University of Toronto researchers identify benefits of self-driving cars

U of T civil engineering professor Matthew Roorda, Ph.D. candidate Sina Bahrami, and Ph.D. graduate Mehdi Nourinejad conducted a study about how self-driving cars can make parking easier for drivers and cities safer. AHMED-ZAKI HAGAR/GLEANER NEWS

By Ahmed-Zaki Hagar

Researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T) have determined that self-driving, or autonomous, cars may be the solution to a common problem of dense urban landscapes: the need for more parking.

Matthew Roorda, a civil engineering professor, Ph.D. student Sina Bahrami, and Ph.D. graduate Mehdi Nourinejad, all at U of T, published a report on a study last month that showed parking lots can accommodate 62 per cent more autonomous cars than cars driven by a person.

“If you sum up all the land that is given to parking in the United States, you have enough land for the state of Connecticut,” Nourinejad said.

The report includes a diagram that compares a conventional parking lot with one designed for self-driving cars.

The conventional lot can hold only four vehicles per row with two cars facing the opposite direction and allowing enough space for drivers to enter and exit.

The autonomous parking lot has six cars per row, however, with three facing the opposite direction, and significantly less space between cars.

The study’s authors believe that conventional parking lots are insufficient compared to automated vehicle parking lots.

“People are not as good at parking as computers,” Roorda said. “You have to allow far more space per car just to allow [for] all the challenges humans have.”

“You cannot block any regular vehicle, because if you park behind another vehicle, at the time that car wants to leave, you have to be in the car to relocate and give some free space for them to leave,” added Bahrami. “But if they are autonomous vehicles, they can move by some communication with each other so that they can be relocated without the driver being there.”

“The better reaction times of self-driving cars over humans should also help curb gridlock,” said Luc Tremblay, an associate professor of kinesiology and physical education who believes autonomous vehicles will have a positive impact on cities like Toronto. “Once a light turns green, a human must detect the change from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds at best, and then move the foot from the brake to the gas pedal in at least another 0.3 to 0.5 seconds.

“In contrast, self-driving cars can detect the change in light faster and immediately accelerate. The human reaction time is compounded such that we sometimes see the light turning green far ahead and know we will not make it through.”

Roorda thinks that self-driving cars would be particularly beneficial to areas like the Annex, because they would provide residents with more transportation options.

“In the Annex, there are choices of getting where you want to go,” he said. “In the Annex and downtown Toronto, most of the things you want to do [are] within walking distance. It is probably likely to first influence people who do a lot of commuting more so than [those who live in] highly-urbanized areas.”

The study also reviewed the City of Toronto’s lack of regulation on automated vehicles.

The authors believe that the city should be preparing to answer big questions about autonomous cars, the technology, and how people interact with them.

“We have to be planning in advance for things like what happens to all of the parking garages that we have,” Roorda said. “If we have vehicle automation, can we take advantage of opportunities to move some of those parking lots from the most valuable land downtown to someplace else?”

“We are still in the testing and piloting phase, we are far behind the U.S. in terms of automation,” added Nourinejad. “The U.S. is starting to move towards policy-making and regulation.”

The researchers can’t predict when fully-automated cars will hit the road here, but noted that “difficult weather” and “complicated driving conditions” are preventing autonomous vehicle tests in Toronto.

“The shortest time period is 10 years up to 40, 50 years,” said Nourinejad.

“And it depends on the kind of automation, we currently have lane assist and adaptive cruise control,” Roorda said. “These are elements of automation we already have on vehicles.

“The removal of the driver from the vehicle is quite a few years away. It takes some time.”

Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church marked Palm Sunday with a special children’s pageant. Written and directed by David Craig, a playwright with the Tarragon Theatre, Children at the Gate celebrates the miracles of every day life by following a group of children who ask a rabbi in ancient Rome to perform miracles. Pictured is Colin McElheran as The Roman Soldier, scolding and threatening to capture three children who want to see the rabbi. GEREMY?BORDONARO/GLEANER?NEWS

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ON THE COVER: Artscape Wychwood Barns 10th anniversary (March 2018)

ON THE COVER: Wage protest (Jan. 2018)

ON THE COVER: Snowshoes and a red sweater (Dec. 2017)

ON THE COVER (Nov. 2017): Remembering

ON THE COVER (Oct. 2017): Transitory night

ON THE COVER (AUGUST 2017): Setting up for a new season

Synagogue and church share one building

City Shul covers the cross in the Bloor Street United Church sanctuary with a tapestry depicting the Ten Commandments. AHMED-ZAKI HAGAR/GLEANER NEWS

By Ahmed-Zaki Hagar

Every Saturday morning at Bloor Street United Church (BSUC), a tapestry depicting the Ten Commandments is hung in front of the giant cross. It’s a sign that for the morning, the church has been transformed into a synagogue for the hundreds of Jewish congregants who observe Saturday services at the City Shul.

“We had to figure out a way to cover up the cross, which was quite large. We had to find a way to repaint our Jewish identity in a Christian space,” said Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, who founded the Reform synagogue in 2012 at the urging of former students from Kolel Adult Education Centre for Jewish Learning.

The synagogue’s first home was at the Wolfond Centre of Jewish Campus Life at the University of Toronto, but the congregation outgrew the space — which can hold only 60 people — in five years.

“The Wolfond Centre is a student centre, and we thought we were taking up too much of the students’ space,” Goldstein said. “We were using it so often that the students could not even use it. We felt that we had to give it back to them.”

That’s when the BSUC came in. City Shul had been holding its High Holiday services at Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church, but needed an alternative space in 2013, when Trinity-St. Paul’s was undergoing renovations.

“So [City Shul] came to us looking for short-term rental just for a couple of weekends in the fall,” said Reverend Martha ter Kuile of BSUC.

As the relationship grew over the years, ter Kuile said that representatives from the congregations met over several months to consider whether City Shul should make the move permanent.

“We talked to everyone at the church to see whether the adjustments that would need to be made could be made pretty readily,” said ter Kuile. “And everybody said ‘yes’ and everybody was quite enthusiastic.”

“Bloor Street United was very, very open and warm and interested in how they can accommodate us,” added Goldstein.

It’s not the first time that Bloor Street United has shared its space with another congregation. It was initially a Presbyterian congregation that voted to enter the United Church of Canada in 1924. The Alpha Korean United Church was a tenant of BSUC for 50 years until it moved to Willowdale last year, coinciding with City Shul’s relocation in September.

Mary-Louise Work, communications director for BSUC, described having City Shul under the same roof as a “very positive experience”.

“The day that they moved, the whole City Shul congregation marched up Huron Street and came into the building during one of our Sunday services,” she said. “It was one of the most joyous occasions.”

“Co-locating with a Christian church speaks to a certain intention that’s really powerful and important to us,” said a member of City Shul. “We care about pluralism, we care about living in the community. We care about being friends and good neighbours with people of other religious communities.

“We care about being Jewish in the world, as opposed to just being Jewish off by ourselves.”

Both congregations believe in inclusivity, diversity, and plurality. Ter Kuile said that “sincere worshippers should have a place of worship” when describing City Shul’s similarities with her congregation.

“When they put up their tapestry with the commandments on it, those are the same ten commandments that we have,” she said. “We were very open to it, and it has turned out to be working out really well.”

City Shul has moved in just as plans are being made to renovate the church, but Goldstein said that will not have an impact on the congregation. Both City Shul and Bloor Street United will simply move to another location until the construction is complete.

Rabbi Goldstein and Reverend ter Kuile will lead a shared Sabbath dinner at the end of the month with members of their respective congregations to learn from one another’s faith.

“We will explain our traditions through the evening,” she said. “There will be a study portion and discussion portion and just enjoying Sabbath dinner with each other.”

Goldstein believes that BSUC is a perfect match for City Shul. She and ter Kuile want to work together with the community to make the church open to all faiths for the foreseeable future.

“We are discussing with the church ways that physically the church can be more of a dual-purpose building,” Goldstein said. “I think the goal is for us and the church to stay together as a dual-purpose building.

“It is more than just ‘we are just another group renting the church.’ I think that we are in partnership with them to be a multi-faith building that the community can feel very welcome in no matter what faith they are.”

