How hard can it be to live without a car in Toronto? I'm not sure I wanted to find out. I love my SUV. But every time I mention it -- it's a five-year-old Mazda Tribute -- I get a ton of hate mail. People ask me if I really want to destroy the planet. But the problem isn't just SUVs. It's all gas-guzzling vehicles. The anti-car faction is convinced that our pathetic reliance on them is responsible for everything from the anomie of modern life to smog deaths, urban sprawl and obesity. It's not just better to take the TTC. It's our duty.
Okay. I've listened. I want to be good. I shall get around for five whole days on my own two legs and the transit system. (I've got a bike, but it's rusting in the basement.) It has been 30 years since I relied on the Toronto Transit Commission. Here's what I remember: Battling the icy blasts as I waited for the bus that never came. Lugging tons of textbooks home through the sleet. Roasting on a subway car crammed with sweaty bodies -- some groping me. I bought a car as soon as I could afford one, and never looked back.
But there are downsides to driving (I tell myself). It's expensive. The traffic's getting worse and worse. And the whole experience of trying to get across town aggravates my natural impatience. So I'm going cold turkey. For one work week, I'm going to hang up my keys and leave behind my carbon-belching, environmentally unfriendly SUV. It might be good to sit back and relax, and let someone else do the driving. And here's the clincher. I'm bound to lose weight. Day 1
9:10 a.m. Pumped by my new TTC-positive attitude, I stride three blocks to the streetcar stop, token at the ready. It's a beautiful warm morning. I won't have to wait at all -- the streetcar is already coming! I run for it, waving madly. It speeds up and races by.
10:40 a.m. The trip from my house in the Beaches to the Globe office at Spadina and Front has chewed up an hour and 15 minutes. That's 56 minutes more than it takes by car. But otherwise the ride's not bad. I live near the end of the line, so I can almost always get a seat. I've plowed through the Star and the Post and 20 pages of a depressing book about Iraq. (Judging by the number of people reading paid newspapers on the streetcar, my industry is dead.)
By the time I sprint from Queen Street down to Front, my face is streaming with sweat and my feet hurt. I can tell that I'm a mess. But I'm not complaining. They could have made me be Maid for a Month. Tomorrow, I will bring more comfortable shoes, more stuff to read and some water.
1 p.m. I call my friend Cindy to change our dinner plans. We're supposed to meet at our favourite Italian restaurant, Il Mulino. It's way out on Eglinton near the Allen Expressway. If I go by TTC, it will take an hour to get there from the office and at least another hour and a half to get home.
When I tell Cindy about my assignment, she breaks into incredulous laughter. "You won't last," she predicts. We decide to meet on Queen Street.
6:45 p.m. I am at Queen and Spadina, waiting for the TTC and breathing in exhaust fumes. The streetcar is jammed with students. They are yakking on their cellphones or text-messaging their friends or communing with their iPods. I love it! I feel young again.
I reach the restaurant 20 minutes late. I've forgotten to adjust for streetcar time.
9:50 p.m. After dinner, I explain to Cindy and her husband that I'm going to take the TTC home. They are horrified. My husband, who thinks this assignment is idiotic, just shrugs. It has begun to rain. He grabs a cab and waves goodbye, leaving me standing forlornly at the streetcar stop under Cindy's borrowed umbrella. "No cheating," he says.
After just one day, I realize that my entire life is arranged around having a car. Relying on the TTC doesn't just mean it takes longer to get places. It means you've got to reorganize everything you do around the public transit routes. It means you've got to scale down your shopping to what you can personally schlep home. It means you've got to carefully plan ahead. It also means that many of your friends and relatives become Geographically Undesirable. My mom lives about three miles away, and it's easy to pop over to her place. Unfortunately, she's located across a major geographical divide, transit-wise. I'd have to cross the old city of Toronto and Scarborough boundary, which would mean having to get off the streetcar and change to a bus. By TTC, she might as well be on the other side of the Grand Canyon.
It occurs to me that none of our best friends live in the Beaches. They're all in other parts of town at least an hour away by TTC. Last week, that didn't matter. But now I realize that if we didn't have a car, we'd have to move or change our friends, or both.
Day 2
8:50 a.m. Here's another reason I miss the car: It's a giant purse. It lets you carry all your stuff around with you.
This morning, I'm more prepared for the TTC. I've dug up my Comfort Support System backpack, which I wore in the Rockies. It is fully loaded: iPod, cellphone, water, newspapers, depressing book, Cindy's umbrella and some lunch. On my feet are an extremely ugly pair of ergonomic sandals. My husband calls them my dork shoes. But I don't care. They're good for walking.
As we wait for the streetcar, I strike up a conversation with a woman in a business suit. "Do you take the streetcar much?" I ask, hoping to discover that even the affluent can be devotees of public transit. "Only when my car's in the shop," she says.
