ReThink London: BRT is so last century

BRT, bus rapid transit, goes back, I believe, all the way to the early '70s. It has been around a long time. It was good then and over the years it has proven itself in many communities. It is still good today and I am sure it will have its place in the transit mix of the future. But, if one wants to rethink public transit, BRT may not be the whole answer.

Yet, London is preparing to spend about $340 million according to Harold Usher as quoted in today's Free Press. This does not seem out of line but it is interesting that there is no mention of any other approach to solving our public transit challenges. And it could take up to eight years to implement the BRT approach the paper tells us.

Allow me to suggest something that seems to be on the, as they say, cutting edge: Avego Real-time Ridesharing. Watch the video to get an idea what Avego is all about.



Avego had a pilot project underway in Seattle late last summer. You know Seattle, if you don't The London Free Press reporter Randy Richmond can fill you in. Seattle, in northwest Washington state, is number five on Richard Florida's list of the the top creative cities.

But Avego was busy in other places as well. They had RTD pilots in Cork, Ireland; Bergen, Norway; Houston, TX; Arlington, VA; along with the Seattle, WA one mentioned.

It's hot but there's no reason to panic.

It's hot! The Middlesex-London Health Unit has issued the region’s second Extreme Heat Alert for the year. More at http://bit.ly/LxbSl7

The health unit is telling people to drink plenty of water. Consume the stuff throughout the day. Do it even "if you don't feel very thirsty."

Huh? Why guzzle water if you're not thirsty? Studies have shown consuming water, and other liquids, when you are not thirsty is poor advice. For a few people such a suggestion actually puts them at additional health risk.

"The vast majority of healthy people adequately meet their daily hydration needs by letting thirst be their guide."

Source: Food and Nutrition Board

The health unit is also warning people to lay off the "coffee and cola." Why? Studies have shown that "cola and coffee drinks hydrate you as well as water does." This is, of course, contrary to popular mythology; a mythology now promoted by the health unit.

In truth, coffee and cola consumed during a heat wave keep dehydration at bay. Don't believe me? Here is a link: Caffeine: Is it dehydrating or not? And another: European Hydration Institute.

A lot of the health unit's suggestions are good. Why does the unit weaken our confidence in its advice by repeating old myths?
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This is an add from July 2016. The New York Times is reporting:

"Surprisingly, drinks containing moderate amounts of caffeine and alcohol or high levels of sugar had hydration indexes no different from water. In other words, coffee and beer are not dehydrating, despite common beliefs to the contrary, and regular soda can hydrate you just as well as water."

It's funny but when I tried to interest The London Free Press in my take on the hydration story, I got a lot of resistance. It was me who was spreading myths, I was told. One person at the paper, a runner, was downright angry that I would tell people not to be concerned if they drank a coffee or enjoyed a cold beer on a hot day. I don't believe anyone at the paper checked my sources. They knew the truth. They did not have to check anything. I was left shaking my head.

Pickles: Not made in Ontario

Ontario made pickles under attack.

I'm angry. I don't always think coherently when I am angry and this morning I am angry.

Some time ago I wrote a piece on Made in India Pickles. It is my most popular post, with more than 26,000 hits. I have learned that people all over North America have noticed the changes occurring in the pickle business.

Small producers are swallowed by food industry giants, who then have a hiccup. Think of Bick's Pickles. Started by a Scarborough, Ontario, farm couple in the mid 1940s, the family-run business grew into a well-respected nationwide pickle producer selling 12 million jars annually with 33 varieties by 1960.

In 1966, the Bick family sold their business to Robin Hood Canada. The flour company was expanding beyond baking products and into other food categories. 

After a series of acquisitions and restructurings, the company become the International Multifoods Corporation in 1970. In 2004, The J.M. Smucker Company acquired International Multifoods and took control of its entire line. Near the end of 2011, all Canadian production ended and was moved to the U.S. Canada lost 150 factory jobs plus hundreds of farm jobs.

Which brings us to today. In early 2024, the J.M. Smucker Co. sold the Bick's pickle brand, along with a number of other condiment brands, to Treehouse Foods. The price for the entire lot? $20 Million USD. This half the estimated value of the Bick's brand alone at the time of the Smucker purchase.

Today Bick's pickles are caught in the middle of the Donald Trump tariff wars. Canada has slapped 

a 25 per cent Canadian retaliatory tariff

 on the product. With grocery stores removing Bick's from their shelves, Bick's pickles are now too expensive for most Canadian consumers. The brand is in danger of disappearing.

