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Transit City Plan

Which transit plan do you prefer?

  • Transit City

    Votes: 95 79.2%

  • Ford City

    Votes: 25 20.8%
  • Total voters
    120
EnviroTO said:
What do you mean? I'm not saying we stop paying provincial taxes, or separate. I'm saying that if something is really important to us then we should build it. City council is fearful of property tax increases, but when the province took over the school board they didn't have any such concerns that the poor Toronto taxpayers couldn't afford higher property taxes. If the money isn't there to build a line in 10 years then build it in 20. What is missing is a resolve to do it and a focus on real business cases where the project makes sense because rather than a drain on the city it is an investment with some non-fictitious ROI.
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The asymmetry and lack of communication. On both sides. We need new taxes. End of story. Toronto will never be great unless we build up.
 
EnviroTO said:
To add to that sentiment Toronto is an economic engine as shown in rising housing prices and office growth, but for some reason we need the province (which gets taxes from us) to pay for our subway. Why should we rely on the tax payers of St.Catharines, Sault Ste Marie, and Windsor to contribute to our subway? Why can't we go it alone if we do indeed need it, and if we don't need it why should we be accepting it from the province when they are using our tax dollars as well to pay for it?
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Because property taxes are not the same thing as income taxes.

For one thing, property is not necessarily proportional to income. There are lots of seniors in Toronto who own homes but live on fixed incomes, so you can't reasonably raise their taxes very much without compelling them to move, and they are the ones that vote the most.

For another, Toronto is surrounded by municipalities that sell away their future by financing their municipal government on development charges rather than property taxes. It's stupid of them because they will all run out of land eventually and have to raise their taxes, but until that happens Toronto cannot raise its taxes very much without chasing away businesses and residents to the 905.
 
andrewpmk said:
If taxes are low and transit is decent then development in North York Centre type areas is perfectly possible. The only reason we get so much car oriented business park crap is because taxes are too high in Toronto to encourage any development outside downtown (which is expensive anyway, so landlords are more willing to pay high taxes there because it is a premium location), and transit is crap in the 905 forcing landlords to build huge parking lots. Plenty of cities outside North America e.g. Tokyo and Paris have transit oriented office buildings along rail lines in the suburbs which I would not describe as car oriented business parks. Heck NYCC had lots of office building construction in the 1980s when taxes were low but it stopped when taxes went up due to amalgamation.
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Downtown has the entire GO network and subway network feeding passengers into it and a critical mass of walkable streets and underground PATHs. Never will there be something similar on offer in North York Centre or Scarborough Centre. Paris and Tokyo have development constraints in the core that push developments to a few sites outside the core, most of those larger sites are on the regional rail network. There isn't a shortage of downtown developable space in Toronto, nor major height restrictions around a palace or historic districts, nor is the cost of land in the core expensive compared to the global market. Taxes went up in the suburbs due to amalgamation? I thought the taxes went up in the old city and down in the suburbs.

The city already charges lower rates for new high rise residential than for old high rise residential.
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That is because nobody was building any rental apartment buildings. There are office buildings being built in Toronto... they just aren't in the boroughs. The city is slowly reducing the ratio between residential and office property taxes.
 
Until Toronto becomes its own province separate from Ontario, Toronto will be incapable of paying for subways on its own. It is known.
 
Woodbridge_Heights said:
Chicken and Egg??? First it's not like there is no business development in Toronto, if taxes were too high then how/why were BAC, RBC Centre, Telus house, ICE's office component, PwC tower, etc built/planned. Toronto is still an attractive location to build an office building (note I'm sure there are a handful of similar office buildings built in NYCC and Y/E I'm simply not familiar with that part of the city. I think the equation is roughly, IF you are going to build a business centre in Toronto, THAN you are most likely going to build one in the downtown core as it is the most attractive location in the city.

Second landlords chasing cheaper taxes in the 905 region, according to you, are forced to build huge business parks with large parking because transit sucks in the 905. What comes first, the trip generators or the riders??? You can't expect a municipality to run a transit line along a currently empty (or nearly empty) road (let alone a road that may not exist yet) in hopes that it encourages developers to build transit oriented business parks. No that would be a complete waste of money. So again here we are with the chicken and the egg, developers will continue building business parks with vast parking lots because transit sucks in the 905, but 905 municipalities cannot improve transit if the ridership isn't there and that brings us back to developers building transit oriented developments.

The municipalities could require that 75% of the planned parking available at business park be underground parking so as to minimize the effect of large parking lots. However developers would squawk loudly because land is so cheap in the 905 and building underground parking is so, relatively, expensive. They could also require that the office buildings actually front onto main roads (ones that would be planned to have transit) to make it easier for transit riders to go from their stop to the office building.
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Developers will not build transit oriented office buildings in the 905 unless there is decent transit. The easiest and fastest way to do this is to run GO trains more often and encourage office buildings near GO stations. Buses are not adequate, as is obvious from the lack of new office buildings in Mississauga Centre. Transit oriented development will not occur unless there is high quality rail transit. Otherwise employers will demand huge areas of surface parking such as the Loblaws headquarters at 407/Mississauga Rd.

