so screw it - let's drive.

I'll tell you more about what we talked about at the meeting tomorrow.

How Walkable Is Your Neighbourhood?

This is very, very cool.

There's a website called Walk Score where you can actually find out your neighbourhood's "walkability rating", based on proximity to grocery stores, parks, shops, restaurants, libraries, etc.

It's not a perfect system, particularly for smaller Canadian places like Milton. For example, none of the three closest grocery stores to my house are listed, nor is the movie theatre, and they don't include things like banks, schools or the post office. Still, it's a neat way to get a quick idea of just how walkable any neighbourhood is.

For example, if you just enter "Milton, Ontario", it comes up as 70/100, or "Very Walkable". However, that's for a location corresponding to Town Hall, right in the heart of downtown. If I enter my address on Commercial St., it comes up as 62, or "Somewhat Walkable". I suspect it would do better if those grocery stores were in there.



My son's friend lives in one of the '70s developments in the NE quadrant of town - his house scores a 58, only slightly less than mine. However, a friend of mine in another older development in the SE quadrant only gets a 32, or "Car-Dependant", although that is definitely because there are things missing from the map.

As for the new developments, here`s a random sampling:

Dixon Drive: 30
Weller Cross: 13
Yates Blvd.: 10
Lancaster Blvd.: 10
Pettit Trail: 18
Ferguson Drive: 12

Just for fun, I also entered the Toronto addresses for my first home near Avenue Rd. & Lawrence (only 37, but still pretty), my second home near York Mills and Bayview (30 - ouch!), and my first apartment on Dovercourt (80!)

Of course, none of this takes into account things like street width and design, trees, sidewalks, bike accessibility, etc., but it's still a lot of fun. So you tell me - how walkable is your neighbourhood?