Extending subway system driving force behind Thomson mayoral campaign

[golodhendil]

I like Hong Kong's model how the government eventually sold the MTR to the private sector. MTR would then build malls, housing along all the subway lines.

The MTR has been in the development business since its beginning, as a government-controlled entity, long before it became publicly listed (the HK gov't is still, and by law will always be, the controlling stockholder of the company). MTR also gets to expand infrastructure and develop property largely thanks to subsidy from the government in terms of basically free transfer of land and development rights and almost full gov't funding for all projects. As I have pointed out multiple times already, MTR is hardly what one would consider a "private" transit operator.

As for salary, an MTR employee earns ~$10000 HKD on average monthly (~$1300 CAD). With the work hours at 42 hr/week, that comes up to about $7-8 CAD/hr.

 

[JasonParis]

While I think Thomson's chances of being our next Mayor are very slim (and frankly, I don't really want her to be our next mayor), she's done this race an incredible favour. Everything about this debate is now changed. A right-winger calling for significant road tolls to pay for massive amounts of transit expansion turns everything on its head...and in a good way.

BTW, my issues with her map...

• B-D should go west to 427
• DRL should hit the core a bit further south than Queen and extend up to Sheppard on the east (and yes, it's missing a lot of stations)
• Sheppard should be expanded west to Downsview

Curiously, she's halted the 905 expansions. Did she explain her reasoning?

 

[andomano]

I knew I had seen this map before! In my opinion, Sarah Thomson has plagiarized Miguel Syyap, ripped right off of the Transit Toronto website. Look at Miguel's map:



And Sarah Thomson's:

Notice the small changes, like leaving the near-impossible routing of Atwell-Skyway>Carlingview>Renforth>Airport on the Eglinton Line, but for some reason changing the placement of the Atwell-Skyway stop. The remaining "Swift" and "Old Forest Hill" stations on Eglinton (not included on any other fantasy map I've ever seen). The remaining interchange circle at Downsview station, while having erased the extended Sheppard line. Most importantly, the overall look of the map is the same (even if they changed the colours)!

Sarah Thomson should fess up to stealing another person's vision and work and apologize!

Here is a higher-res image

Clearly now, you can see she's ripped this map off. In addition to the afore mentioned changes that were made; Pape, Science Centre, Don Mills, and York Centre which were originally connections with the DRL route, are written in seperate fonts and sizes than the rest of the map. Both the Sheppard the Downsview 'interchanges' still have yellow around the circles.. and list goes on.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

If you run DRL up to Don Mills and BD to STC - having a Sheppard subway that goes to STC is equally overkill.

Equal to what? Equal to running a subway (which subway?) to Rexdale just to make a prettier transit map? It's not like the transit infrastructure options on the table for the Don Mills, Sheppard, and SRT corridors aren't already going to cost many billions of dollars, including tunnelled segments (or, with the east half of Sheppard East and the SRT extension, move hardly any people and be a serious waste of money). Ridership is also very malleable.

 

[Fresh Start]

What if she hired on Miguel Syyap as a consultant? We don't know for certain what the behind-door implications of that map are yet.

Could she have at least considered a line to Northwet Toronto? Yeesh.

Did I miss something here or will Rexdale not soon be within 10-15 minutes of a subway station from either Jane-Steeles or Keele-Finch? How greedy must we be to propose subway lines this far out of the urban core? Oh wait...

Who cares if her subway plan might need some tweaking here and there or if her preliminary numbers might be a little off! She's done more for subway advocacy in one day than any of the so-called experts or any of the more experienced and better known city politicians. What's more, her basic message actually makes a lot of sense when you blow away a lot of the smoke and mirror nonsense that passes for informed transit discourse in Toronto: The city's transit structure is broken and inadequate and will only get worse all the while politicians continue to pass off on their responsibility for it. Subways are expensive but they are needed and they make the most sense long term, which ultimately will be the most efficient and cost effective alternative now. It's only a shame somebody like her didn't step up 10 or so years ago! We'd be hailing them as a visionary now!!