READ MORE:

NEWS: First look at Bloor Street United (Oct. 2017)

NEWS: New vision for Bloor Street United (July 2017)

Concrete yard to become shared greenspace

By Geremy Bordonaro

A concrete school yard at Monsignor Fraser College is set to be redeveloped into a park that will be shared by the school and community under a 21-year joint use agreement between the City of Toronto and the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB).

It will be paid for with funds from the city’s parks and recreation budget, and the city will be responsible for maintaining the greenspace once it has been developed.

“We have identified $300,000 through my office to turn it in to a public greenspace,” said Joe Cressy (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina). “The school will have access to it for use of its students during school hours. Outside of school hours, before and after school and on weekends, it will be a public park.”

The plan dates from 2016 when the TCDSB and the school first had a meeting with the community about greening the space.

“It was all a local and TCDSB initiative for the school. The site used to be an elementary school, St. Peter’s Elementary School, [and] it has now been an alternative high school for some time,” said Jo-Ann Davis, the TCDSB trustee for Ward 9 and a candidate for the provincial Liberal nomination for University-Rosedale. “Given that there was all this space at the south end of the site that wasn’t really being used by the students, the students and the local community wanted to look at what they could do to green it and incorporate school programming.”

The revised plan for redeveloping the large concrete yard at Monsignor Fraser College into a greenspace that will be shared by the school and the community. The plan includes removing the fence and adding community gardens and an outdoor classroom. COURTESY THE CITY OF TORONTO

The school and board initially sought funding from the Ministry of Education, but could not get the money. They also approached the community and tried to find independent sponsors, again to no avail.

“Given that it wasn’t something that we could fund, we initially — the fall before last — had a meeting with the community and said that we really wanted to be doing something with the space and had applied for various grants but weren’t successful,” Davis said. “We told them that this was the kind of thing that we would like to do and asked what their suggestions for potential partners were.”

Davis and representatives spoke to Cressy at that meeting about whether the city could help.

“At that meeting we invited the city and Councillor Cressy to attend. He was excited to hear about the types of things we wanted to do,” Davis said. “We asked him at that meeting about whether or not the city would be able to be a partner. As a result of our invitation the city has since responded and, through parks and recreation, has been able to find funds in order to make this shared-use greenspace a reality.”

It was a natural fit for Cressy, who advocates for the need to have more greenspace in the ward and sees the potential of this type of arrangement.

“This is an exciting project. Here we have, in the heart of Seaton Village, on [Toronto] Catholic District School Board land, a giant piece of concrete. Asphalt that is fenced in,” Cressy said. “It’s not serving the students, the community, or the environment.”

The design was initially chosen in 2016 by stakeholders, the school board, and Cressy, though some updates have been made since then.

“This is just a wonderful example of different public entities working together. Far too often opportunities like these aren’t seized because of finger-pointing over who owns the land,” Cressy said. “At the end of the day it is all public land and I don’t care if it is the city or the school or the province who owns it. It’s public land so we need to do a better job working together to ensure that is used in the public interest.”

“As you know, in downtown Toronto we don’t have a heck of a lot of greenspace so how can we bring in a new space, especially in that part of town,” Davis said. “It’s something that especially the community welcomed with open arms.”

READ MORE:

FOCUS ON EDUCATION: Monsignor Fraser College needs help to go green (Dec. 2016)

NEWS: A $9.4-million school with a view (June 2016)

Students from the University of Toronto Schools (UTS) will join schools across the city and around the world to mark Day of Pink on April 11. A feature of the celebration will be their annual public event during lunch hour in Matt Cohen Park at Bloor Street West and Spadina Road. It’s the fifth year that the school has marked the day, aimed at ending homophobia, bullying, and discrimination.

This year’s theme explores erasure and how marginalized groups are concealed from society. The students are raising money for the Rainbow Railroad, which helps LGBT people who have faced physical violence or face an imminent threat of violence, imprisonment, or death. For more information about the Day of Pink, please visit dayofpink.org.

