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Toronto 2024 Olympic Bid (Dead)

Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Welcome to the debate NoTO2024! It's an extended and fulsome one here at UT. I, for one, will appreciate your input.
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Yeah right. It's been a nice couple of weeks without his drivel while he was busy working on that graphic. I look forward to the next one that will show us which neighborhoods will be demolished for Olympic venues.
 
NotoTO2024, are you saying that we'll get around $3 billion of private funds towards infrastructure if Toronto hosts 2024? Sign me up! Also, London didn't bring 10 already constructed venues to its Olympics like the ones we built for the Pan Am's. London built the venues in one small area, which is not what Agenda 2020 is asking. We'll be able to use many existing facilities, including ones outside the city. Oh, and for Rink Rat and the rest of the 'Just Say No' squad, I say we go as big as possible in our aims. Yes, let's get a DRL, SmartTrac, a beautifully redeveloped Port Lands, an iconic big-assed architectural masterpiece of a stadium, a buried Gardner and anything else we can think of while the getting is good. Otherwise, 10 years from now we'll be petitioning the gov to add public art to our scaled down vision of SmartTrac and debating whether we can keep tolls off of the 401, because we'll already have added them to the Gardner.
 
Oh yeah, throw the high-speed rail line into the mix for the Quebec-Windsor corridor. We paid enough for the studies. At least Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal? C'mon, you know you want it...
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
The point was -- and is -- that bidding for an Olympics and building infrastructure are two different conversations. You're conflating them for your own purposes. There's nothing particularly 'higher order' about spending money on an Olympics, even if you want there to be..
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LOL, Try and pass that one off in Vancouver, or in London, or in Barcelona... oh wait, we're not allowed to talk about Barcelona because it was an unmitigated success. Say it in almost any first world nation with a reasonably responsible form of government that has hosted the games and you'll be laughed out of the room.

Look, if we're talking reality here and not agenda-laden conspiracy fantasies we can observe that there are tangible reasons why major cities of the world bid for these games, even prosperous ones. These have already been discussed at length but the bottom line is that they look to leverage and fast-track long term, master-planned developments that are often slow, cumbersome and vulnerable to divisive politics. To choose to believe that any city just wants a big expensive party for the heck of it is beyond naive.

Riverdale Rink Rat said:
There's no need for an Olympics from a city building point of view. That city is already being built.
.
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That's a little rich given that much of that city building was driven by and/or fast-tracked by the PanAms, which unless you're an utter hypocrite you wouldn't have supported... and waxing nostalgic about Riverdale is lovely but to make light of Toronto's current infrastructure quagmire is irresponsible.
 
salsa said:
Yeah right. It's been a nice couple of weeks without his drivel while he was busy working on that graphic. I look forward to the next one that will show us which neighborhoods will be demolished for Olympic venues.
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I think you're mixing up two different posters. This one seems to be an organized group a la CodeRedTO or CodeBlueTO.
 
Euphoria said:
NotoTO2024, are you saying that we'll get around $3 billion of private funds towards infrastructure if Toronto hosts 2024? Sign me up! Also, London didn't bring 10 already constructed venues to its Olympics like the ones we built for the Pan Am's. London built the venues in one small area, which is not what Agenda 2020 is asking. We'll be able to use many existing facilities, including ones outside the city. Oh, and for Rink Rat and the rest of the 'Just Say No' squad, I say we go as big as possible in our aims. Yes, let's get a DRL, SmartTrac, a beautifully redeveloped Port Lands, an iconic big-assed architectural masterpiece of a stadium, a buried Gardner and anything else we can think of while the getting is good. Otherwise, 10 years from now we'll be petitioning the gov to add public art to our scaled down vision of SmartTrac and debating whether we can keep tolls off of the 401, because we'll already have added them to the Gardner.
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OK, then. You go big.
 
Tewder said:
That's a little rich given that much of that city building was driven by and/or fast-tracked by the PanAms, which unless you're an utter hypocrite you wouldn't have supported... and waxing nostalgic about Riverdale is lovely but to make light of Toronto's current infrastructure quagmire is irresponsible.
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My views on the Pan Ams are well documented on this forum. And I'm not making light of the need for infrastructure spending in Toronto, but I'd rather it was being spent to WaterfrontToronto's vision than the last Toronto Olympic bid committee's vision.

