Rob Ford's Toronto

[tariqata]

What has been opened is the Pandora's box where City Council voted to increase taxes to fund subways. They must now do the same for the DRL. Later on in planning, I believe that Council will realize that Property Taxes that don't grow with inflation shouldn't be used to fund transit and they'll create a dedicated transit tax to help fund the $30B in projects that must be built in Toronto.

Do you think they will? After hearing the last bit of Ford's speech, when he claimed that his next fight will be to extend a subway from Sheppard to Finch*, I'm pretty worried that no matter who is elected mayor in 2014, council is going to be too divided about which parts of the city 'deserve' a subway more, and too ignorant of what LRT technology is and why it's appropriate in certain areas.

*I could be misremembering the streets he named, or I may have misheard. However, it definitely was not any of the routes suggested for a DRL.

 

[innsertnamehere]

He mentioned Sheppard and Finch.

Lets just all hope the Liberals can pass a transit tax in the spring, which would finally take transit out of politicians hands.

 

[Adjei]

They haven't actually voted on the full funding of it yet. They voted to look into P3 funding (which is essentially what they've been doing for the past year or so and it's never materialized). They won't be able to come in with an actual final cost until after the Environmental Assessment is completed. Let's not forget that this was just a redo of a vote that happened in July, and I believe happened earlier in the year as well. Anytime anything new comes up they hold a new vote. This will not be the last of the Subway debate. Also Ford promised that the next election he'll be running on Subways for everyone! So expect much more of the same in the future but with Etobicoke, East York, etc in place of Scarborough.

I don't get what the hype is with P3 funding. The private sector is not going to hand money to anyone to build them subways if there is money to be made for them. You have fools like Mammoliti and Doug Ford who don't actually understand what it actually is believe that we can save money through it.

 

[Voltz]

at this point, with so much federal and provincial money on the table, voting for subway is a sensible thing to do.

No it isn't, the federal money was part of a fund that is going to come regardless. The city has just wasted it to buy votes.

 

[BurlOak]

And you know the Conservatives wouldn't have done the same because?

I can count 4 things the Liberal did wrong

1. They chose a poor location or created a process where the wrong location was chosen.
2. They cancelled the plant after the contract was signed.
3. They paid a larger cancellation penalty than was required by the contract, just to keep things quiet.
4. They lied about how much the cancellation costs ($40M vs $675M). A major lie.

Maybe the NDP or Conservatives would have mistake #2. I say maybe, because maybe they would have changed their minds if the actual cancellation cost were discovered to be singificantly more than the $40M that they were told by the Liberals that the cancellation would be. For the other 3 points, I don't think there is any evidence that the other parties would have made them.

So maybe the PC's and NDP are not perfect, but the Liberals are 4 times worse.

 

[guitarchitect]

at this point, with so much federal and provincial money on the table, voting for subway is a sensible thing to do.

The LRT was fully funded by the province. The subway requires $910 million (plus over-runs) from the city. It doesn't make any sense to devote $910 million to a subway when there are so many other priorities in the city if you're going to raise people's taxes.

Torontoist made a handy calculator where you can do the math yourself. You can even pick your own pet project (or three) at the bottom, which you can do IN ADDITION to the Scarborough LRT since it's only $910million. In theory you could build three LRT's and bring transit to far more people than this single subway.

 

[Adjei]

The LRT was fully funded by the province. The subway requires $910 million (plus over-runs) from the city. It doesn't make any sense to devote $910 million to a subway when there are so many other priorities in the city if you're going to raise people's taxes.

Torontoist made a handy calculator where you can do the math yourself. You can even pick your own pet project (or three) at the bottom, which you can do IN ADDITION to the Scarborough LRT since it's only $910million. In theory you could build three LRT's and bring transit to far more people than this single subway.

And who said the province was going to build the LRT? The province were pretty clear that they were going to build a subway. Today's vote was more to fund the McCowan alignment so that the province doesn't build what Murray proposed.

 

[Dubster]

Behold, Warmington's latest, and the Ford defense strategy should the TPS follow through. Despite the false equivalences, he does kind of have a point. Should not OPP be involved here?

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/10/0...gating-rob-ford-they-shouldnt-be-from-toronto

 

[adma]

Y'know, over the day, I've been thinking that the Ford strategy of blaming the Star/Globe/lefties/elites for aerial surveillance et al could very rationally telescope into "Lemme outa here! I didn't do nuthin'! I was framed! Get me a mouthpiece!"

 

[Peepers]

Behold, Warmington's latest, and the Ford defense strategy should the TPS follow through. Despite te false equivalences, he does kind of have a point. Should not OPP be involved here?

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/10/0...gating-rob-ford-they-shouldnt-be-from-toronto

Joe is live on Newstalk 1010 and will be discussing the Ford saga with crime expert Ross McLean

http://player.newstalk1010.com/

 

[nfitz]

And who said the province was going to build the LRT?

The province, in the signed agreement that they have with the city, that says they are building LRT, and that can't change without approval from the city.

