Open letter to Margaret Wente

Dear Margaret Wente:

In the Toronto section of today's Globe and Mail, you wrote an article where you described the many difficulties you faced going carless for a week. I humbly suggest that the problem is not the lack of a car or shortcomings with the TTC, the problem is your neighbourhood.

When you chose to live in the Beaches, you doubtless did so without consideration for the quality of the public transit service in that area. However, people in your socioeconomic demographic can afford to live in most Toronto neighbourhoods, so if you actually intended to live without a car IRL, you would have picked a different neighbourhood. Try those same errands again, but this time with Yonge & Eg. serving as your home base. If Yonge & Eg. isn't your cup of tea, try Roncesvalles, or Davisville, or the Annex, or St. Clair. Pick your favourite one of the many Toronto neighbourhood that has a subway stop and all your most frequently used amenities and services all within walking distance, and try using that as your home base to get a taste of what life is like for people who could afford a car, but choose not to have one.

My home base is Yonge & Eg. Using a CAA map of Toronto and a ruler, I've determined that my commute is about as long, distance-wise, as yours. It takes me 17-25 minutes, door to door. The amount of walking I have to do is so negligible that I can wear whatever shoes I want, including my ridiculous heels. If my feet are going to start hurting, they would do so from my normal around-the-office walking anyway. If you're worried about the fashionability of carrying a backpack, you can easily fit water, reading material, etc. in a larger purse that does not look out of place on an office worker. The modus operanti for female TTC commuters who carry their lunch is to use a fashionable shopping bag. I see immaculately-groomed women with killer three-inch heels taking the TTC all the time, sometimes including myself. (And when my grooming deteriorates to less than immaculate, it's not because I took the TTC, but rather because I'm generally clumsy and sloppy, with oily skin and flat, heavy hair.)

The trip to the two "out of the way" places you listed (Bathurst & Lawrence and Eglinton & Allen) take me no more than half the travelling time you listed. I can't speak to the ease or difficulty of getting to Scarborough because I have no reason to go there. I don't have to worry about shopping using the TTC, because all the shopping I need is right in my immediate neighbourhood. Ditto with exercise classes - I don't go to a gym because it's no my scene, but I go right past three in the five-minute walk from the subway to my house, and I can think of three more within a five-minute walk in the other direction, plus two more within a five-minute walk of my office. I'm sure one of them would meet my needs.

I do grocery shop several times a week, but it is not out of my way at all (even when I don't grocery shop, I walk right past the store anyway) so it isn't a Great Big Chore. And carrying home a 32-pack of toilet paper? Dead easy! You just stick the end of the pack into one plastic grocery bag, then take two more plastic grocery bags and tie them to the handles of the bag that contains the toilet paper. The two extra bags will serve as extended handles, comfortably reaching over the top of the toilet paper package and allowing you to carry it with no more difficulty than you would have carrying a normal grocery bag. I regularly carry home a big-ass pack of Charmin along with up to five other grocery bags, and the toilet paper is the least of my problems.

While I know that many people cannot afford to live near a subway station, a couple with a house in the Beaches, two cars (one of which is an SUV), and two jobs (at least one of which is white-collar) can certainly afford to live in one of Toronto's more convenient neighbourhoods, and would certainly do so if they chose not to own a car. Therefore, while your experiment may reflect what life is like for those who are too poor to have their pick of neighbourhoods, it is not a sign of what your own life would be like if you gave up driving.