5:30 p.m. I have a dilemma. I'm supposed to go to an important meeting at 8. It's at Bathurst and Lawrence. I can stay downtown, grab a bite, take the TTC to the meeting (one streetcar, one subway ride and a bus), and then go home. The meeting will end by 10, which means I won't get home until at least 11:30. Or I can say the hell with it.
I say the hell with it.
Day 3
7:30 a.m. I need to get to the office early because I have a dentist appointment this afternoon. I load up my backpack, strap on my dork shoes and head out the door. "Where the heck are you going at this hour?" my husband asks. He's still in his bathrobe, drinking coffee. "To work!" I snap. Thanks to the car, he won't have to leave for another hour and a half. I hate him.
And yet, I'm sort of getting to enjoy the ride. I feel I'm bonding with my fellow citizens. Most of them are courteous. They make way for the old and infirm and the young mothers with their toddlers.
Riding the TTC is a useful reminder that a lot of people in this city can't afford a car. It's also a good way to get reconnected. My streetcar rattles through neighbourhoods I usually bypass in my car. And now that I've got lots of time to kill, I notice them.
3:10 p.m. Took the TTC to the dentist. Saved 10 bucks on parking. I'm feeling richer already. Now for errands. We've invited a few people for lunch this weekend. Normally I'd just pick up a bunch of stuff at the butcher, the bakery, the cheese shop and the LCBO (which are many blocks apart), and fling it all in the back of the car. But now I have to plan. I also have to get home in time to greet the nerd who is supposed to fix our modem.
Fortunately, I find an LCBO near the subway stop. I dash in and buy two bottles of wine, and stuff them inside my backpack. Let's hope these people aren't heavy drinkers.
I find a cheese store, buy a load of cheese, do a few more errands, and stagger back on to the subway with all my stuff. I ride it back downtown and catch the Queen car home.
"What's the worst part of your job?" I ask the conductor.
"The drivers," he says. "They're crazy. Half of them shouldn't be on the road."
He means me. Whenever I get trapped behind the streetcar, I try to sneak up beside it in the curb lane and then race ahead as soon as the light changes. It's like a giant game of chicken.
4:05 p.m. The driver kicks us off when he is ordered to short-turn up Kingston Road. I stagger off with all my stuff. Fortunately, another streetcar has pulled up right beside us. But instead of stopping to pick up the stranded passengers, it pulls away.
The short-turning Queen car is notorious in our end of town, and is a major source of TTC rage.
4:13 p.m. I was going to make one more stop, at the butcher, but now I'm worried I'll be late. Nerd or meat? I decide the nerd is more important. I clump home, feeling like a pack mule. Why did we invite those people anyway?
In truth, shopping is pretty much impossible without a car. You can forget about those 32-roll packs of toilet paper. Food shopping every single day is lovely if you live in Paris, and every street has charming produce shops selling fraises de bois.
But we don't live in Paris. And I don't want to eat stuff from the convenience store.
And the lunch? We went vegetarian that day, thanks to the TTC.
Day 4
8:05 a.m. My husband looks in the fridge and says, "You didn't get any blueberries." Can I kill him now?
8:30 a.m. I cheat and get a lift to my exercise class in Scarborough. It is across the great TTC divide, which means that it's an hour away on foot and ridiculously inconvenient by public transportation.
You'd think my exercise instructor (a natural, holistic, planet-loving type) would be a fan of public transit. She is not. "I hate the TTC," she says. "Okay, I admit it's a class thing. All those smelly people breathing on you. What if they cough and their spit lands on you?" She says she'd rather sit in gridlock in her car.
After class, I stuff my sweaty workout clothes in my backpack, put on my dork shoes and take the TTC to work. Surrounded by other riders, I wonder if I'm smelly. I try not to cough on anyone. I pick up a coffee in the cafeteria and stand in line behind an immaculately groomed woman in killer three-inch heels. This woman did not take the TTC to work.
Day 5
8:50 a.m. After five days on public transit, I'm feeling like a real woman of the people. Maybe it's the novelty, but I'm growing rather fond of the TTC. For what it is -- the most underfunded major transit system in North America -- it does a pretty decent job. If you've got lots of time, the weather's pretty good, and you're not squashed like a sardine, or loaded down like a pack mule, and it goes to your mom's place, it's a reasonable alternative. But that's a pile of ifs. And the biggest one is time. Does anybody really want to spend an extra 10 or 12 hours a week commuting? So long as people are in a hurry, and cars are faster, the TTC won't be the better way.
5:55 p.m. Only one more leg to go! Who said I couldn't do it?
But it's raining out again, and I've left Cindy's umbrella on the subway. I am not looking forward to the hike from my office to the packed streetcar. Someone offers me a ride and I take it.
Margaret Wente