ALL CARS ON THE WESTERN FRONT
Coming from the UK to participate in the Year Abroad program at University of Waterloo, I was struck by this unmistakable otherness of Canadian culture to my own.
While I’d expected a certain weirdness from the culture shock, I assumed with all of us living in the globalised West. These differences would be trivial and quaint: perhaps a nationwide lust for maple syrup or flannel-clad lumberjacks on every street corner.
But North America loves cars. It loves great four-lane, six-lane highways that stretch beyond the horizon and vast concrete jungles that own the cultural imagination. The 401 is a living, breathing animal, an all-consuming fixation for commuters and provincial officials alike. Living here now for over a year, I’ve begun to feel that this factors into how we occupy shared space. It alienates people from their community; from the inherent possibilities of good public transport, and ultimately, from themselves.
In the UK, cities are usually much older, and therefore more walkable than in North America.
Downtowns and main streets prioritize pedestrians over drivers the roads are often cordoned off with people free to walk unimpeded. From my experience, this makes cities feel denser, more texture not just transitionary places between different businesses.
Room to loiter, to exist in a public space without hurrying on, opens broader connection possibilities. Coming to Waterloo for the first time, I was struck by how strictly functional King St. felt, just a rigid street of central businesses and pavement solely used to get between them, with loud, busy roads like Bridgeport and Erb interrupting the flow.
While I’ve grown to appreciate the parks in the city for offering a sense of community and interconnection, it is not quite the same. Downtown Cambridge’s Galt is a more extreme example, with transport trucks ceaselessly roaring through the main street. This sensorial, overwhelming experience becomes commonplace, but if trucks were rerouted away from the centre of Galt, I feel that people would be much more comfortable breathing freely, lingering and connecting with each other.
In much the same way as people-first cities, public transport between cities enhances the possibilities for human interconnection. It also connects economies, allowing wider distribution of wealth between spaces for us poor car-less souls.
Coming over to Canada, I naively assumed that Greyhound buses of legend would proliferate. In the face of motor vehicles’ tyranny over the nation, there would always be easy access to coaches, the capacity to get between central cities and more obscure spots in the outer regions. I liked the iconography of Greyhound buses: they seemed to symbolise the raw opportunity for travel and new experience on offer in North America.
Hitchhiking might be dead, but at least you can travel coast to coast on a dinky little bus if you are so inclined.
This is no longer the case. Under the strain of pandemic lockdowns, on May 13, 2021, Greyhound Canada completely ceased operations, with the only remaining buses running cross-border to the US. I find this tragic—with their closing, the ability to affordably travel throughout Canada without relying solely on cars has vanished. While other companies like Flixbus offer travel between major cities, they do not offer the same opportunity to access more peripheral cities, the nooks and crannies of the nation. In my eyes, I see thousands of strands of connective tissue, the lines of travel possible through public transport extinguished. When travel becomes a private affair, only accessible through the confines of a private vehicle, the strands are wiped away and we all suffer.
To some extent, communal ridesharing manages to fill this void, with there being large Facebook groups of drivers devoted to ridesharing. I have had my share of harrowing carshares, travelling from Waterloo to Quebec City with three German students, at once a vivid bonding experience and bleak endurance test. Nonetheless, to me, the widespread prevalence of car-sharing appears less as an independent phenomenon than as a strained response to the absence of affordable intercity public transport.
The lack of consistent public transport between Southern Ontario cities is perplexing—I remain baffled that there are no direct trains between Kitchener and Toronto on the weekends. The infrastructure exists to make this happen given that they run regularly for commuters on weekdays, and the weekend buses are typically full of anxious students, so there is an evident demand. To me, the fact that this short route between two of Canada’s largest cities lacks a direct train route two days a week, suggesting a systematic prioritization of private travel and the interests of the auto industry over the shared value of public transport.
Though this might read like a rant, I promise I did not construct this entire article just to voice my frustration with this one local issue. These are just some scattered reflections on the impact of car-centric cities and public spaces that don’t engage the potential capacity for connection. Canada may be an immensely large country, especially compared to England, but consistent and affordable public transport to travel between major cities seems like a very achievable, even basic expectation. As the nation’s population continues to swell, and vast sums are continually pumped into the highways, prioritizing pedestrian-friendly cities and stronger public transport might offer a more connected vision of the future.
#401 #community #greyhound #Immigration #JoshMiltonBell #KatWexPhoto #UK #universityOfWaterloo #urbanPlanning #walkableCities
Students win again! 
in what police are calling a hate-motivated attack.
