Rob Ford's Toronto

[Asterix]

Not true. I used to share this view as well, but if you go look at their financial statements you'll see that their transit operations are profitable independent of their real estate holdings.

Interesting. I did have a look. Thanks.

I think the interesting thing to note about the Hong Kong system is the "subway"-like system (not including the higher-speed, longer distance lines) is only around 70 km in length, the same size as Toronto's system. This is with a higher population and far, far more dense urban form.

Obviously making their money on concentrated demand, not expensive subways to sprawling suburbs (which include Vaughan).

 

[GraphicMatt]

Privatizing is a non-starter because no private agency would want to take control of anything except maybe the Yonge Subway Line. And the subway line wouldn't generate any revenue without all the 'money-losing' surface routes that feed into it.

Contracting out labour items like station cleaning and maintenance is an option, though.

But the cynical side of me sees that the best strategy for transit in the eyes of a government looking to cut costs is to strategically reduce service, raise fares and ultimately bring ridership down. Not only will this make the system less costly to operate it will also ease concerns about customer service. (I don't think TTC customer service got worse in recent years so much as there were more riders around to notice how much it sucked.)

 

[Eug]

Privatization would be a very hard sell, unless the union there was well on its way to being busted already.

 

[SimonP]

.. saved the province from going broke after the NDP?

By saving the province, are you reffering to how Harris ran up the debt and left a $6 billion deficit during the some of the best boom times we ever had?

 

[GraphicMatt]

Yeah, I thought it was weird that a smart person like Tewder would buy into such a grade school interpretation of political history.

 

[golodhendil]

He SHOULD privatize the TTC. Hong Kong, and several companies in Japan have done it and they're making money out of it. Also, do you see Hong Kong cancelling routes due to privatization? NO! Also, they're super efficient and modern.

Hong Kong, not only has significant density advantages, but the profit their metro system makes is due to its commercial real estate holdings, not the running of the transit system itself. That'd be like putting the TTC under Microsoft and saying it is profitable because M$ as a whole is profitable.

I feel like a broken record every time I have to correct these two misconceptions, but a) as CDL said, the MTR in HK is profitable without its real estate component (whereas most of the systems in Japan aren't, but in fact buoyed up not just by RE but also their tourism and retail/department store businesses); and b) the MTR is not a "private" company, because 50% of its shares are still held by the government, and the majority of its capital funding (for the projects currently under construction, all of it) comes from the government.
Bus companies in HK cannot cancel routes because by law they are required to maintain all routes they have been franchised and to maintain a minimum service level, lest their franchise be revoked; while it would be the more reasonable way to privatize transit, I doubt that's what most pro-privatization or pro-"competition" advocates have in mind. The transportation part of their business also have a very slim profit margin and actually dips into the red half of the time, and that is when they already charge rather exorbitantly high fares (for the median income of many transit-riders in HK).

I think the interesting thing to note about the Hong Kong system is the "subway"-like system (not including the higher-speed, longer distance lines) is only around 70 km in length, the same size as Toronto's system. This is with a higher population and far, far more dense urban form.

The density is actually why HK can have such a small system, because the majority of the population is squeezed into these narrow corridors, perfect for mass transit. Most of the recent and planned expansions will be to build parallel routes along the same general corridors to relieve current overloading.

 

[Glen]

Obviously making their money on concentrated demand, not expensive subways to sprawling suburbs (which include Vaughan).

Just how much of the existing Toronto subway is in densely populated areas? I recent drive along parts of Bloor had we wondering, what is the difference between much of the Bloor line and the Vaughan extension?

 

[Tewder]

By saving the province, are you reffering to how Harris ran up the debt and left a $6 billion deficit during the some of the best boom times we ever had?

Please educate me then. To be clear, I stated that Harris saved the province financially. He eliminated an uprecedented debt left by the NDP that was approaching $10 billion in 1995 dollars and balanced the budget. We had a surplus when he left office in 2001. Simple facts. Your statement requires a little 'defending' I should think...

Now, how Harris achieved those cuts and what the longer implications of them have been is up for fair debate I would agree.

 

[Asterix]

Just how much of the existing Toronto subway is in densely populated areas? I recent drive along parts of Bloor had we wondering, what is the difference between much of the Bloor line and the Vaughan extension?

Toronto subways are also heavily served by the feeder buses, not just walk-ins.

The point with subways to the 'burbs is that even with such feeders, there isn't the demand generated.

How many Vaughan subway riders would be going anywhere other than downtown and why should those who are be served by a subway and not GO?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

If Council slowly congeals into Fordists and anti-Fordists, and maybe some kind of fluctuating mushy middle, I'll increasingly wonder how different the council would be if ridings and wards had been redistributed before this election. It's been a few years and the councillors no longer represent anything close to equal numbers of people. Many old Toronto wards are very small, barely half the size of some suburban wards, yet there are some small suburban wards, too, and some of the more central wards are large and growing.

It would have certainly shaken up the races, pitting incumbents against each other in spots and sprouting entirely new voting bases in others. Some, like Cho and Filion, would have had an easy time since the bulk of their old base would probably have stayed intact, but other incumbents would have been toast. It would be very interesting to see a continuum of councillors according to general leftness/rightness (not that such a list would be especially accurate, but three political spectrum blobs could probably work) combined with ward population. Would redistribution have made it easier for Ford to push a right-shifting agenda through Council? Would it have buffed up the left?