 

It seems odd but Treehouse Foods used approximately 11 million pounds of Ontario-grown cucumbers and a lot of Canadian-made jar lids for its product. If the Bick's brand disappears, will this mean an overall loss of  more Canadian jobs? It is hard to say. As sales of American-make Bick's fall, sales of Canadian-made pickles, like Lakeside and Marty's, are growing.

But Bick's is not the only Canadian pickle to leave Canada. Once a market leader, the Strub's pickle brand is now bottled in India. Strub's, once based in Brantford, Ontario, closed and the name and recipes were acquired by Whyte's out of Quebec. After Whyte's failed, Quebec-based Aliments Putter's Inc. purchased the physical assets of Whyte’s Foods Inc. in March 2024. 

Aliments Putter's uses the former Whyte's production facilities in Quebec to make their own brands, Putter's and Moishe's. They sold the Strub's name to Condiment House, which is owned by Clubhouse/McCormick Canada. Condiment House does not make pickles. They farm out the production, mainly to India. They are not alone. Some store brands now import their pickles from India.

If you check my work, you will come across references to Foodfest International 2000 Inc. which acted as the interim owner that transitioned Strub's from a family-run business toward its eventual acquisition by Whyte's Foods. Foodfest attempted to leverage the Strub's name into other categories, such as smoked salmon and hummus. These attempts failed as did Foodfest International 2000 itself, which closed leaving many Ontario cucumber farmers unpaid.

ReThink London: ReThinking our almost unlimited water supply from The Great Lakes

I saw this posted by another blogger but it was unclear what the largest drop of water actually represented. Many believed the large drop represented all of the world's fresh water, and no more. They were wrong.

The largest blue marble, the one over the American West, represents all the world's water: Period! Fresh water, salt water, water trapped in ice.

Here is the image that so grabbed my attention and the accompanying info from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

If the big bubble burst: If you put a (big) pin to the larger bubble showing total water, the resulting flow would cover the contiguous United States (lower 48 states) to a depth of about 107 miles.

The drawings below show various blue spheres representing relative amounts of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth. Are you surprised that these water spheres look so small? They are only small in relation to the size of the Earth. These images attempt to show three dimensions, so each sphere represents "volume." Overall, it shows that in comparison to the volume of the globe the amount of water on the planet is very small - and the oceans are only a "thin film" of water on the surface.

Spheres representing all of Earth's water, Earth's liquid fresh water, and water in lakes and rivers

The largest sphere represents all of Earth's water, and its diameter is about 860 miles (the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Topeka, Kansas). It would have a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (mi³) (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (km³)). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, and rivers, as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.

Liquid fresh water

How much of the total water is fresh water, which people and many other life forms need to survive? The blue sphere over Kentucky represents the world's liquid fresh water (groundwater, lakes, swamp water, and rivers). The volume comes to about 2,551,100 mi³ (10,633,450 km³), of which 99 percent is groundwater, much of which is not accessible to humans. The diameter of this sphere is about 169.5 miles (272.8 kilometers).

Water in lakes and rivers

Do you notice that "tiny" bubble over Atlanta, Georgia? That one represents fresh water in all the lakes and rivers on the planet, and most of the water people and life of earth need every day comes from these surface-water sources. The volume of this sphere is about 22,339 mi³ (93,113 km³). The diameter of this sphere is about 34.9 miles (56.2 kilometers). Yes, Lake Michigan looks way bigger than this sphere, but you have to try to imagine a bubble almost 35 miles high—whereas the average depth of Lake Michigan is less than 300 feet (91 meters).
The data used on this page comes from Igor Shiklomanov's estimate of global water distribution, shown in a table below.

Credit: Howard Perlman, USGS; globe illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (©); Adam Nieman.

Data source: Igor Shiklomanov's chapter "World fresh water resources" in Peter H. Gleick (editor), 1993, Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources (Oxford University Press, New York).

ReThink London: World leading ideas needed

This is going to be a busy day. No time for blogging. But, I want to leave you with a thought or two.

London wants to be a world leading, well run community. According to what I understand from attending ReThink London events, the city want to be known for its innovative approach to urban living.

O.K. Here are the little bits of sand, the irritants if you will, now to fashion the comforting pearls.

1. Mass transit is a challenge almost everywhere for a number of clear reasons. One being that, if given a choice, people like cars.

2. Google has spend a bundle perfecting robotic cars. I believe they have logged more than a million miles without an accident (while under robot control. One car had an accident caused by a human driver and another was rear-ended in traffic.)