As for the large amount of office construction downtown and the absence thereof in 416 suburbs I think it is an issue of taxes. Downtown office space is expensive because land downtown is expensive and downtown office buildings tend to be occupied by high paying financial services jobs. Downtown Toronto is competing with even more expensive locations like NYC so developers are willing to pay high taxes there. 416 suburbs office space is cheaper because 416 suburbs land is cheaper than downtown but high taxes mean there is almost no development there. Cutting taxes would encourage more development in these areas by making them cost competitive with the 905 for lower paying jobs. If lower taxes make NYCC competitive with Leslie & 7 then employers will move.
 
andrewpmk said:
As for the large amount of office construction downtown and the absence thereof in 416 suburbs I think it is an issue of taxes. Downtown office space is expensive because land downtown is expensive and downtown office buildings tend to be occupied by high paying financial services jobs. Downtown Toronto is competing with even more expensive locations like NYC so developers are willing to pay high taxes there. 416 suburbs office space is cheaper because 416 suburbs land is cheaper than downtown but high taxes mean there is almost no development there. Cutting taxes would encourage more development in these areas by making them cost competitive with the 905 for lower paying jobs. If lower taxes make NYCC competitive with Leslie & 7 then employers will move.
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They locate downtown because it's easy to get there from anywhere in the GTA. NYCC and STC can't compete.
 
Not necessarily - they are locating in downtown often to due Agglomeration Effect - especially the financial and supporting sectors. And sorry andrewpmk, like I've said before, MCC is centrally located with tons of transit options - and yet development stalled - but somehow back when there are fewer buses it prospered (relatively speaking). Parking wasn't exactly lacking in the area either, and yet there were no takers (hence zoning into residential uses). Also keep in mind that there is high quality rail transit along pretty much the entire stretch of Lakeshore W GO, and yet there is no pressure for commercial developments in Mississauga at PC and Clarkson either. To build a subway line on these shaky assumptions and what-ifs is simply bad planning.

AoD
 
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Well, Ford announced today that he's open to the idea of a 'parking fee' or levy or tax Toronto-wide to pay for Sheppard. This is a bit of a change of direction for Ford, the talker - a bit of a surprise.

There's no well-thought out plan, yet, behind the announcement, and even a glance at it apparently shows that it would likely not quite be sufficient to generate the amount of income that would actualize subway construction.
I'm not sure that it's a great announcement - it sounds a bit like relief, only because it's not the same shade of catastrophe that is boiling between the mayor, the TTC and Council. This move from any other intelligent and established politician would be laughed at as being too rudimentary to be dignified. But with Ford, well...

It could also merely be a ploy to try and soften the coalescing opposition that's apparently boiling at council, and win some affection. A dodgy way to do it with the public, considering his entire platform was built around a free Sheppard line, and that Toronto had a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and no new taxes, fees, etc., etc. As for council, Ford's utterance is still not a plan though, and such unprepared and hasty gestures now seem pretty off-the-cuff and late after over a year of having no funding model, suppressing the report, pushing council to the brink, and nearly bringing down the roof of city hall.
I suspect Council needed a funding plan months ago - not after the damage. It will take more than just some talk now to calm any tempers or reassure the pros after the Webster firing. Stintzs window to look at options for the Sheppard line might give the mayor some time to look a little better down the line, though.
That is, if he still has any say - if council still does not strip him of every rag and ribbon of power he can abuse in the future, in the next few weeks.
 
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Well, I am curious about the details of this parking fee/levy - would it be applied to single detached housing with a driveway, for example? I can totally see him loading it up in such a way that will minimize the damage to his base.

AoD
 
Fresh from the Star:

"Exactly what Ford has in mind isn’t clear, but members of his inner circle say what has been discussed is a per-space fee, which would be passed on to owners of large parking lots — malls and movie theatres, which typically offer free parking, as well as pay lots. For the latter, the added cost would probably be passed on to drivers. Ideally, the strategy would be implemented across the GTA, so there isn’t a situation where parking lots on the city limits struggle to compete."

http://www.thestar.com/news/cityhal...r-on-parking-tax-to-fund-sheppard-subway?bn=1
 
CanadianNational said:
Fresh from the Star:

"Exactly what Ford has in mind isn’t clear, but members of his inner circle say what has been discussed is a per-space fee, which would be passed on to owners of large parking lots — malls and movie theatres, which typically offer free parking, as well as pay lots. For the latter, the added cost would probably be passed on to drivers. Ideally, the strategy would be implemented across the GTA, so there isn’t a situation where parking lots on the city limits struggle to compete."

http://www.thestar.com/news/cityhal...r-on-parking-tax-to-fund-sheppard-subway?bn=1
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I do not see anything happening GTA wide, since essentially that would involve McGuinty helping Ford out of a mess.
 
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