It would become a big issue if Ford somehow managed to slice the council in half...

Obviously making their money on concentrated demand, not expensive subways to sprawling suburbs (which include Vaughan).

Yes, that final 2km of the extension into Vaughan will totally sink the TTC. It will cost a billion dollars a year to operate and ridership will be zero, too. We could have ended the line at a UPS depot or we could have ended it at a huge planned development node and Viva line. Of course, even if we were lying and said we preferred the UPS depot, running to the development site and Viva line were the only options if we wanted the line extended at all.

Vaughan does get a bad rap. Visit Bathurst and then visit, well, anywhere in, say, Durham. Night and day. If the Megapolitan Centre gets built as planned, it could be impressive.

Do the MTR's finances specifically exclude bus lines, ferries, etc? The TTC's finances could be tweaked to show large profits if they didn't have to be burdened with the operating losses of all the surface routes. If only they could teleport buses...all those busy Steeles East buses that end up way out at the end could be zapped back in seconds instead of having to trudge back to Finch while picking up like 2 people.

Anyway, I doubt Ford will touch the low-performing bus routes any time soon. Just one angry, hard-working, tax-paying, howe-owning citizen appealing directly to Ford to keep a route could be enough for a crusade to be launched. It could be tricky for him to cut anything since doing so without causing such individual appeals seems unlikely, and such individual appeals drive Ford's traditional political ethos.

 

[golodhendil]

Do the MTR's finances specifically exclude bus lines, ferries, etc? The TTC's finances could be tweaked to show large profits if they didn't have to be burdened with the operating losses of all the surface routes. If only they could teleport buses...all those busy Steeles East buses that end up way out at the end could be zapped back in seconds instead of having to trudge back to Finch while picking up like 2 people.

I think that's a very important point. The MTR barely runs any surface routes. It has a handful of feeder bus routes to connect to more rural places, but the majority of bus service in HK is run by 4 bus companies (technically 3, since two are owned by the same corporation), the old tram and funicular lines on the Island by two other operators, and ferries by a bunch of other franchisees/licensees. That's why I mentioned that the bus companies actually don't make a profit off their bus operations half the time; AFAIK the tram companies do make a profit (contributed in part by their touristic appeal, and in the tram's case, being really cheap and running beyond crushload at all times), while I think most (all) the ferry operators consistently report losses.

 

[SimonP]

Please educate me then. To be clear, I stated that Harris saved the province financially. He eliminated an uprecedented debt left by the NDP that was approaching $10 billion in 1995 dollars and balanced the budget. We had a surplus when he left office in 2001. Simple facts. Your statement requires a little 'defending' I should think...

Now, how Harris achieved those cuts and what the longer implications of them have been is up for fair debate I would agree.

The Tories in no way eliminated the debt. It was $96.6 billion when they took over, and $138.8 billion when they left office. The deficit was $10 billion in 1995, but was $5.6 billion in the Tories' final year in 2003. They did manage to balance the budget in 2001, but only by the one time cash influx from selling the 407.

Moreover, by failing to invest in new transit, health care, energy, sewers, and other items the Tories created an infrastructure deficit of tens of billions. One that still causes huge problems today.

This wouldn't be so bad, if those weren't also years of unprecedented economic growth. Rather than stock up when times were good, Harris threw all of the new money into tax cuts. He let transit and power plants crumble, and left nothing for worse economic times, like we are dealing with today.

 

[Glen]

Toronto subways are also heavily served by the feeder buses, not just walk-ins.

So. They have buses in Vaughan. Maybe with the subway there will be more.

The point with subways to the 'burbs is that even with such feeders, there isn't the demand generated.

Is that any different than Kipling Station, for example.

How many Vaughan subway riders would be going anywhere other than downtown and why should those who are be served by a subway and not GO?

That is a good question. One that we can ask for any station. Why should people in Vaughan use GO if a 2.5 km extension of the Subway into Vaughan would be better? Do you think that having two parallel systems are better? How many residents of Vaughan park and go at Downsview, Finch, Yorkdale today? How many downtown residents work in Vaughan or nearby that might now be able to commute by subway?

 

[toto]

The Tories in no way eliminated the debt. It was $96.6 billion when they took over, and $138.8 billion when they left office. The deficit was $10 billion in 1995, but was $5.6 billion in the Tories' final year in 2003. They did manage to balance the budget in 2001, but only by the one time cash influx from selling the 407.

Moreover, by failing to invest in new transit, health care, energy, sewers, and other items the Tories created an infrastructure deficit of tens of billions. One that still causes huge problems today.

This wouldn't be so bad, if those weren't also years of unprecedented economic growth. Rather than stock up when times were good, Harris threw all of the new money into tax cuts. He let transit and power plants crumble, and left nothing for worse economic times, like we are dealing with today.

SimonP, good to see that someone actually remembers the truth about the Harris years. I am dumbfounded by many of my peers who are becoming more conservative as they get older, yet were so anti Harris when he was in power. Somehow they think today's conservatives are a different breed.

 

[Irishmonk]

^Indeed, great post SimonP. The Neo-con revision of history continues unabated, esp. when it comes to the fiscal policy of their predecessors. Conservative governments tend to be the most fiscally imprudent of all the major parties since their constant mantra of lower taxes with no service cuts is mathematically impossible and always leaves gov't budgets in a shambles. Ford has promised the same and the results will be the same.