—Brian Burchell/Gleaner News

READ MORE:

CHATTER: Pink Day at UTS renews call for tolerance (APRIL 2017)

NEWS: Celebrating pink at Harbord Collegiate Institute (May 2016)

NEWS: Break out the pink on April 13 (April 2016)

UTS goes pink, students unite (April 2015)

After closing its doors for what might have been the last time in December 2016, Little Island Comics has reopened at 323 College St., beside its parent store, The Beguiling Books & Art. Beguiling and Little Island moved from their locations on Markham Street to make room for the Mirvish Village redevelopment.

The comic book store for kids was the first of its kind when it opened in Mirvish Village in 2011, and served as a hub for young readers. The store also hosted many kid-centric events and classes on how to make comics.

“Independent bookshops are important spaces for learning, for exploration, and for building community, especially for young people,” said store manager Andrew Woodrow-Butcher. “The community has been showing us lots of love during the last week, and we are looking forward to serving them in our new College Street location for a long time to come.”

—Billie Wilner/Gleaner News

The City of Toronto has received an application to build three residential buildings just west of Robarts Library on 366, 368, and 370 Huron St. The applicant would like to build one three-storey residential building facing Huron Street and two residential buildings on the laneway off Huron Street near Glen Morris Road.

The plan is significant to the downtown neighbourhoods because of the laneway housing, which was identified as a way to meet the community’s housing needs in the 2014 Huron-Sussex Neighbourhood Planning Study in 2014. The University of Toronto (U of T) announced a pilot project last March to build two laneway houses on Huron Street.

“The laneway houses are a pilot project that will provide good rental housing and valuable information on what can work or not work for laneway housing in our neighbourhood,” said Julie Mathien, co-president of the Huron-Sussex Residents’ Association, which supports of the development. “With sensitivity to location and flexibility regarding size, laneway housing has the potential of providing more stable and affordable rental and owned housing.”

The Toronto and East York Community Council meeting will consider the application at its meeting on May 2.

—Ahmed Hagar/Gleaner News

READ MORE:

ON THE COVER (JANUARY 2017): Putting the city’s laneways to work

NEWS (JANUARY 2017): Laneway living

NEWS (OCTOBER 2016): Preventing a wall of towers

Bateman’s Bicycle Company will host its Spring Bike Swap at its flagship store at 913 Bathurst on April 14 and 15. Anyone can bring their used and working bikes before April 13 and Bateman’s will evaluate their value within minutes. Sellers can choose to get their bike’s value in store credit or 80 per cent of the value by cheque.

“This is one of those unique opportunities where price point and the quality of bike meet,” said Mike Nurse, a Bateman’s employee.

The event has taken place since 2012 and is now semi-annual. Nurse said it usually attracts hundreds of customers “who line up and down the street,” and recommends arriving early to get the best deal.

The bike swap runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on April 14 and from 12 to 5 p.m. on April 15. For further information, please visit www.batemansbikeco.com.

—Ahmed Hagar/Gleaner News

Improving Huron Street to make a positive impact

Huron Street Junior Public School’s Big Tree, a heritage tree that is about 150 years old, is at the centre of a plan to revitalize the schoolyard. School representatives want to create a welcoming space around the tree, clean up the tennis courts, and remove the fences. GEREMY BORDONARO/GLEANER NEWS

By Geremy Bordonaro

Huron Street Junior Public School hosted a community meeting in late January to discuss plans for revitalizing its playground.

“There’s been a lot of rumbling, a lot of discussion, and a lot of thought over the last few years. I think what really started it was the full day kindergarten. When that started in 2014 it made us think bigger,” said Meg Gardner, who is both a teacher at Huron and a director of the Annex Residents’ Association. “We’ve got these kids, they’re little and here all day, they represent 25 per cent of the school population and we need a dedicated space for them to play.”

[pullquote]“We want to celebrate and create more of a welcoming space around the big tree” —Meg Gardner, Huron Street Junior Public School[/pullquote]

While upgrades to the yard are sorely needed, the school highlighted four points that could use improvement: the large and old “Big Tree” that they want to use as a gathering point for the school, the grass playing field that is uneven and has drainage problems related to its original foundation, the baseball diamond that has an uneven sandlot and may end up becoming a safety hazard, and the tennis courts that have been falling apart.

