Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Category: Mobility

  • Us versus them — the reallocation of public space

    On Saturday, Toronto closed a few of its major roads, including Lake Shore Boulevard West, to provide more space for outdoor activities and social distancing. A number of “quiet streets” were also created last week. These now only allow local vehicular traffic. This, of course, isn’t anything novel. Most cities around the world have been reallocating their public space in the wake of this pandemic, with many hoping that some of these changes will stick.

    I rode my bike out to the Humber Bay Shores on the weekend (where I took the above photo) and it was clearly the fix that we needed. Our current waterfront trails simply cannot safely accommodate the volume of people who are out right now on the weekends. I reckon that, under normal circumstances, a good percentage of these runners, cyclists, and rollerbladers would probably be on a patio drinking. That’s not possible right now, so demand for outdoor activities is way up. (Entirely unproven theory.)

    But as is always the case, changes like this make a lot of people grumpy. Traffic got backed up on Lake Shore and the regular “war against the car” narrative flared up. I’m not sure where all these cars were going, but they were out in the sunshine trying to go places. So we have a situation where the reallocation of public space has flipped the supply and demand imbalance to another user — drivers. Now it’s us versus them: “Isn’t there already more than enough room on those big bike trails?”

    I’m frankly tired of this never ending debate, which is why I have argued before that we could use better data and better metrics. How many people are we moving with the decisions we are making? How many people are we accommodating per square meter of space? Where are users of this public space coming from? What performance standards are we trying to meet and/or maintain? What is the most equitable allocation of a finite amount of space?

    But perhaps I’m naive to think that people might listen to facts.

  • Sidewalk Labs, Uber, Lime, and the demise of urban density

    Today I am going to talk about 3 things that recently happened and/or that are on my mind.

    Sidewalk Labs pulled out of Toronto. I think this is sad. A lot of people have said that they’re surprised, but not surprised. The official reason is that this unprecedented environment has made it financially infeasible for them to develop the 12-acre site, while still adhering to their core principles. I don’t have any inside knowledge of the situation, but I can’t help but think that this is probably just an opportune excuse. They were getting beat up pretty badly by Toronto on all fronts, even though they had put forward an incredibly ambitious development proposal. As I said before, I can’t imagine many (or any) “conventional” developers coming forward with something like this. The last plan I saw was 1/3 non-residential, and 40% of the residential component was to be priced below market. And never mind all of the other innovations that were being contemplated.

    In other tech news, Uber just led a $170 million investment in Lime (the micromobility scooter company). I think this is smart — both from an overall mobility standpoint and, selfishly, as a shareowner of $UBER. It is being reported that this round of investment values Lime at about $510 million. This is a 79% decline from April 2019 when it raised its last round. So presumably, Uber is getting a pretty good deal here. The bet is that the urban landscape demands multi-modal transportation solutions, everything from bikes and scooters to cars and public transit. There is also an argument to be made that in the short-term, our post-pandemic world is going to gravitate toward individual mobility and away from things like public transit. I’ve heard a few people say that, as we re-open the global economy and try to maintain social distancing, we’re going to face two major mobility bottlenecks: transit and elevators. Sounds like more testing would be a prudent idea.

    Above, I was very careful to say “in the short-term” because I think the narrative that is emerging around the demise of urban density is entirely overblown. Few of us are clamoring to jump back into a mosh pit right now (perhaps a metaphorical mosh pit), but I also don’t believe that we will suddenly look to sprawling Brasilia as a source of urban inspiration. While it is true that “disease did shape architecture in the 20th century” (Alex Bozikovic wrote a good piece on this over the weekend) and that there have been oscillations in terms of how we view urbanity, I also know that this isn’t the first pandemic that our cities have lived through. The Hong Kong flu of 1968 is thought to have killed one million people around the world after, allegedly, emerging in one of the densest cities ever created. Hong Kong’s relationship with Beijing is a tenuous one right now, but it still remains one of the world’s most important global cities.

    Perhaps cities are more resilient than we give them credit for.

    Photo by Touann Gatouillat Vergos on Unsplash

  • The latest coronavirus figures

    The Financial Times has some of the best charts/graphics that I have seen on the coronavirus and its impact. They’re also free and regularly updated. Below is the cumulative number of deaths, by number of days since the 10th death (last updated March 23 at 21:00 GMT). I prefer this to the number of cases because it is more precise, though impacted by things like demographics. The number of cases is impacted by how good you are at testing. Some countries have been far better than others. And what we are continuing to learn is that lots of people were and are completely asymptomatic.

    Seeing China (and Iran?) continue to flatten out is encouraging. (Note the logarithmic scale.)

