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Toronto transit riders are facing a fare increase at year-end and, because tokens are undated, the TTC has reduced their availability, thereby generating long queues and consternation on the part of riders.

By way of personal disclosure, I should say that I’ve seen this scenario played out often enough to know what was coming, so when I saw the first mention in the newspaper of possible fare increases I began hoarding. And last Sunday afternoon, despite the sign on the ticket booths indicating token sales were limited to five to a customer, a helpful agent was willing to sell me ten. I now have a cache of 23 tokens, which should be sufficient for my infrequent TTC trips over the next six weeks.

Recalling the TTC’s own slogan, is there a better way? Let me suggest two.

The first would be for the TTC simply not to restrict the sale of tokens, accept that there will be some loss of revenue due to hoarding, and recognize that it is the inevitable cost of maintaining good customer relations. That is what Canada Post does by selling perpetual (P) stamps valid at any time, rather than requiring customers to buy additional stamps every time rates go up.

A second solution would be to adopt better, more flexible pricing technology. Twenty-five years ago - that’s right, twenty-five years ago - I was in Hong Kong and saw how their subway system used what were called Common Stored Value Tickets. You bought a ticket for a certain value, and on every trip the automated card readers would deduct the price of that trip, until the ticket was used up. If the TTC had such a system today, fare changes would be easily implemented by increasing the amount deducted from the card on the day the new fares come into effect.

From a broader public policy perspective, I don’t think ever-increasing transit fares are the way to go. The better way would be to increase transit ridership and decrease automobile traffic in the core. The best way to do that, as has been demonstrated in London and Stockholm, is through an area pricing scheme, where road tolls are used to fund improvements in the public transit system. At the limit, I’d even support making transit free to riders, and fund it entirely through road tolls.

Highway 407 was an early foray into leading edge road tolling, so the technology exists right in our own backyard.

Let’s see if next year’s mayoral candidates are far-seeing enough to embrace these ideas. The one least likely to do so is the unimaginative stuffed shirt John Tory, who in the 2003 mayoral campaign even went so far as to set up a website attacking David Miller’s willingness to contemplate road tolls. Maybe next time will be different.

As the Government of Canada rolls out its Economic Action Plan, I have two projects that, as far as I can tell, are not under consideration for funding. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I’ve visited both several times with my children, and we’ve talked about how to improve these two museums.

The Canadian Air and Space Museum (casmuseum.org) is on the site of the former Downsview airport in suburban Toronto. The museum is smaller than the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa, but offers a different perspective, focusing its attention on the aircraft manufacturers, particularly De Havilland and A. V. Roe, which were both located in Toronto. It contains the only full-size replica of the Avro Arrow as well as a Canadian-built World War II Lancaster bomber that a group of dedicated amateur machinists is laboriously refurbishing.

The museum is attempting to raise $2 million in funds for a major expansion to highlight the role of the different manufacturers. The website contains a pitch from actor Harrison Ford, proclaiming the virtues of Canadian designed and manufactured aircraft, such as the Twin Otter.

I would have thought supporting the museum would readily appeal to the Harper government. It’s in multicultural northwest Toronto, an area where the Conservatives would like to make inroads. It would send messages about government support for manufacturing and for Canada’s armed forces. Yes, the Avro Arrow exhibit criticizes John Diefenbaker, the PM who decided to kill the Arrow, but I would hardly think the current-day Conservative Party - less than a decade old - considers itself accountable for Dief’s decisions half-a-century ago.

The second project is the Canadian Automotive Museum, which occupies a 25,000 square foot former dealership in an aging section of downtown Oshawa. The Museum has a superb collection of vintage cars going back to the 1910’s, with a particular emphasis on those manufactured in Canada.

The building is too small so the collection is very crowded. It is also in poor shape, for example the heating is insufficient for it to be comfortable in the winter. If the museum were in better shape, or in a better location, it could display its collection in the context of the history of Canadian automobile manufacturing, and launch a discussion about the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the automobile.

