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Last month, I wrote about Toronto's proposal to add additional "Avenues" to its urban structure. ("Avenues" is a defined term that I touch on in last month's post). Well, this week the new Avenues Policy went to City Council for debate and approval. You can read all the back and forth via Matt Elliott on X. Not surprisingly, some Councillors were/are opposed to it, fearing it will create some sort of dystopian future for Toronto. An attempt was made to send it back for further study and consultation, which is the typical delay tactic. Comments were made that people in multi-family buildings are lonely because they don't know their neighbors. And it was argued that Kipling Avenue should not be a designated "Avenue", even though it's already called one. (Toronto street suffixes can be weird sometimes.) Thankfully, the new Avenues passed. And this is a big deal for Toronto. Over time, this expanded Avenue network is going to create new housing and employment opportunities, and make transit and other forms of mobility far more viable all across the city. As I said last month, I think it's going to be foundational in helping us move away from the outdated model of the monocentric North American city. Slowly but surely we are laying the groundwork for an urban structure that is actually, and more uniformly, urban.
We landed on Hokkaido yesterday. And when we got out of the airport, it was snowing. The first thing we did was stop in Sapporo for lunch and, while we were there, it continued to snow.
After lunch, we drove west to Niseko, and for almost the entire 2-hour drive, it was whiteout conditions. It was the first time I had ever seen a place use flashing red arrows hung above the road to indicate the edge of the outer lane.
This, I quickly learned, is invaluable in a place like Hokkaido; it's so that both drivers and snowplows know where they're going and know their limits. But to be honest, many other places should probably adopt it as well.
We are now on day two and it's still snowing. The stats do not lie: this is one very snowy place. As I understand it, the main reason for this is its location, and not its elevation. I'm sitting at ~280 meters right now (whereas Park City is over 2,000 meters up).
But it does have mountains.
And when warm air from the Sea of Japan mixes with cold fronts from Siberia, and then intersects these mountains, it produces beautiful dry powder snow, and lots of it. "Japow" is no joke, as you can tell from the above photos.
One of the truly remarkable things about Tokyo is that it manages to be both the largest metropolitan area in the world and one of the most livable cities in the world. That's quite an accomplishment. And one of the key ingredients has to be its heavy reliance on rail for mobility. Look at any list of the busiest train stations in the world and you'll find that the majority of them are in Japan.
But what does this mean for the average person living in a city like Tokyo? Well, every 10 years Tokyo does a "person trip survey" that looks at how people get around. And if you look at the last set of results from 2018, you'll find the following modal splits:
33% railway
27% private car
23% walking
13% bicycle
4% other (bus and motorcycle)
This is a big deal. Supposedly this is the highest railway split in the world. But the numbers may be even better than this. According to a recent book by Daniel Knowles, who is a correspondent for The Economist, only about 12% of trips in Tokyo are done with a car, giving the city one of the lowest driving rates in the world. Bike usage is also higher than the above at 17%.
Whatever the exact numbers are, it is clear that there's a heavy bias toward rail and other forms of non-car mobility. And you feel that in the city. You feel it in the lack of traffic congestion (which incidentally makes the city feel generally quieter and calmer) and you feel it in the way that density and pedestrian traffic is obviously concentrated around stations.
In the span of a 10 minute walk, you can go from feeling like you are, in fact, in a giant megacity, to feeling like you're in a tranquil community where grade-separated sidewalks aren't even needed because the cars, if any, all drive so slowly. It's an interesting dichotomy that is the result of true transit-oriented development.
On-street parking is also virtually non-existent. According to Knowles, 95% of streets in Japan do not allow it, either day or night.
At the same time, this approach makes it easier to get around by car. We have taken a handful of Ubers on this trip, and they always arrived in a few minutes, and we have yet to be stuck in soul-crushing traffic. It's perhaps ironic that in a city many multiples larger than Toronto, it feels easier to move around. Or maybe it just goes to show you that it's not about how much urban space you have, it's about how efficiently you use it.