I don't see any point debating it though ... we've now got the rare combination of the city, province, and feds all in agreement in how to do this. And that's a tough thing to change.

I'm not convinced subway was the best option. But it wasn't a terrible option either. The ridership is at least double, and perhaps triple what the Sheppard subway has. And it will make getting to Sheppard/McCowan much, much faster than it is now. Travel time is currently about 25 minutes to Kennedy, where you then have to wait for a subway train. Eglinton/Yonge to Sheppard/Yonge is 9 minutes for 3 stations. Eglinton/Marlee to Sheppard/Dufferin is 10 minutes for 5 stations. Worst case scenario I'd think for this extension from Eglinton/Kennedy to Sheppard/McCowan would be 11 minutes for 4 stations. That puts McCowan/Sheppard 33 minutes and a one-stop ride from Bloor/Yonge, compared to about 50 minutes today ... probably longer with that delay you always get pulling into Kennedy station, which this extension should fix.

 

[Franks2000inchTV]

Joe is live on Newstalk 1010 and will be discussing the Ford saga with crime expert Ross McLean

http://player.newstalk1010.com/

The only thing Ross McLean is an expert in is pretending to be an expert in crime.

He was a cop for about 5 minutes, 20 years ago.

 

[jje1000]

Ok great. We're in debt for 30 years. So let's make the mortgage worth it. Raise property taxes by another 1-2% to put our stake in the DRL and get the Feds and Province to put in theres. Council just voted to legnthed a clogged pipe so now the DRL must start construction at the same time as the Scarborough subway or we're looking at a TTC with white gloved subway passenger pushers/stuffers.

Remember that Ford doesn't really understand (or want to understand) anything. He thinks the subway is good as built that it's voted on, and is probably eager to be able to use the 1.5-2% potential tax hike as part of his re-election policies. Hopefully that investigation goes somewhere.

So Ford's finishing his speech. "The next campaign is going to be on subways - to connect Sheppard, and Finch." Promises more subway fights.

Palacio asks the mayor about St. Clair. Ford says city will get competitive bids. "I want to do an international search for subways."

Scrumming, Ford says he thinks he can get the property tax increase for 2014 back down to 0.25%.

https://twitter.com/GraphicMatt

 

[Johnny Au]

Rob Ford had to break one promise to fulfil another promise.

Any mayoral candidate should not make mutually exclusive promises.

 

[Electrify]

The province, in the signed agreement that they have with the city, that says they are building LRT, and that can't change without approval from the city.

I don't see any point debating it though ... we've now got the rare combination of the city, province, and feds all in agreement in how to do this. And that's a tough thing to change.

I'm not convinced subway was the best option. But it wasn't a terrible option either. The ridership is at least double, and perhaps triple what the Sheppard subway has. And it will make getting to Sheppard/McCowan much, much faster than it is now. Travel time is currently about 25 minutes to Kennedy, where you then have to wait for a subway train. Eglinton/Yonge to Sheppard/Yonge is 9 minutes for 3 stations. Eglinton/Marlee to Sheppard/Dufferin is 10 minutes for 5 stations. Worst case scenario I'd think for this extension from Eglinton/Kennedy to Sheppard/McCowan would be 11 minutes for 4 stations. That puts McCowan/Sheppard 33 minutes and a one-stop ride from Bloor/Yonge, compared to about 50 minutes today ... probably longer with that delay you always get pulling into Kennedy station, which this extension should fix.

Thank you for not making me the only one blinded by partisan politics!

If I may repost what I wrote in the SRT thread:

I feel it is fair to say that the last half decade has seen transit technologies become a partisan game. This goes for Miller as well, not just Ford, though the former at least didn't intend to see it played out like this.

If Miller had announced plans for a subway line in his Transit City plan, or even at some point later on, then I don't think we would have seen Ford and the right try and twist the technology debate the way that they have.

Likewise the left has denounced everything but light rail (coughstevemunrocough), with the exception of the downtown line. The way some of the left argue against subways, you would think that they are worse than downtown highways.

Hell, we have even sounded off against aspects which are in our own best interests. A subway would see higher ridership which would be better for the environment, but we cannot support it because it will mean the current network will be too busy. With this line of thinking, the only rapid transit this city would have is up to Eglinton and the Bloor-Danforth line would have never been constructed.

Perhaps LRT would be better for Scarborough. Believe it or not, I do see plenty of merit in it. But I also see plenty of merit in the subway plan as well. This isn't Sheppard we are talking about, besides both being in Scarborough they are apples to oranges. The subway may cost more and not be as good a value, but it also does some things better than the LRT plan and the government has wasted far more money on far worse transit decisions.

Bonus: What I wrote on the Globe and Mail's site and my Facebook page:

You know what else is a waste? Spending $1.4 billion including a 3 year shutdown to tear up a perfectly good railway in order to allow it to run slightly different trains!

The subway plan is hardly perfect, but the original light rail one was hardly the roses and unicorns that some make it out to be.