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feature — Comments Off on City Council Scorecard: How to save the Jarvis bike lanes
28
Jun 11

City Council Scorecard: How to save the Jarvis bike lanes

On May 25, 2009, a very different-looking Toronto City Council considered PW24.15, “Jarvis Street Streetscape Improvements – Class Environmental Assessment Study.” This item ultimately led to the installation of the controversial Jarvis Street bike lanes.

In the coming weeks, thanks to a motion by Councillor John Parker on PW5.1 “Bikeway Network – 2011 Update”, council will once again debate Jarvis Street, its role in the city, and whether it should continue to be of use to the 900+ cyclists who ride the route daily. While the exact nature of that debate is still a bit unclear — Public Works Chair Denzil Minnan-Wong would appear to favour the return of the reversible fifth lane, but the cost may be prohibitive — cycling advocates within the city have already begun a campaign to Save Jarvis Street.

But given the divisive nature of council and Mayor Rob Ford’s effectiveness when it comes to gathering support for major issues, the question has to be asked: Can the Jarvis lanes be saved? Is there any realistic hope of Rob Ford and company not getting their way?

Combining data from the 2009 vote and trends from my City Council Scorecard, an answer to that question does seem to emerge. And that answer is: maybe. But there are still a number of blanks that need to be filled in.

DISCLAIMER: This is highly speculative. For novelty purposes only.

Surprisingly, seven councillors who are currently hardline Ford supporters voted in favour of the bike plan on Jarvis Street in 2009. Joining them in support was Councillor Ron Moeser, who leans conservative but tends to vote more with his conscience than with the whip. The 2009 vote passed 28-16, with 1 absent. (I’ve included a breakdown of that vote at the bottom of this post. Just for the hell of it.)

Making a bunch of assumptions based on current voting patterns — along with some statements councillors have made since this issue resurfaced, e.g. Mary-Margaret McMahon’s comment on Twitter –, council currently breaks down with 17 in favour of keeping the Jarvis lanes, 15 opposed and 13 unknown votes. Six of the uncommitted councillors need to break for maintaining the status quo for the Jarvis lanes to win the day.

Of the unknowns, Councillors Mammoliti, Nunziata, Kelly, Palacio & Grimes are likely to flip-flop on their earlier position and support the removal of the lanes. It’s hypocritical and barely justifiable, but that won’t be enough to stop them.

Of the remaining eight, the best bets for cycling advocates are Councillors Matlow, Bailão, Colle, Moeser, Robinson and Di Giorgio. The first three will be significantly easier to convince than the last three, who might trot out the argument that, following the results of the 2010 election, Council has a democratic mandate to remove the Jarvis bike lanes.

It all adds up to a very tough-looking fight. The next council meeting is set for July 12.

If anyone has any information on voting intentions for the councillors I’ve identified as unknown — or if I’ve got a ‘likely’ vote wrong — please let me know and I’ll update the chart. I can be reached via email or on Twitter at @FordForToronto.

Continue reading →

feature — Comments Off on Sheppard Subway plan a “big black hole of wasteful spending”
27
Jun 11

Sheppard Subway plan a “big black hole of wasteful spending”

The cost of the Mayor’s much-bragged-about Sheppard Subway extension has risen by $500-million. The 11% jump comes before the project has reached even the planning stages, as Toronto Transit Infrastructure Ltd. (TTIL), led by Gordon Chong, continues to develop a strategy for moving forward with a feasability study that, if successful, would lead to an exploration of potential private sector partners who would help deliver the project.

The Toronto Star’s Paul Moloney:

Pegged at $4.2 billion initially, the estimated cost has risen by $500 million, according to the head of the company created to make the business case for a publicly and privately funded subway extension.

“The Sheppard project is projected to be around $4.7 billion,” Gordon Chong, president and chief executive officer of Toronto Transit Infrastructure Ltd. (TTIL), said Friday.

…

A TTIL working group needs 12 to 18 months to come up with a more detailed look at the scope, design and cost of the Sheppard subway extensions the mayor wants to build, to determine if it’s feasible.

