Community Streetscaping on Jarvis

Owing to budget shortfalls (among other reasons), City Council has voted to remove the painted on bike lanes from Jarvis at a cost of $210,000. While we certainly can't help the city deal directly with 6-figure budget constraints on bicycle infrastructure projects, we can use our ingenuity to maintain and even upgrade bicycle infrastructure that the city cannot afford to maintain for us. Instead of spending millions of dollars on road crews and construction materials, we can rebuild Jarvis Street into a world-class cycling facility using entirely found objects. Following streetscaping practices employed in Vancouver to celebrate the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, we can reconfigure the streetscape without having to bring in any new materials at all, by overturning cars that are already there. As we can see in the photo below, an overturned car can make a tasteful and functional traffic calming measure, and even serve an additional function as a piece of public art and street furniture:

In fact, if evenly spaced and properly aligned, overturned cars can be employed to provide a barrier between cyclists that is both safer and less expensive to the city than costly road paints. Here we can see a simple change to the layout of Jarvis St. that would provide a protected bikeway for cyclists without having to reduce the number of cars on the road from present levels:

Moreover, it has been nearly two years since Darcy Allen Sheppard was killed by former Attorney General Michael Bryant (and only slightly less time since any homicide charges against Mr. Bryant were dropped). Yet in spite of all this time having passed, there is still no decent memorial to Mr. Sheppard. Fortunately, the novel use of unused cars can help here too, helping to provide an eternal-flame-style monument around which people can gather to mourn and contemplate.

Observe the dignified memorial the hockey fans in Vancouver prepared for their Stanley Cup hopes. Surely such a touching scene would be welcome in Yorkville, where Mr. Sheppard was killed, or in front of the Ministry of the Attorney General, where Mr. Bryant used to work.

Indeed the possible uses for immobilized cars are almost as abundant as the smog-machines themselves, and exploring such uses is an area where Toronto could demonstrate some clear leadership, and properly establish itself as a world-class city.