I’m commuting by car to work these days and kind of liking it. You’d think hurtling around in potentially lethal weapons would require a trust in fellow humans which, I’m ashamed to say, I often lack. This comes out when I’m on a subway platform, worrying that someone will push me onto the tracks or when devilled eggs are served at a picnic and I think about salmonella.  

So why do I share the collective faith that drivers seem to have in each other?

My only other regular car-commute was the summer of 1987, after second year university. I lived with my parents in Lambeth, Ontario, a suburb of London. I struggled getting work that year, eventually signing on with a temp agency. After a failed attempt to keep my attention on a midnight shift making car parts for Magna on a line (oh, kill me now), the agency farmed me out to a modular home manufacturer in Hensall, an hour north. I drove at top speed in my parents’ Escort on backroads singing along to ‘80s first wave. By the time I arrived at my gig as an accounts payable clerk, I’d slapped myself awake twice despite the Benson and Hedges menthols I allowed myself enroute — I planned to blame the evidence on coworkers, although strangely, my parents never asked. When I entered the office, the stench of stale ashtrays from the day before overwhelmed the small space but by 9:30, we’d replaced it with fresh smoke. Puffing, laughing, and enjoying country music were ways to fit in with the other “girls in the office” at a very testosterone-loaded workplace and I worked very hard at the first two - country music has always been a bit of a tough hurdle for me to get over. When I started the return trip eight hours later, I was a little more awake. The traffic-less drive was boring, though, and I was grateful when the summer ended. I never gave much thought to how drivers were governed by mutual respect and civility, each pursuing individual geographic goals  but mindful of the rules of the road and the driving norms of the day.  Since my Hensall days, I’ve lived either a walk away from my work or I’ve commuted by subway or commuter train. 

That is, until the last three months. I live in the northwest corner of Toronto - Weston - and my new work is at Pape-Danforth, southeast of me. I know I should take transit and that by failing I’m contributing to the problems of an underfunded transit system and increasing congestion. But TTC would take longer than driving, be less pleasant, and cost more. The convoy of single-occupant cars along the backstreets of mid-town Toronto suggests I’m not alone in my views. 

While we all hear about road rage, I confess not to have seen much of it among the car-commute gang. Indeed, the respect for the fellow commuter that was present in 1987 is still very much the norm. Perhaps there is mutual trust fuelled by the seriousness of the risks and the immediacy of the consequences: my attentiveness saves you and yours saves me. Aggressive moves at high speeds carry greater risks - potentially life threatening - but for commuters, traffic volume rarely allows for those kinds of speed. Time is the most precious commodity for the urban commuter and so the biggest risk for us is delay..

Beating the clock is a game. For the first few weeks, I tested different routes, checking my trip data at the 22 minute point to see how far I’d gotten, that being the approximate mid-point of my inbound commute. I’ve eliminated all highways from my route; they’re too susceptible to holdups from accidents or construction. When you see congestion on backstreets, you can more easily adjust: nothing pleases me more than exploring new routes. I know many use apps like Waze to find the most efficient route, but after nearly 35 years in Toronto, it’s cheating to ask my phone for help getting around. 

Roselawn, for example. If I had a photographic memory for licence plates, I’d recognize the same ones day after day as I cross from Castlefield to Yonge Street, the prefect way to shave a few minutes from the trip by not descending south to Eglinton which has been under construction for a decade, or Chaplin/Davisville, which is chockablock with wealthy Forest Hillers, who have parking at their offices and therefore wouldn’t use transit on a bet. 

I’m not entirely proud of the Jack-tricks I now employ on these car-commutes to better my commute times, walking the careful line between decreasing my travel-time without attracting police attention or creating an accident - both big-time delay-causers. Jack was the master of aggressive driving, legendary in his ability to scare the shit out of me, any other passengers, and all the drivers around him.* The most effective approach is to weave in and out of the curb lane past the many who are stuck firmly in the ‘fast lane’ even when ‘fast’ is impossible. On the highway, this involves bleeding from the line of traffic into the underused onramp lane and accelerating past the standing cars, cutting in when the lane ends, all the while longing to live where drivers embrace the elegance and efficiency of the zipper merge. In the city, curb lanes at stoplights provide the perfect vantage for hopping to the front of the pack for the next stretch, providing you’re prepared to accelerate like you’re Jack-propelled. Having my Prius Plug-in gives me an advantage here - it’s fun, for example, to exchange glances at a stoplight with a young pup in a souped up Civic and then leave him in my dust. I’ve learned not to take on a Tesla though. (I would really, really like a Tesla just for the acceleration, but I digress.)  

So far, I’ve managed to use these tricks within the general framework of communal responsibility to minimize the risk of delaying myself or anyone else. 

This begs the question: how can we inject the pro-social collective responsibility of the commuter into pressing long-term issues like housing affordability and the climate crisis where I gather people don’t feel the risks are as immediate or as serious? I fear by the time we do, we will surely have passed the point of no return. 

* For a deeper drive into the experience of driving with Jack, read here.

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