Thank you for acknowledging this. We need visionaries and innovators at the helm running this city. Better that than the same-o status quo. It takes daring political risks and chances for real socioeconomic progress to begin. Every revolution started with just one person quietly deciding enough with the corruption, time for a change. I don't think a career politician can do it, I think it has to be an outsider.

 

[M II A II R II K]

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[picard102]

It's pretty cheesy!

Yikes. Who's running her campaign, that was abysmal.

What if she hired on Miguel Syyap as a consultant?

So they hired Miguel, who then proceded to do a hatchet job on it? Her design team need to be fired asap.

 

[CDL.TO]

What if she hired on Miguel Syyap as a consultant? We don't know for certain what the behind-door implications of that map are yet.

It's highly unlikely that the edits to the map would have been such an inconsistent ouright hack job if she had hired the person who made the original map.

It's funny, someone spends hours of their time writing an essay (on a proposed transit plan, for example), and if someone steals it everyone agrees that it's a great crime. But someone else spends hours making a map (or doing other graphic design work) and no one considers it a big deal when that gets stolen.

 

[TOareaFan]

Am I missing something? Does it matter where she got the idea from? Does it matter if she saw someone else's map and said "that looks like a good idea...but I think I would tweek it this way or that way?" Is the validity of the idea in anyway related to her abilities as a graphic artist/map drawer?

I don't get the conern over the map....concern over the costing or deliverabiltiy of the plan? that might be legit but who realy cares where she got the idea from?

 

[CDL.TO]

Am I missing something? Does it matter where she got the idea from? Does it matter if she saw someone else's map and said "that looks like a good idea...but I think I would tweek it this way or that way?" Is the validity of the idea in anyway related to her abilities as a graphic artist/map drawer?

I don't get the conern over the map....concern over the costing or deliverabiltiy of the plan? that might be legit but who realy cares where she got the idea from?

So you wouldn't mind if someone took work you did and passed it off as their own? Maybe they could change a few words here and there to make it seem like they were the ones who did the work. But what really matters is the ideas in the work, not where it came from, right?

 

[Kitsune]

Anybody else notice on her map has Downsview listed as a Subway Interchange but there is no subway line to it?

 

[hkric88]

Anyone who talks about subway system expansion gets my vote. If a more articulate, more careful person comes out with it in their platform, they'll get my vote. I'm not impressed with anyone in the running right now, but if this can be a subway referendum of any kind, then I will find whatever way I can to say NO to Transit Shitty and YES to transportation that actually works and actually gets me where I want to go in a more timely manor. I'm sure I'm not the only one. She gets my vote by default.

 

[TOareaFan]

So you wouldn't mind if someone took work you did and passed it off as their own? Maybe they could change a few words here and there to make it seem like they were the ones who did the work. But what really matters is the ideas in the work, not where it came from, right?

If the person she "borrowed" from is/was running for mayor I could see the concern...OR if she was saying "I came up with this all on my own and no one else has ever thought of it so I am really smart".

I don't think (I stand to be corrected) either of those is the case. Are they?

As an example, was David Miller the first (or only) person in Toronto that was opposed to the bridge to the island airport? No...but he ran with that as a key part of his campaign and it struck a chord with some and won him votes. Isn't that what politics is? Listening/observing/researching the ideas out in the public domain and finding the ones you can support and push forward?

Look, if she wants to come out and say "my map is a concept piece that is a derivative of one I saw on the web by "X" " no harm no foul but what would that achieve or accomplish?

What I don't get, frankly, is the political sense of posturing as the "subway candidate" then showing a plan that eliminates two stops that are already approved and funded (I think there are two north of Steeles West, aren't there?)

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Anybody else notice on her map has Downsview listed as a Subway Interchange but there is no subway line to it?

I bet Sarah Thomson didn't notice.

 

[TOareaFan]

Anybody else notice on her map has Downsview listed as a Subway Interchange but there is no subway line to it?

Couldn't you say the same thing about Kipling and Pearson?