3. Some places in the world have, or are, experimenting with community cars. These are cars that are available to those who have paid a fee to be able to access the service. Pick up a car and drive it from one community lot to another close to where you were wanting to go.

4. There are cars being built in the world, but not offered for sale in North America, that are very interesting when it comes to urban transportation. e.g. The Volkswagen Up. Read about the Up here;

- Reviewing the Volkswagen Up (New York Times)
- Just passing through impressively (New York Times)

5. There is an unused automobile assembly plant on the south edge of London, the closed Ford St. Thomas Assembly Plant.

6. Some communities have, or are, experimenting with computer controlled bus routes which can deviate from established routes to pick up and drop off riders. An older, failed, non computer managed system was the Dial-a-Ride Service in the '70s in Santa Clara, CA or the Dial-a-Bus run by GO Transit briefly in Toronto in the early '70s. I lived in T.O. at the time and recall the pluses and minuses of the GO Transit plant. Adding today's computer power to the Santa Clara or the Toronto systems would change the dynamics of the experimental operations.

7. Ultra small cars could be run on narrower-than-normal lanes dedicated to the ultra small vehicles.

8. Somewhere in the above there is a creative, imaginative, not being done anywhere else in the world, idea on rapid transit and if a company like Google and/or a car company making a suitable, ultra small, urban car (an automatic would be, I believe, a requirement and this puts the UP out of the running), could be convinced to conduct a community-wide experiment using London as the test bed something could be achieved that was unique and not break the bank costly.

I apologize for any typos but I've got to get going.

Cheers!

ReThink London could take inspiration from Savannah, GA

Savannah, Georgia, is one of my favourite places when it comes to a successful street grid. Check out all the parks or squares that dot the heritage section of this Southern city.

Notice all the squares dotting the heritage neighbourhood in Savannah, GA.

At the ReThink London meeting I was told that urban planning is a new concept. I'm not so sure. I think urban planning is as old as urban living. Humans like planning stuff. It's in our make-up.

From Savannah Squares:

As originally laid out, each of the Savannah squares was at the center of a basic organizational unit called a ward. Each ward contained a square. All communal activities of a ward took place in the square which was at its center. As the wards and squares were planned, the east and west sides of each square contained two large lots, known as “trust lots”. These lots were reserved for public buildings, such as churches, schools and institutions. On the north and south sides of the squares, the land was divided into 20 “tithing lots”, with a lane down the middle for passage. These lanes form the streets of Savannah’s historic district today.

When I was in Savannah, I loved the walkable nature of the heritage area. It was laid out before the car but it was as easy to drive around as to walk around. Savannah is famous for good reason. The old town is a wonderful place.

ReThink London: See what others have done

On Saturday, June 23, 2012, ReThink London is holding its next event. Those attending are being asked to craft a vision for London. Participants will discuss community goals and city priorities in five different areas and then they will discuss the policies and strategies necessary for success.

I love cities. All my life I've had strong feeling about cities. But being opinionated doesn't make me an urban planner. The Saturday meeting will not be all that long: Three hours. Being prepared will be very important if anything of substance is to be accomplished.

I wondered what the twenty-year plans of other cities were like and I recalled I had noticed Birmingham, Michigan, had posted their plan from 2006. Birmingham is a cool city. In fact, the idea for London's downtown pocket patios was inspired by the platform patios in Birmingham.

Click the link and check out the proposals. The famous new urbanist firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk is behind the work. It shows.

Check out the two pictures from the Birmingham Report on the right. The top one shows how the location looked in the recent past; The second image shows the new building that has been erected.

Now, think of the boring brick residential apartment complex recently built where the former Hudson's department store was in East London. It would be a dull building anywhere but being just down from the heritage Lilley's Corners means it is a clear blight on the streetscape.

Let's be clear, Birmingham isn't the only city putting up new buildings that enhance their city. Markham, Ontario, has plans to achieve something very similar on their main drag. In fact, our very London has pulled this off: Think Capitol Theatre and the Bowles Building beside it.

In the London core, the Bowles Building on the right is new.

The Bowles lunch building is a completely new facade made to look  like the original facade that unfortunately had deteriorated over time. The facade could not be saved and so was replaced. Some fancy, curved stuff disappeared but few notice the missing details.

There's a lesson here. If you can demolish a heritage building and then rebuild it with almost no one the wiser --- as was done with the Bowles Building --- you can erect new buildings with a heritage feel anywhere such a structure is needed. Done right, the result looks good without being too costly. Achieve the look with design and not expensive materials.