Miller Eyes Parking Lot Tax

[Abeja de Almirante]

Like just about any other city in North America.

Illegal yes, existant, also yes. There are several covert bus services in China towns in North America, not door to door service, but following a strict schedule, with mostly IIRC convenient stop locations.

I don't see why I can't set up a business in Toronto with two or three Orion-type buses, and run my bus from Scarborough to downtown, picking people up at pre-booked street corners, etc...

Maybe the TTC needs some competition on mass transit?

 

[bizorky]

No, I'm suggesting two-tier mass transit. Those that can pay more, should be able to pool their money and commission a private bus service, while the plebs can take the dirty TTC.

Two tier? Now you're thinking small. How about multi-tier service. Why don't the rich just hire themselves a diverse fleet of limos for all the species of the wealthy? They can then categorize their wealth so as to distinguish themselves by what they would consider as outstanding features (millions, hundreds of millions, billions, sweatshop masters, wealth by inheritance, etc.). By doing so, the old money types don't have to hang around with the smelly nouveau rich, for example, never mind those nasty "plebs" upon whom the maintenance of their wealth requires.

Maybe the real solution is to start "richville," a gated community palatial homes and offices that the mega wealthy could safely wall themselves within with appropriate high levels of security to keep the sweaty, wandering, TTC-using "plebs" at bay. There would be no need for the ugly spectre of the rich using mass transit.

There would still be the problem of all those servants though...

Guess the TTC will have to stick around.

 

[FutureMayor]

Just a suggestion...

The Toronto Star's Hume confirmed my earlier arguement that Miller doesn't really have the balls to go through with a Parking Lot Tax:

No time to shy away from tax on drivers

The first taste of our new reality came this week, when Miller floated the idea of a parking surcharge in downtown Toronto and North York. Immediately the spit hit the fan and drivers throughout the GTA were calling for Miller's head on a platter.

After that, the mayor's staff spent the rest of the day doing damage control, reminding anyone who would listen that the scheme was simply a suggestion. Much more study would be required, they assured anxious car addicts, so put your brains back on idle and don't worry.

It was simply just a suggestion and not even a proposal by the newly elected Mayor. At this rate Miller isn't going to get anything done in 4 years.

However, Miller does have time and energy to launch a series of staged media events to boost him image outside of downtown Toronto:

Saturday, December 9
Dennis R. Timbrell Resource Centre from 10 a.m. to noon
(formerly Flemingdon Resource Centre)
29 St. Dennis Drive in the Don Mills-Eglinton area

North Kipling Community Centre from 2 to 4 p.m.
2 Rowntree Road in the Kipling-Finch area

Sunday, December 10
Malvern Community Recreation Centre from 1 to 3 p.m.
30 Sewells Rd. in the Neilson-Sheppard area

Lawrence Heights Community Centre from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
5 Replin Rd. in the Lawrence-Allen Road area

We had 3 years to "Meet the Mayor" and an entire fall election campaign. Enough with the PR events and let's actually get some work done inside City Hall.

Louroz

 

[Abeja de Almirante]

Two tier? Now you're thinking small. How about multi-tier service. Why don't the rich just hire themselves a diverse fleet of limos for all the species of the wealthy?

In jest I know, but much of this already exists. My firm's president has a limo that picks him up at home each morning, and brings him to work.

If you look at the cost of owning a car, for many of us it would be cheaper to hire a airport style limo or at least a cab to go to work each day.

 

[SD2]

Re: Just a suggestion...

It was simply just a suggestion and not even a proposal by the newly elected Mayor. At this rate Miller isn't going to get anything done in 4 years.

However, Miller does have time and energy to launch a series of staged media events to boost him image outside of downtown Toronto:

Things take time. Did you expect him to implement it instantly?

We had 3 years to "Meet the Mayor" and an entire fall election campaign. Enough with the PR events and let's actually get some work done inside City Hall.

Louroz

It's a total of 8 hours. I think that's the least you could ask of a mayor when it comes to public accessibility.

 

[spmarshall]

Re: Just a suggestion...

Someone's been reading too much Royson James and Christopher Hume.

 

[alklay]

Re: Just a suggestion...

And those meet and greets are in neighbourhoods which probably contain a very low level of voter-turnout. I do not get the impression that he is out shopping for votes.

 

[billonlogan]

Re: Just a suggestion...

^
and high transit use and the type who use social services the most in the city. He'll soften them up with "GoodSpeak" and how their lot in life won't get any better without a portion of the sales tax from the feds.

 

[bizorky]

Re: Just a suggestion...