“What we’re hoping to see is kind of a three-pronged approach,” explained Gardner. “We want to celebrate and create more of a welcoming space around the big tree. We also really want to clean up the tennis courts. We want to get rid of the concrete and the fences and make that a more usable space. We also really want to look at what the permanent sports areas will have to offer.”

“It’s really exciting for the community,” said Ausma Malik, the local trustee (Ward 10) for the Toronto District School Board. “The possibilities of this revitalization are really great. This master plan process is a wonderful opportunity to engage the ambitions for the playground with the entire community.”

It’s still unclear how the revitalization would be paid for, but the school’s representatives spoke openly at the meeting about their hope that some Section 37 funds could be allocated to the project. (Under Section 37 of the Ontario Planning Act, the City of Toronto can ask a developer for funding toward community projects when a zoning by-law is amended for a development.)

“It’s not so much about where the money is coming from at the city,” said Joe Cressy (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina). “It’s all public land. I think we need to stop thinking in silos. Is this school board land? Is this city land? It’s all green space that the community uses. It’s all play space that our kids use. Therefore we just need to think about partnering together.”

Malik seemed to agree.

“Huron is a really amazing school that’s very connected to the community. The green space around the school that is obviously used during the school day is also used after hours as well. It’s a huge benefit to have improvements to the school playground. Not just for the kids and the families who participate in the life of the school but for the neighbourhood.”

The school is hopeful that funding can found so the revitalization can be completed quickly.

“I would like to see this done within the next two or three years,” said Gardner. “Likely it is going to take a little bit longer than that. With everyone’s help, from not only the school but the community, I think we can push this along.”

READ MORE:

NEWS: Huron Street Playground renewal (April 2016)

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Sometimes a mea culpa comes in the form of a memoir. Such is the case with Alok Mukherjee, who was the chair of the Toronto Services Board from 2005 to 2015, a period that included the G20 economic summit in June 2010 in Toronto.

In Excessive Force, published last month, Mukherjee considers how police, particularly the Toronto Police Service (TPS), (mis)managed security during the summit. According to Mukherjee, there was a lack of training and planning, and perhaps most damning, no common articulation of shared values that one should expect from the police service.

The “21,000 security personnel on Toronto streets during the summit included 6,200 Toronto officers, 5,000 from the RCMP, 3,000 from the Canadian Armed Forces, 3,000 from the Ontario Provincial Police and 740 from Peel Region,” writes Mukherjee in his book. “Collectively, the police response was one of confusion, communication breakdowns and overreaction.”

It’s a timely mea culpa.

Canada is preparing to host the G7 summit in Quebec in June, and Mukherjee’s inside account of how and why things went so awry could hopefully prevent the problems — including blurred lines of authority, no accountability, and a lack of operational preparedness — from happening again.

The author describes the “darkest chapter in Toronto police history, where officers — as many as 100 — removed their identity badges during confrontations with protesters, in clear violation of police board policy requiring every uniformed member of the police service to wear their name badge. As many as 1,140 protesters, peaceful and otherwise, were arrested.”

These arrests and the time spent in an overcrowded, chaotic, temporary jail may represent one of the worst breaches of civil rights in the history of peacetime policing in Canada.

At Queen’s Park, designated by event planners as a peaceful protest site, protestors were targeted by police and subjected to violent take-downs, heavy-handedness, and other mistreatment that’s been widely documented in media accounts. The police also used “kettling” at Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue, a tactic that indiscriminately confined protestors and passersby alike in the intersection during cold torrential rain for hours. It’s since been determined that this was ordered by TPS Superintendent Mark Fenton, who had not considered how to disengage from hundreds of people corralled inside a solid circle of cops in riot gear.

Fenton — who said he was following an order from the police chief to “take back the city” — is the only senior police official to face discipline under the Police Services Act for his conduct on that day. He was reprimanded and docked 30 days’ vacation. He appealed, lost, and had that penalty increased to 60 days.