    Here has been the impact to the Chinese economy. It’s slowing coming back.

    And here are traffic volumes around the world. This chart was published on Sunday, March 22. At that time, Tokyo looked to be largely business as usual.

  • Electric vehicle startup Canoo launches first wave waitlist

    LA-based startup, Canoo, is trying to rethink urban transport and, more specifically, how people use and consume electric vehicles. They aren’t planning on launching in Los Angeles until next year, but here’s what is apparent so far.

    (1) The vehicles (pictured above) are far more utilitarian in their design — though still attractive. The focus does not seem to be on creating objects of desire, which is how cars have historically been sold.

    (2) The interiors are more living room-like in their seating configurations. This makes them feel less like a car and more like public transit (or a prom party limo).

    (3) The plan is for these vehicles to be available through a commitment-free monthly membership, as opposed to through a traditional lease or purchase option.

    These features are the sorts of things that many have been predicting would happen. But they remain signals for the future of the “car.” They are also perfectly well suited to autonomy.

    If you’d like to join their waitlist, you can do that here. I just did and apparently I’m #5967 in line. I have no idea when they hope to launch in Toronto, but who doesn’t love a good waitlist? The illusion of scarcity can be a powerful motivator.

    Update: My position in line has improved to #229 because of all of the “referrals” generated by this post. Canoo has done a good job using their waitlist system to generate exposure and solicit early customer feedback.

    Update: #46.

    Image: Canoo

  • Measuring street-network disconnectedness around the world

    Here is a recent research paper by Christopher Barrington-Leigh and Adam Millard-Ball that looks at the connectivity of local street networks across the world. They refer to this as “street-network sprawl” and they measure it using a Street-Network Disconnectedness index (SNDi).

    This is important for many reasons. Compact street networks with shorter blocks and fewer dead ends are far more conducive to different forms of mobility, including transit. Street networks are also incredibly sticky. Once laid, they rarely change. And if they do, it’s over very long periods of time.

    The study period in the paper is 1975 to 2013. What they found is that in 90% of the 134 most populous countries in the world, the street network has become less connected since 1975. What this means is that we have been making it harder to service our communities with transit.

    That said, there has been a reversal in “high income” countries, most notably in North America. If you take a look at the above graphs, you can see a fairly dramatic drop off, signalling a reduction in the construction of low-connectivity streets. Southeast Asia, on the other hand, is trending in the opposite direction. Note Bangkok in the upper righthand corner.

    For a copy of the full research paper, click here.

    Images: Global trends toward urban street-network sprawl

  • The future of clothing

    Today’s post is going to be a bit of a departure from our regularly scheduled programming. But it’s so cool that I had to share it. It’s a company called Vollebak, and they use science and technology to make highly technical clothing (or, as they call it, the future of clothing). It was founded by two brothers.

    Every month they launch a new clothing concept. (Sign up here if you want to get on their list.) But each new piece they develop could take anywhere from one to five years to actually produce. Usually we’re talking about new production methods and materials that have never before been used for clothing.

    Examples include an indestructible puffer jacket designed to help us withstand up to -40 degrees; a solar charged jacket; a “black squid jacket” that reflects visible light to go from black to bionic; and a plant/algae t-shirt that is grown and can later be composted.

    But the piece I’m really eyeing is this blue morpho ski/snowboard jacket. It uses two billion microscopic glass spheres to try and replicate the wings of a blue morpho butterfly. During the day the jacket is matt blue. But as soon as you shine light onto it, it looks like the above photo.

    This would be useful if you were, say, caught in an avalanche and a helicopter searchlight was trying to find you. Hopefully that’s a use case that none of us have to experience. But it could also be invaluable if you were out walking or cycling at night and you wanted to make sure that cars could see you.

    (Please note how I somehow managed to make this post mildly relevant to cities.)

    Image: Vollebak

  • Maeklong Railway Market — plan view

    Many of you have probably visited or seen videos of the Maeklong Railway Market in Bangkok. (I’ve done the latter, not the former.) It is one of the largest seafood markets in Thailand and it is literally housed on the railway’s tracks. Every time a train passes through, the entire market needs to be pulled up and relocated. Even the awnings that cover the market need to be collapsed. The videos I’ve seen have all been taken from grade. But the below video (via Vala Afshar on Twitter), showing the market in plan view (from what was likely a drone), is arguably even more impactful. There isn’t a foot of wasted space.

  • Tesla’s new Cybertruck is growing on me

    Tesla’s new Cybertruck was the talk of the town last week. Its design is polarizing and both windows broke during the unveiling (Elon’s reaction was amazing). At first I couldn’t tell if this wasn’t some sort of spoof on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. Everything seemed to fit, including the design of the car, the chosen brand typography, and Elon’s outfit.

