With Toronto preparing to deploy the first batch of its new streetcars this summer, there’s been a lot of talk about streetcars in general. Rob Ford has said he wants to get rid of them all together and I hear a lot of other people expressing similar frustrations: Streetcars are rolling stop signs. Streetcars block 2 lanes of traffic. Why don’t we just use more buses? Streetcars cause traffic. And so on.

So what should we do?

First, let me start by saying that buses suck. I’m a huge proponent of public transportation in cities, but there’s nothing quite like a rush hour bus ride to have you question your economic status in life. Bus routes have also been shown to have little economic development value, where as fixed rail lines (such as streetcar, LRT and subway) generally increase surrounding property values and spur investment.

Second, my view is that streetcars themselves as a transportation technology aren’t the problem. It’s our execution. I’ve touched on this topic before on ATC, but I’d like to reiterate a few points here. 

The value of light rail is that it’s a relatively inexpensive way (compared to subway) of efficiently moving a lot of people. But in order to do that, you need deploy it in a sensible way. In my mind, that primarily involves 3 things: giving streetcars their own dedicated lanes (grade separation), having a reasonable number of required stops, and streamlining the onboarding and off boarding process. Today, we don’t do a great job at most of these things (although our new streetcars will use a proof of payment model).

Take a look at this comparison between Dublin’s Luas light rail system and Toronto’s streetcar system. Both images are at the same scale. Notice the dramatically different stop spacing. Much of the Luas system also runs on its own dedicated lanes.

Dublin:

Toronto:

Every time a Toronto streetcar stops it generates waste. Cars are forced to stop behind it. Everyone on the streetcar has to sit and wait while somebody fumbles through their change looking for a token. But there are other ways to do this. There are ways to make light rail more subway-like, despite the fact that it may be above ground.  And so I don’t think we should be so quick to write off all streetcars.

Two things happened yesterday. And since there’s a nice tie in, I’d like to talk about both of them.

First, here at TAS, we launched a new condominium project called Kingston&Co. We had already gone public with some information, but we now have an updated rendering and we’ve gone live with a public Q&A section on our website (kingstonandco.ca). The questions are all geared towards topics that we think are on a lot of people’s minds and anybody can respond. Instead of trying to cover up the elephant in the room, we wanted to do the opposite and get it out and into the open. It’s all about promoting greater transparency.

Second, I watched this 45-minute interview with author and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk last night before going to bed. It’s a great video and I would encourage you to watch it if you have any interest in entrepreneurship, social media, marketing, capitalism and overall hustle. But if you don’t have the time, here are some of my key takeaways. Gary makes, on average, between $3-5 million a year selling the social media dream (but it could be more depending on things like his angel investments). Everybody is a media company first. He has clients putting 100% of their marketing dollars into social media and they’re seeing a ROI. It took him 1 ½ years to get anybody to care about his video blog Wine Library TV. And don’t just ask. Give as well.

That last point is a tie in to his latest book called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. And what he’s effectively saying is that, as a brand, you need to be mostly giving to your customers (that’s the jab). It could be valuable content you produce via social media or whatever. It’s you, delivering value to your customers in some way. Then, once you’ve done that, you can go in for the right hook, which is the ask: Buy my stuff. The idea is that you build up trust with your customers and develop a relationship so that you get the privilege of asking them to give you money.

The alternative, of course, is what we’re all already familiar with: brands constantly bombarding people with right hooks. It’s the let’s throw a bunch of shit up against the wall and see what sticks approach. And it’s related to the whole permission marketing vs. interruption marketing debate popularized by marketer Seth Godin.

But Gary’s argument–and I found this really interesting–is that constant right hooks is the approach we had to take before the internet and things like social media. Those right hooks were so expensive to deliver through billboards, print ads, TV commercials and so on, that companies simply couldn’t afford to be delivering any jabs. But all that has changed with social media and technology. Now, the best brands succeed by building trust and establishing relationships with their customers–often one-by-one.

And this is exactly what we’re trying to do with Kingston&Co. We know that there’s a lot of discussion happening in the marketplace around condos and we didn’t want to ignore it. We wanted to address it. And if you look at our messaging, you’ll notice that in most cases we’ve put “Join the conversation” ahead of the typical “Register now.” That’s because we truly do want to have a conversation.

This morning I’m super excited to announce that Architect This City has just been listed by the Guardian Cities UK as one of ’The best city blogs around the world.’

There are some great and well known blogs on the list, including The Happy City by Charles Montgomery (Vancouver) and Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton–which went on to become a #1 NYT bestselling book. So it feels good for my fledgling ATC blog to be included.

A big thanks to the editor of the Urban Times for encouraging the folks over at the Guardian to include it and thanks to everyone who reads ATC. Happy Monday.