It's not 'waxing nostalgic' to be excited about the great strides that have been made in Harbourfront, QQE, the Spit, WDL. It's the reality of the east end of Toronto. Where do live in Toronto, Tewder? I assume you've seen all the great things that have been done by WT?
 
Hey NotoTO2024, can you advise the Olympic bid committee on how to squeeze the Feds for two thirds of the Olympic tax funding like they did in London? That's fricken awesome...
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
My views on the Pan Ams are well documented on this forum. And I'm not making light of the need for infrastructure spending in Toronto, but I'd rather it was being spent to WaterfrontToronto's vision than the last Toronto Olympic bid committee's vision.
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Many of these projects were undertaken because of the PanAms and Waterfront Toronto's vision itself was fast-tracked because of them (including QQ and the WDL), which you would have opposed. Even a Scarborough LRT under Miller would have been fast-tracked and complete today were it not for supreme anti-games 'gravy man' Ford cancelling it. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/pan...ressure-on-toronto-construction-projects.html

Why would you think that a bid/plan for an olympics games would ignore the Waterfront Toronto master plan already in place? In the UoT article I posted it describes how the PanAms took existing plans and kicked them into action. They didn't go back to the drawing board, if for no other reason but time. The studies and plans were already in place, conceived of by an already existing tri-level government agency, namely Waterfront Toronto. Yet again, I would join you in my opposition to any bid that did away with this vision and replaced it with something that doesn't make sense!
 
Tewder said:
Many of these projects were undertaken because of the PanAms and Waterfront Toronto's vision itself was fast-tracked because of them (including QQ and the WDL), which you would have opposed. Even a Scarborough LRT under Miller would have been fast-tracked and complete today were it not for supreme anti-games 'gravy man' Ford cancelling it. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/pan...ressure-on-toronto-construction-projects.html
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/pan...ressure-on-toronto-construction-projects.html

To me this undermines the main argument that mega-events spur transit development via some kind of 'bundling' effect.

As you and others have described it, a mega-event will prevent feckless politicians from intervening willy-nilly and allow us to finally get stuff done.

But, as the Rob Ford-SLRT debacle shows, that's not the case. Infrastructure is just as political with a mega event. I see no reason to believe that getting a mega event will somehow short circuit the messy and imperfect work of democracy.
 
diminutive said:
To me this undermines the main argument that mega-events spur transit development via some kind of 'bundling' effect.

As you and others have described it, a mega-event will prevent feckless politicians from intervening willy-nilly and allow us to finally get stuff done.

But, as the Rob Ford-SLRT debacle shows, that's not the case. Infrastructure is just as political with a mega event. I see no reason to believe that getting a mega event will somehow short circuit the messy and imperfect work of democracy.
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It's worse than that - instead of council running the show, we'd be handing over control of infrastructure planning to an unelected and unaccountable bidco.
 
diminutive said:
To me this undermines the main argument that mega-events spur transit development via some kind of 'bundling' effect.

As you and others have described it, a mega-event will prevent feckless politicians from intervening willy-nilly and allow us to finally get stuff done.

But, as the Rob Ford-SLRT debacle shows, that's not the case. Infrastructure is just as political with a mega event. I see no reason to believe that getting a mega event will somehow short circuit the messy and imperfect work of democracy.
Click to expand...

... but the mega event was there to kick start the plan in place, it was an anti-games, anti-gravy populist mayor that got in the way and bungled it for us, because of his own political agenda. Sure, an allegedly crack smoking mayor can upend anything - and shame on us for allowing it - but that's a whole other kettle of fish. The PanAms delivered on the vast bulk of what was planned by the agencies that count.
 
Tewder said:
... but the mega event was there to kick start the plan in place, it was an anti-games, anti-gravy populist mayor that got in the way and bungled it for us, because of his own political agenda. Sure, an allegedly crack smoking mayor can upend anything - and shame on us for allowing it - but that's a whole other kettle of fish. The PanAms delivered on the vast bulk of what was planned by the agencies that count.
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Umm, the Pan-Am games didn't "kick start" the plans around Transit City/SLRT at all. That's plainly a-historical.

The only infrastructure that PanAms really delivered was UPx, which was probably the lowest priority project in the region. It's a good example of how mega-events can lead to mis-investing, considering 90% of TTC bus routes probably have higher ridership than it.
 
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