    But within the first 24 hours and with no paid advertising, Tesla received 146,000 pre-orders for the truck (though, all it takes is a USD 150 fully refundable deposit to secure a place in line). So while a lot of you may consider this to be one the ugliest vehicles around, there are others who think this entire move is genius.

    The design was jarring when I first saw it. It looked like a comical representation of what we thought vehicles in the future were going to look like. But I have to admit that the design is growing on me. And I agree that for Tesla to win any sort of marketshare in the pick-up category, it needed to do something radical. Brand loyalty to Ford’s F-Series pick up truck is simply too strong.

    Marques Brownlee has a good video explaining this take (and why he ordered a Tesla Cybertruck):

    But if successful, I also wonder to what extent the Tesla Cybertruck will eat into the sales of existing pick-up truck models versus capture new buyers that historically wouldn’t have bought this kind of vehicle. In other words, we are seeing tech people and successful YouTubers, like Marques, pre-order this truck. But I bet that very few of them currently drive an F-150.

    Image: Tesla

  • Ride hailing in Toronto

    Earlier this year, the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute (UTTRI) published this report on the impacts of ride hailing services in the City of Toronto.

    And then today, the Ryerson City Building Institute leveraged it to opine on how “on-demand tech” might improve transit going forward. That’s how I discovered it.

    What is clear from the report is that ride-hailing services — which they refer to as Private Transportation Companies (PTC) — are driven by two dominant use cases: 1) going out at night and 2) commuting to and from work.

    Friday and Saturday nights are by far the busiest periods for PTC travel, with the peak usually happening around midnight on Sunday morning. About 13,100 trips per hour, mostly concentrated in the core.

    Overall, it is estimated that Toronto does about 176,000 daily PTC trips (as of March 2019). That places it behind New York and Chicago in terms of the size of the market. But Toronto also didn’t complete its first PTC until 2014. Here’s a comparison chart:

    Another diagram that I found interesting was the proportion of shared ride trips by neighborhood. It shows that much of the inner suburbs are hailing shared rides — sometimes as high as 45% of all trips. This is interesting because it is people effectively gaming the system.

    Because the population densities are lower in the suburbs than in the core, you’re a lot less likely to get paired with other riders when you select that option. So what tends to happen is that you end up getting a private ride for the price of shared ride. I know I’ve played the odds before.

    If you’d like to download a full copy of the report, click here.

  • How to fix transit in Toronto

    Last month, Drew Fagan and Matti Siemiatycki — both of the University of Toronto — published an interesting op-ed in the Globe and Mail on how to fix Toronto’s dysfunctional approach to building transit. They argue that two things need to change: (1) the unclear and competing web of different levels of government and (2) the seemingly divisive relationship between technical evidence and politics.

    Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

    The focus should not be on one-off political deals. What is needed is co-ordination and integration. Why not consider all aspects of a regional approach that enables the creation of a long-term strategic investment plan with the legitimacy to be implemented? The GTA’s transit problems can’t be solved through backroom negotiations between Queen’s Park and the City of Toronto alone.

    They also get into some of the nuances around point number two:

    It is often said that we need to remove the politics to improve transit planning. This is wrong. Politics is the instrument of our democratic system and is an essential and legitimate part of decision-making for projects costing billions of dollars. The key is to ensure that politics is isolated to the correct stages in the decision-making process, and that decisions are made in a transparent way.

    The civil service produces the independent studies assessing the merits of proposed projects. The politicians debate and approve the projects that best meet strategic objectives, informed by the technical evidence. When politicians go against the evidence in choosing projects, as is their prerogative, the intervention should be reported publicly along with the rationale for the decision made.

    These arguments are from a paper that they published for the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the University of Toronto. If you’d like to read the full report, you can do that here. But here’s what I take from it. At the end of the day, what the authors are talking about is an effective process for making transit decisions in this city region.

    What comes to my mind as I read all of this is the following: Any decision — including a wrong decision — is better than no decision. I subscribe to this philosophy. Maybe some of you do too. And so what is most frustrating about the way we pretend to plan transit is that we’re constantly re-trading previous decisions, which means decisions aren’t really being made and investment dollars don’t know where to go.

    I have my own views on how transit should be planned and built in this city, as I am sure many of you do as well. (Being a transportation planner is easy, right?) But more than seeing my vision of the world come to fruition, I would like to see a vision of the world come to fruition. Matti and Drew put it this way in their report: “[The GTA needs to] act decisively with more focus and discipline, and yet also with greater inclusiveness.”

    Photo by Jorge Vasconez on Unsplash