However, Miller does have time and energy to launch a series of staged media events to boost him image outside of downtown Toronto:

I would think it proper that a mayor would make an attempt to go out and meet with the public. I would assume that he will be talking with people, so the message will not be as controlled as in, say, an advertisement or press release. Yes, it is a "staged" event, but it is an event where one can ask the mayor questions. As the political leader of the largest jurisdiction in Canada, his only way to meet with people is in group settings like this.

I don't envy Miller. As mayor, his is an upstream swim. Among other things, while being a mayor is a prominent position, it is not a terribly powerful one. Miller leads a city council of whom some members could hardly be called "urban" in their mind-set. He faces a provincial parliament that pleads poverty, and a federal government that is uninterested. He has little room to raise revenues, and a growing city that requires money now for an entire host of needs.

I am pretty sure surface parking lots are not taxed to the hilt right now. There are jurisdictions to the tax-hating south that nail parking lots with rates far higher than is paid here. Portland is one example.

 

[Erik Tea]

Re: Just a suggestion...

I don't know how to find it, but the Globe and Mail's Dr. Gridlock column featured a piece on fluctuating parking rates in various parts of the city at different times. I think a large part of the appeal of the new parking meters is one can change the rates without going to each individual meter. Have the cities or towns near London (U.K.) implemented their plan to charge more for parking large vehicles?
I also wonder if Canada is as out-to-lunch as the U.S. when it comes to giving generous tax breaks on S.U.V's under the auspices of their being 'trucks'? If we do, and people are buying them as 'trucks', why wouldn't they expect to be subject to fees and/ or restrictions associated with trucks? When I was doing regular deliveries in a truck, I saw S.U.V's parked all over streets that had signs purportedly banning trucks. Anyone know the deal here in Canada or Ontario with respect to tax breaks on S.U.V. purchases?

I think this is my first post, I have tried posting before but they kept stalling because my log-in attempts kept failing. Come to think of it, I suppose it could happen again now...

 

[Mark Dowling]

Re: Just a suggestion...

Margaret Wente has just taken a similar TTC trip with a similar result.

Simply increasing the price of parking isn't the complete answer - it will just make it worth getting someone to drop you downtown (4 return trips). The money has to go into making transit faster:

* Traffic signal control on every streetcar route and *every major bus route* like Eglinton E/W and Finch E/W.
* Stalinist police enforcement of diamond lanes, parking etc. at peak time. If that means giving TPS money, do it.
* Take cab ranks off major transit streets like King which forces traffic into streetcar lanes
* Fit forward facing cameras on the vehicles to catch people doing illegal lefts or using transit only lanes and affix signs that it's going to happen.
* Buy new, lighter, quieter streetcars with disabled accessibility - now, not in 2025 or whenever the ODA exemption runs out - preferably bidirectional ones to eliminate loops which take up land and increase wheel squeal from the large turning circle.
* Look at adding a short third track at some stops to permit streetcars to overtake ones that are loading or to park unserviceable ones.

 

[TdotTrickyRicky]

I think the point missing in most of these discussions is that the only real force that will drive people to transit is congestion. As I have said before the concept that public transit eases congestion is as absurd as the notion that highways releave congestion. New infrastructure only reduces congestion in a fictitious steady-state model but the real world is dynamic. The fact is that this city region just isn't congested enough yet. If you have noticed in the absence of major infrastructure improvements the city-region has slowly been organically optimizing its existing infrastructure through the millions of decision of individual people to change jobs, move businesses or homes, change their consumer habits etc. This can only go on for so long until the point where if we want to keep growing for real we need more rapid public transit.

 

[bizorky]

^If transit does not relieve congestion, then why build it to relieve congestion? Not enough congestion in the city region, yet? Then transit construction and use will be initiated? I'm not sure I follow your above points.

 

[jayomatic]

I think the point he's making is that congestion will only increase. Its never going away. Transit is needed for people who decide that it is the better way of getting anywhere meanwhile you'll never get people to stop driving. If you look at examples of large transit networks like London or New York, people eventually realise that taking transit is the only way to get anywhere and streets are then used for tourists, taxi cabs, delivery vehicles and people who just don't get it yet. The problem we face is that we don't have the capacity to carry all these people downtown.

 

[bizorky]

^Thanks for the clarification.

But waiting for congestion to get worse does not strike me as being prudent in terms of a strategy for transit planning. The idea behind planning is to pre-empt these types of situations. Severe reductions in quality of life, business decisions to move further away from populated areas and efforts to expand existing roadways will all probably occur before congestion becomes so bad as to motivate transit construction. In other words, severe congestion will do damage to the city before habits change because other stop-gap solutions will begin to appear beforehand.