Admiral Beez
Superstar
Last week I spent Monday to Wednesday driving all around London, ON visiting over forty retailers that carry my brand. And I have to say, London has to have some of the worst transit infrastructure of any non-GTA city I’ve seen. With the possible exception of their brick paved, skid row core, I saw zero separated bike lanes. There were lots of orphan painted bike lanes - you know the sort that start and then stop seemingly randomly, and are never used - the one cyclist I saw those three days rode on the sidewalk. And forget about public transit, I think I saw perhaps a half dozen slowly moving buses over three days. And then there’s the condition of the city’s roads, with huge holes and heaves. And the speed of traffic is very fast, roads signed 50 kph race at nearly 80 kph, facilitated by long, wide four lane roads everywhere. And forget about pedestrian crossings. As an aside, even as a two decade veteran of Toronto downtown east living, I’ve never before experienced beggars and junkies at nearly every four lane intersection - I sense there’s a huge homeless and addiction issue there. I wanted to take the VIA to London instead of driving from Toronto, but the train schedule is unworkable, with trains departing for Toronto either in the middle of the workday or in the evening. I should not be able to drive my own car from/to downtown Toronto faster than a train. I was still willing to do it, as I love train journeys, but I couldn’t get a rental car - there’s a national shortage. London has some pretty spaces, but it’s definitely a car dependent city.