Last night Danielle and I went to the downtown Transit Windsor terminal to install the first five test panels we had printed for Text In-Transit. The panels read: everything is possible, YOU MADE MY DAY, YOU ARE THE CITY, YOU CHANGED EVERYTHING, and changing the world starts by changing this city. We had to install these panels while the buses momentarily stopped at the terminal, so it was pretty quick. When we install the rest of the panels later this month, we’ll do it at the garage.
I picked up five test panels on Friday from the printers and got a test shot of them installed on the buses. These first five panels were made up internally at BCL (we still haven’t had the chance to start going through all the submissions yet). I’ll be going back to the downtown terminal this evening to actually install the five test panels on a couple of buses, so keep an eye out for them over the next week.
I’ll post some more photos of the panels installed tomorrow.
Courtesy of the always brilliant Steven …
There’s now a new submission form that allows you to get a quick preview of what your Text In-Transit panel could look like, along with a fun little colour swatch. If you’ve already submitted, it’s worth submitting more just to try this out, and if you haven’t submitted yet—get on it!!!
Check out the NEW Text In-Transit Call for Submissions page!
Or if you’re more comfortable with an old fashioned email, that’s still fine too.
Text In-Transit is a Broken City Lab project where we’re partnering with Transit Windsor to install a number of text-based creative works amongst the ads in the headspace on buses. We’re looking for submissions of short statements, poems, and stories from anyone in the city that will help to change the conversation about Windsor!!!
*** Please send your submission(s) to info@brokencitylab.org by March 20, 2009.
We’ll be curating the submissions, so feel free to send more than one. As well, this project is made possible by Transit Windsor, OPIRG, MYAC and The Arts Society at the University of Windsor.
I saw an article on GOOD Magazine today that talked about initiatives that US colleges on the west coast are taking on to encourage more students biking to school. Among these initiatives are giving out free bus passes, car and bike sharing programs, shortening the school week and even paying students not to drive.
The University of Windsor (partly pictured above), as a commuter school, is essentially surrounded by parking lots. For some students, coming up from Essex County or even Tecumseh, taking public transit is not an option… (Let’s forget that there was once a commuter train that went from Kingsville, through Essex, and into Windsor). There are a number of obstacles for other students to get to school, even if they live within range of Transit Windsor’s routes—namely that it takes far too long to get to school by bus and to take a bicycle anywhere but along the riverfront is taking your life into your own hands.
There are proposed solutions to make the campus into more of a campus, with a sustained student body, and less of a drive-thru educational depot, such as increasing the cost of parking even more, and I’m wondering if the next few years might not be especially crucial to shift the student body onto public transit. With the economy so depressed, affording gas, insurance, parking, and car payments may be impossible, so why isn’t there another referendum to try to instate a University bus pass? Especially for students at Lebel, making it to main campus and back again in time for classes that are back to back is difficult, what if there was an electric shuttle that could get you back and forth in five minutes? How much would you be willing to add to your tuition for that? What if there was a dedicated bike path from Lebel to main campus? What if there was a bike sharing program with drop-off points at Lebel, the St Denis Centre, Odette and the Library? Should we buy some bikes and make our own bike-sharing program?
On a pretty regular basis, I have to cross our infamous Huron Church Road intersection at College Avenue in order to get to LeBel. If I’m lucky, I’m coming from the West, and only have to cross College. However, there are many times that I have to cross Huron Church itself, fighting the timer (what is it, about 15 seconds?) and drivers making left-hand turns.
In Toronto, they unveiled a new set of pedestrian crossing signals, setup to create a crossing time of 57 seconds and an opportunity to cross in any direction (including diagonally). This change is happening at Yonge and Dundas and is being billed as one of Toronto’s initiatives to make the city more pedestrian-focused. While there are likely problems with this (traffic rerouting itself, many idling cars), I would welcome a change like this in Windsor.
That our city is clearly built around cars is one huge example of just how broken it is. Public transit here is rough (1/2 hour waits for buses after 6pm?), and I give anyone who bicycles on any major street a lot of credit, but how do we begin to look at a problem like the layout of a city on our terms and at our scale?
Image and details [via].