Developing this museum would also appear to be a no-brainer. The local MP is Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. The museum is about a vital part of Canada’s industrial heritage, which would appeal to the government’s values. So why, in this case as well, isn’t funding from the Economic Action Plan available? Isn’t the museum’s board knocking on the door of their powerful local MP? If they are, why isn’t that MP speaking up for his constituents?

Both these museums are about important chapters in our industrial heritage, and spending stimulus money on them would be a great idea. I hope it happens.

With the sequel to Wall Street currently in production, I want to look back at one of the most memorable scenes in the original. Not the famous “greed is good” speech, but rather a scene early in the movie (33 minutes in, chapter 7 on DVD) in which corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) convinces his protégé Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) to take up illegal corporate espionage.

Gekko carefully chooses as a setting to make his pitch to Fox his own limousine. Gekko wants Fox to spy on rival corporate raider Larry Wildman as payback for Wildman’s snagging a company Gekko wanted. Breaking the law for the thrill of participating in his mentor’s vendetta doesn’t much appeal to Fox, so Gekko has to be more clever.

Earlier the movie makes it clear that Fox is earning an entry-level stock broker’s income of $50,000 and aspiring to an income of half-a-million (remember, that was in 1985 dollars). Gekko raises Fox’s aspiration level by pointing to a building he claims — without verification, I should add — he flipped a decade before for $800,000 profit, which is now simply “a day’s pay.” He sneers at the guy earning $400,000 as “a working Wall Street stiff, flying first class and being comfortable.” He suggests Bud should be aiming for a net worth of $50 to $100 million, which he describes as being “a player, rich enough to own your own jet, rich enough not to waste time.”

Just as he raises Bud’s aspiration level he reframes his perceived downside. Gekko mentions his own father as “working like an elephant pushing electrical supplies and dropping dead at 49 with a heart attack and tax bills” and contrasts two men on the street, one well-dressed and successful and the other panhandling. Gekko’s implicit message to Bud is that the downside is not respectability, but poverty and misery. Fox would be unlikely to break the law if his choice is between an income of $50,000 and an income of $400,000. But, if posed an all-or-nothing choice between being really rich and being on the street, breaking the law looks more attractive.

When Fox points out that Gekko is asking him to deal in insider information, Gekko reminds Fox that he previously disclosed inside information he got from his father about the airline where he works. Thus Fox has already broken the law. Metaphorically, he’s a little bit pregnant.

Finally, Gekko poses the all-or-nothing choice as dramatically as possible. He asks his driver to pull over and let Fox out. It’s either cooperate with Gekko and ride in the limo or walk on New York’s mean streets. Fox ponders his fate for a few agonizing seconds, then leans over the window and agrees to cooperate: “alright, Mr. Gekko, you got me.” Yes Gekko “got” Fox alright, and it’s clear from Fox’s anxious body language by exactly which part of his anatomy Gekko has got him.

That clip is a cinematic gem that I’d heartily recommend to any instructor teaching motivational theory in psychology. It might be necessary to provide a bit of explanation about the context, but I think the clip stands up pretty well on its own.

Finally, I can’t help but compare Gekko’s ability to persuade the initially-skeptical Fox to break the law to the ability of terrorist organizations to persuade more than a few people of a similar age to be suicide bombers. While the element of revenge — against the Americans and their Afghan or Iraqi or Pakistani or Israeli or Australian allies — is greater, the terrorist leaders also provide a psychological upside in terms of the portrait they paint of life in the afterworld and a material upside in terms of wealth for their families. It’s surprising - and depressing - some of the things some people can persuade other people to do.

As we head up to Halloween weekend, here’s an update on the home front. Our older son, who has become interested in men’s fashion, is going as a magician, so that, for the first time, he can wear a top hat and tails. And our younger son, who has developed a deep interest in baseball this summer, is going as a New York Yankee, wearing number Derek Jeter’s number 2.

