Mayor John Tory's Toronto

[JWBF]

Now that we have sussed out what we are supposed to get for transit , I think this assessment has quite a bit of merit for nothing if not for moving people around Scarborough and funnel them to RTs.

Forget subways: Scarborough's buses could be the future of rapid transit, U of T prof says
'We have tons of buses … we just need to get them out of traffic and given better priority'

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/scarborough-buses-subways-rapid-transit-1.3691910?cmp=rss

 

[JWBF]

Didn't Robbie do the same thing but was worshiped for doing so?

 

[salsa]

The TTC chair refuses to endorse John Tory's "unpalatable" budget cuts that might require eliminating all fare discounts for seniors and students, cutting service, and delaying the opening of the Spadina extension. TTC is also proposing a 10-cent fare increase that would still be $149M short of the budget request. In response, John Tory is considering calling in a task force to cut costs at the TTC if they are unable to do so themselves.

“If (the TTC) can’t do this themselves, and I’m confident they have enough good management there to find these ways of doing things better and differently, then I guess we could help them,”

“Perhaps the only people who would find them unpalatable would be those who want to preserve the status quo,” he said.


https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/08/03/ttc-chief-wont-endorse-unpalatable-budget-cuts.html

 

[W. K. Lis]

The TTC chair refuses to endorse John Tory's "unpalatable" budget cuts that might require eliminating all fare discounts for seniors and students, cutting service, and delaying the opening of the Spadina extension. TTC is also proposing a 10-cent fare increase that would still be $149M short of the budget request. In response, John Tory is considering calling in a task force to cut costs at the TTC if they are unable to do so themselves.

“If (the TTC) can’t do this themselves, and I’m confident they have enough good management there to find these ways of doing things better and differently, then I guess we could help them,”

“Perhaps the only people who would find them unpalatable would be those who want to preserve the status quo,” he said.


https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/08/03/ttc-chief-wont-endorse-unpalatable-budget-cuts.html

Four years of cuts under the Ford administration. Can we expect another four more years of cuts under Tory? When will all the cuts stop.

Maintenance for the TTC has been deferred to too long. Streetcars have to stop at each track switch because the TTC does not have the funds to correct them properly.

Tory wants a 2.6% budget cut in all departments, including the TTC. Inflation for June was 1.5%, excluding gasoline it would have been 1.9%. With inflation, Tory wants 4.5% budget cut for 2017. Enough already. I want services improved, not cut.

 

[jje1000]

What happened to all the organizing and opposition that occurred during the Ford era?

Most activists seem to be strangely silent on Tory's cuts.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

What happened to all the organizing and opposition that occurred during the Ford era?

Most activists seem to be strangely silent on Tory's cuts.

I can only hope there's significant behind-the-scenes organization to deny Tory reelection in 2018.

 

[Videodrome]

So long as Doug Ford continues to occasionally mention a 2018 rematch, Tory will be a lock for re-election.

 

[ShonTron]

The TTC chair refuses to endorse John Tory's "unpalatable" budget cuts that might require eliminating all fare discounts for seniors and students, cutting service, and delaying the opening of the Spadina extension. TTC is also proposing a 10-cent fare increase that would still be $149M short of the budget request. In response, John Tory is considering calling in a task force to cut costs at the TTC if they are unable to do so themselves.

“If (the TTC) can’t do this themselves, and I’m confident they have enough good management there to find these ways of doing things better and differently, then I guess we could help them,”

“Perhaps the only people who would find them unpalatable would be those who want to preserve the status quo,” he said.


https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/08/03/ttc-chief-wont-endorse-unpalatable-budget-cuts.html

The TTC Chair is Josh Colle, a Tory ally. The TTC CEO is Andy Byford, who is sticking up for the transit system. I'm worried that he will follow Gary Webster as being forced out for resisting the mayor. Calling for a group of outsiders to look for more "efficiencies" reeks of Mike Harris' tactics of forcing hospital closures and takeovers of cash-strapped school boards.

And yes, where is the resistance to John Tory's austerity agenda?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

The TTC Chair is Josh Colle, a Tory ally. The TTC CEO is Andy Byford, who is sticking up for the transit system. I'm worried that he will follow Gary Webster as being forced out for resisting the mayor. Calling for a group of outsiders to look for more "efficiencies" reeks of Mike Harris' tactics of forcing hospital closures and takeovers of cash-strapped school boards.

And yes, where is the resistance to John Tory's austerity agenda?

Let them - and have them own the decisions they chose to make.

AoD

 

[JWBF]

Let them - and have them own the decisions they chose to make.

AoD

That's optimistic.

 

[rbt]

Most activists seem to be strangely silent on Tory's cuts.

