I woke early and went for a drive. That’s how I began New Year’s Day. That’s how I often begin the year. That’s because Toronto’s roads are empty early in the morning on January 1. They are so clear it feels like an episode of the Twilight Zone. As I drive along streets that are normally bumper-to-bumper, I can almost hear Rod Serling saying, “the hand on the steering wheel belongs to Andrew Clark, known by some as the Road Sage, a writer who dreams of open roads, but who just took a left into the Twilight Zone.”
I use my New Year’s drive as a reset. It feels like I am driving the way it used to be when, in fact, I am driving the way it was meant to be but never was. With the exception of a few holidays and some days during the pandemic, the roads have rarely been this clear, not since the 1920s, and even then, they were fraught, chaotic spaces.
It’s also a chance to recalibrate my values. A chance to take a break from blowing the lid off hard news stories (such as the perils of parking dibs) and engage in meditative musing. This time I pondered the question: What is the best kind of transportation? Here, I break down my top three.
1. Space travel: From the passenger’s perspective, there is no “downside” to space travel. It looks fun in all the movies and billionaires and Katy Perry like doing it.
True, it’s odd for me to choose something I’ve never done (space travel) as my top pick but I saw Star Wars: A New Hope eight times in the theatre when it opened. Besides, the fact I’ve never experience it means I have not see the ‘dark side" of space travel.
Once you eliminate space travel, there is a very big drop off.
2. Automobile: I’m a product of the 20th century, an age when the automobile was equated with freedom. I got my learner’s permit the day I turned 16. I find driving soothing. Driving is independence. You decide where you’re going and you get yourself there. I have my preferred automobiles: Mini Cooper, Porsche, 1967 Mercury Comet Caliente two-door, four-door 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit. To me, a well-designed automobile is a work of art, the culmination of the human race’s capacity to strive and wonder.
If you want to see a place, really see it and explore those hidden roads, the automobile is the finest way to do it. Bicycle and horseback, if you are up to it, are in the same vein. After the 1920s, the road trip became the North American secular pilgrimage. As beatnik writer Jack Kerouac wrote, “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
There isn’t a single thing I don’t like about driving, except the other drivers, the pollution, the carnage, the maddening traffic congestion, the confusion, the extinction of manual transmission, large screens everywhere and the fact the interior of an automobile can seem like a steel cage, a prison in which we squander what little time we have left.
Otherwise, Number Two.
3. Airplane: Many will have trouble with this choice. Some people loathe flying. I love it because it is the opposite of driving. Unless you’re the pilot, you are passive. You sit there, have a bite to eat, read, have a few drinks, watch a movie, sleep and then wake up thousands of kilometres from where you began.
Utter transcendence. As French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, wrote in his 1943 novella The Little Prince, “I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.”
As with automobiles, I like flying so much I have a “preferred airline.” Mine is ITA Airlines, because I go to Italy at least three times a year. They fly direct to Rome and offer 16 regional destinations in Italy. I get to speak Italian with the flight crew and the in-flight food is tasty.
While many “priority lounges” have become crowded pigsties with irate travellers fighting each other at the trough, ITA’s 1,000-sqaure-metre Piazza di Spagna lounge in Rome offers serenity and fresh-baked Roman pizza. ITA is the official airline partner for the 2026 Winter Olympics. I’d go but my “job” prevents me.
Air travel has its downside and can be frustrating, tedious and exhausting. Long lines, flight delays and cancellations, plus the drive to the airport is often the worst part of the journey. Still, so far as frustrating, tedious, exhausting experiences go, it’s one of the best.
Honourable Mention: Train: For much of my life, the train has been my preferred means of travelling the corridor between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. It began with the “thrilling returning trains of my youth.” They were quick, romantic and easy. Now, not so much. The cost often seems almost as expensive as flying. Trains are frequently delayed. In fact, two of the last four trains taken by myself or my family between Toronto and Montreal were delayed by hours. An autumn train from Niagara Falls to Toronto was three hours delayed.
It’s a far cry from the romance of the rail that I enjoyed when I travelled to Vancouver from Toronto on Via Rail in 1995. Here’s hoping 2026 sees a return to former glory.
I’ll give the last word to keen traveller Robert Louis Stevenson, who published his novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886. He wrote, “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
Words to live by in 2026.