While these failings are now well known, Mukherjee’s book reveals just how disconnected former police chief Bill Blair seemed from the ongoing operations. Mukherjee writes that Blair spent most of his time before the event telling the board to keep its nose out of “operational” matters, and that on one of the days in question, he found Blair alone in an anteroom watching the events unfold on CP24 from a tiny television. Meanwhile, there was a command centre down the hall with CCTV feeds from across the city and a live link to an integrated security unit managed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and conveniently located in Barrie.

No one may ever know the extent to which the RCMP was calling the shots (though to his credit, Blair seems to have halted the kettling). Ostensibly, they were in charge of security, but the former chair writes that his board was under the clear impression that the Toronto police chief at the time was solely or primarily responsible for security operations during the G20.

Let’s hope that those planning security for the upcoming G7 read Mukherjee’s book and find ways to avoid the mistakes made in Toronto in 2010.

Peaceful protest and dissent should be welcome in Canada.

READ MORE EDITORIALS: 

EDITORIAL: A social contract is a precious thing (March 2018)

EDITORIAL: Intolerance leading to Quebec’s decline (Dec. 2017)

EDITORIAL (Nov. 2017): Student safety suffers as trustees cave

EDITORIAL: Pandering to religious intolerance (October 2017)

EDITORIAL: Bike lanes, good for business (Fall 2017)

EDITORIAL: Don’t sacrifice safety for political gain (August 2017)

EDITORIAL: Thank you Mr. Asti (July 2017)

EDITORIAL: A watershed moment (June 2017)

EDITORIAL: Revoke U of T’s unchecked “licence to build” (May 2017)

EDITORIAL: Westbank’s positive precedent (April 2017)

EDITORIAL: Foreign buyers tax a necessary cliff jump (March 2017)

Affordable housing missing from proposed inclusionary zoning

By Mike Layton

Over the past five years, the City of Toronto could have built nearly 10,000 new affordable housing units, according to the former chief planner. How? By mandating affordable units in new developments.

Unfortunately, despite repeated requests, the provincial government has not given the city the power to mandate affordable housing, called inclusionary zoning. Having these powers would have meant that there would be 10,000 fewer of the 100,000 families waiting for a place to call home.

[pullquote]Every day that developers are able to apply for new building permits without an inclusionary zoning policy in place is a lost opportunity to build more affordable housing units.[/pullquote]

Every day that developers are able to apply for new building permits without an inclusionary zoning policy in place is a lost opportunity to build more affordable housing units. The construction boom in Toronto has its limits, and if we wait too long, the opportunity for permanent growth of our affordable housing portfolio will be lost.

Cities across the United States use inclusionary zoning policies to address shortages in their affordable housing stock. For example, the mandatory affordable housing policy in some New York City neighbourhoods requires 20 to 30 per cent of a development to be permanent affordable housing. This not only creates new affordable units, but helps build mixed income communities that are proven to help lift people out of poverty.

Late last year, the province released draft regulations (finally!) to allow cities to use inclusionary zoning to mandate affordable housing, but it was not what advocates for inclusionary zoning expected.

The draft policy was released quietly just days before Christmas, limiting the amount of time available for cities and organizations to comment. The proposed rules would only apply to new condominium construction, not new purpose-built rental buildings. Developers also retained the ability to choose if the new affordable units would be rental or ownership.

Lastly, the proposed rules require cash-strapped cities to subsidize these newly built affordable units by directly giving money to developers. To be clear, cities will need to pay developers to construct these units while they make millions off our shared municipal infrastructure. The fees would be taken from development charges necessary to build and expand new services like transit, libraries, and parks. As cities grow, new services and infrastructure are necessary to accommodate the growth.

It is clear that the province is more interested in the developer’s bottom line than the determination of the municipalities to shape their own policies to meet their unique needs. Municipalities need to be given the authority to make decisions about their housing stock. Developers shouldn’t be driving housing policy when their motives are profit, not people.

The good news is that housing advocates and progressive councillors continue to fight back and push the province to pass legislation that will achieve the housing goals of the City of Toronto. I remain hopeful that we will see meaningful changes to the inclusionary zoning policies and the province will see the demand for comprehensive legislation that gives all municipalities the power they need to give their residents a place to call their home.

Mike Layton is the city councillor for Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina.

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