TTCRiders seems far more interested in low fares than improved service (I assume from their press). Expect them to make noise about the coming fare increase and be oddly silent about simultaneous service cuts.

Is TTCRiders something that came out of the old Rocket Riders group? Rocket Riders, when Perks ran it, had some great spokes-people and very high knowledge of transit.


Most of Council also isn't willing to demand a fare increase and/or a tax increase regardless of what happens to almost anything else.

 

[salsa]

Four years of cuts under the Ford administration. Can we expect another four more years of cuts under Tory? When will all the cuts stop.

Maintenance for the TTC has been deferred to too long. Streetcars have to stop at each track switch because the TTC does not have the funds to correct them properly.

Tory wants a 2.6% budget cut in all departments, including the TTC. Inflation for June was 1.5%, excluding gasoline it would have been 1.9%. With inflation, Tory wants 4.5% budget cut for 2017. Enough already. I want services improved, not cut.

You would think that a city like Toronto that is a major financial centre with a diverse economy and growing population, would be quite wealthy and prosperous. There are not many cities in the world that currently have such a tremendous economic opportunity to not only invest in basic essentials like transit, but to also have some of the "nice things" that we envy in other great cities. So I find it so utterly pathetic to read words like "cash strapped city" in the media whenever there's a budget in the works, hearing about how Toronto doesn't have money/is too poor to pay for ____, hearing the city manager sounding the alarm but still being ignored, seeing the city always asking for money from other governments, cutting services year after year, a growing poverty epidemic that is not being addressed, and a transit system on the brink of a meltdown where broken air conditioners will soon be the least of our problems.

While the population continues to grow at an unprecedented pace, city hall is pushing an austerity agenda and literally shrinking the size of government as if we're an Ohio backwater city run by Republicans. The only reason why the city's finances hasn't collapsed by now is because of unusually high revenue from the land transfer tax, which the city manager warned us not to depend on but we do it anyway. All that just to avoid raising the property tax above the rate of inflation, which is already one of the lowest in North America. This is the same mentality as Chris Christie who bankrupted the New Jersey transportation trust fund in order to avoid raising the gas tax (which ranks 2nd lowest in the country), even after cancelling billions of dollars worth of transit improvements.

I don't think we have ever squandered such a tremendous opportunity to invest in building a truly great city, at a time when it should have been possible to do so. People like John Tory, his council allies and his predecessor are the truest definition of "race to the bottom." What horrendous impediments to the enjoyment and enhancement of our city they are.

 

[Palma]

The TTC chair refuses to endorse John Tory's "unpalatable" budget cuts that might require eliminating all fare discounts for seniors and students, cutting service, and delaying the opening of the Spadina extension. TTC is also proposing a 10-cent fare increase that would still be $149M short of the budget request. In response, John Tory is considering calling in a task force to cut costs at the TTC if they are unable to do so themselves.

“If (the TTC) can’t do this themselves, and I’m confident they have enough good management there to find these ways of doing things better and differently, then I guess we could help them,”

“Perhaps the only people who would find them unpalatable would be those who want to preserve the status quo,” he said.


https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/08/03/ttc-chief-wont-endorse-unpalatable-budget-cuts.html

He spearheads the $4.2B (to rise) scarborough subway and then says this? This is unreal. I support Tory except for the Scarborough subway. I am glad he did not contract out garbage collection east of Yonge and for the elimination of fares for children (12 and under). Besides other considerations why those 2 proposals were the right thing to do, the cost savings is nothing as to what could be saved with not going ahead with the scarborough subway. Its to bad he did not say the same thing when it came to the police budget

 

[JWBF]

Boy, oh boy... Fat? Didn't the City staff submit a report about how there wasn't much left to cut? It's still true if you want shiney then you have to find to pay for it and not cut needed stuff.

https://www.thestar.com/…/time-to-pay-for-the-city-we-want-…

 

[W. K. Lis]

In 1959, Toronto had the worst (so far) heat wave. See link. Most, if not all, homes had NO air conditioning. Automobiles did not have air conditioning. Streetcars, subway, and buses did not have air conditioning. Most offices did not have air conditioning.

Nowadays, most cars, even trucks, have air conditioning. Most everywhere in Toronto, we have air conditioning, or we know where to go to get inside a place that has air conditioning.

But is it a necessity? The penny-pinchers, like in the above article, may consider it an unneeded expense. Getting educated on new technology on those junkets may be considered an unneeded expense. Those penny-pinchers would probably still be using punched card tabulators instead of computers, because they would be an unneeded expense.

We are an evolving city. We cannot stay in the past, not improve, not upgrade, because all that is an unneeded expense.

Wonder if the penny-pinchers are still using a coal burning furnace, because to upgrade is a too big expense.