We’ll pick up some pumpkins after school Friday, carve them Saturday afternoon (following fencing class and a birthday party earlier in the day), and go trick-or-treating in the neighbourhood on Saturday evening (knowing from experience which streets are best), then watch some of the World Series game, and finally collapse into unconsciousness. A busy, and hopefully memorable, day will be had by all.

As the weather cools off, we are developing new ways to have physical activity indoors and my younger son and I have come up with a version of indoor baseball, with certain characteristics of squash. In a basement room 18 feet by 11 feet we set up a diamond going lengthwise. We use a foam rubber ball, which the hitter whacks and usually ricochets off one or more walls. The batter is out if he gets three strikes, if the pitcher catches the ball on the fly, or if the pitcher tags him out on the basepaths. Only home runs count, i.e. hits aren’t cumulative.

There is an open door on the third base line. My son, who is right handed, has developed great skill at hitting the ball out of the doorway, which is a home run. I’m left handed, so find it impossible to do that. We both have developed facility at the fielding side of the game — quickly seizing the ball as it bounces around the room — and holding the hitter to something less than a homerun, as well as the base running side of the game — taking as many bases as we can without getting tagged.

We don’t have an open door on the first base line, so my son has an advantage over me. I suppose we could equalize things by closing the door, but I’m happy to see him develop his skill at pulling the ball, i.e. hitting it down the third base line into left field. We both play as competitively as we can, so his advantage is a result of the structure of the field, rather than because dad isn’t trying hard.

It’s interesting that the game has evolved as we’ve played it, and we’ve worked up a set of rules that both of us understand and try to exploit. We’ll see how it evolves during the winter.

I’ll be back to narrative next week.

After seeing the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, I took the time this week to read George Crile’s 535 page history by the same title - the book from which the movie was adapted. The book was eminently readable and entirely enjoyable, though the story that emerged was very complex, incorporating quite a few subplots. The question that always comes to mind after such an exercise is what value the book added to the narrative in the film or, put otherwise, what was lost in the film’s necessarily simpler version of the narrative.

Let’s put aside the subplots and concentrate on the main plot of the movie, namely the co-operation between Charlie Wilson, a rogue congressman, and Gust Avrakotos, a rogue member of the US Clandestine Service (the elite of the CIA). Together, they orchestrated massive covert American support for the Afghan mujahedeen who ultimately defeated the Soviets.

The book did two things more effectively than the movie. First, it provided more comprehensive back-stories about both Wilson and Avrakotos. Both men had intrinsically fascinating back-stories. Second, working from Wilson’s point of view regarding Congress and Abrakotos’s regarding the CIA, it painted detailed portraits of the organizational culture and incentive systems in both institutions.

In Wilson’s case, we learn about his relationship with the Democratic leadership, in particular then Speaker Tim O’Neill, and how he was able to accumulate and trade personal capital to achieve his policy objectives. In Avrakotos’s case, we learn how he came up through the ranks in the CIA and, despite his profound difference in background with the WASP private school culture, he was able to achieve great things. In both cases, the book tells us more than the movie about their personal backgrounds, Wilson as a military man who combined virtually unshakeable sex and alcohol addictions with Churchillian idealism, and Avrakotos as a Greek-American with an ambition for public service.

The big difference between books and movies is that books tell and movies show. The movie didn’t have the capacity to go deeply into Wilson’s and Avrakotos’s back-stories. It is the responsibility of the actor to read and contemplate the back-story, immerse himself in the characters (as is done in method acting), and then through all the different aspects of his presentation (voice, facial expressions, gestures, etc.) make us understand, in a profound way, the individual he is portraying. And, after having now read the book, I stick to what I said in my previous post. Philip Seymour Hoffman got Gust Avrakotos spot-on and Tom Hanks missed in his portrayal of Charlie Wilson.

I come away from the book knowing more about Afghan and Pakistani politics, Congressional decision-making, and the CIA’s organizational culture, three disparate but intrinsically interesting bodies of knowledge. And I also come away with a better appreciation of where the movie succeeded and where it failed.