Chong estimated it could cost $250 million to $300 million to complete the work needed to determine if the project is feasible.

via Sheppard subway cost soars – thestar.com.

The real concern at this point should be finishing this thing before teleportation technology becomes commercially viable and transit systems are no longer necessary.

TTIL’s report is an interesting read. Steve Munro points out that several of the potential revenue sources Chong identifies are, in fact, just taxes. They include things like a “special city-wide transit development charge” and “Left-over Metrolinx funds from the Eglinton project.”

Meanwhile, Metrolinx continues to indicate they want absolutely nothing to do with Ford’s subway project. The report excerpts a letter from Metrolinx on page five, stating that “any work that you undertake on this [Sheppard Subway Project] City project [sic] needs to be allocated to a separate account and funded by the City. Any invoices to Metrolinx should not include these costs.”

The report also includes a point, underlined for emphasis, indicating that “pre-feasability and/or full business case cannot be completed without more detailed design and data.” It also concludes with a nice budgetary note: “The existing budget is woefully inadequate to complete the tasks of the Working Group.”

In other words: despite campaign promises that said we’d have a subway by 2015, we’re a long way from actually building this thing.

Councillor Doug Ford was steadfast, of course, telling the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat “As sure as I’m standing here, we’re getting subways … I can’t be any clearer, there is going to be a subway on Sheppard.”

It was Councillor Janet Davis who summed things up best, however, in the same article:

“You’re now contemplating taking up to 18 months to complete not just the preliminary financial analysis but the feasibility study,” she said. “It’s a plan for a plan for a project that will take us into 2013 before we see anything that presents evidence one way or another about whether the Sheppard subway can be funded.”

“It feels like this is a big black hole of wasteful spending,” she said.

via Councillor Ford guarantees Sheppard Subway | Toronto Sun.

Government change, at any level, is the biggest threat to this plan. The reason Metrolinx exists in the first place is to allow long-term transportation planning that won’t fall to the whim of every newly-elected major, premier or prime minister. The Sheppard subway, falling far outside the purview of Metrolinx, is offered no such protection. Neither was Transit City.

Worth noting, as always, that the Sheppard Subway extension is now set to cost nearly five times more than the original plan for LRT on Sheppard. The Sheppard East LRT, as the first Transit City line, would have opened before the end of this council term in 2014.

feature — Comments Off on Mammoliti, other councillors face serious audit requests
27
Jun 11

Mammoliti, other councillors face serious audit requests

After making waves with a pretty-damn-serious request for an audit of Mayor Rob Ford’s campaign expenses, Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler turned up the dial last week, debuting a new advocacy group — Fair Elections Toronto — and launching eight additional requests for campaign audits against several councillors and defeated council candidates.

Steve Kupferman with Torontoist:

A group calling itself Fair Elections Toronto is asking for audits of four sitting councillors, whom they accuse of having violated campaign finance laws during the 2010 municipal election.

Comprised of about 25 members and led by activist and Toronto Public Library Board vice-chair Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler, Fair Elections Toronto alleges that Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West), James Pasternak (Ward 10, York Centre), Michael Thompson (Ward 37, Scarborough Centre), and Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) all improperly classified expenses incurred during their campaigns as being for “fundraising functions,” in amounts ranging from $4,000 to $17,000.

via Doug Ford, Giorgio Mammoliti, and Other Councillors Facing Calls for Campaign Audits – Torontoist.

The most serious allegations fall against Mammoliti, who is accused of exceeding spending limits by more than 50%. If, over the course of the audit process, it is determined that the Mammoliti campaigning knowingly overspent — listing non-fundraising expenses as fundraising expenses, which are exempt from the limit — he could very well be removed from office.

Knowingly overspending in an election campaign isn’t just a minor administrative error. It’s tantamount to cheating.

The Star’s Daniel Dale has more on the Mammoliti situation:

“When you file an audited financial statement without a name and a date or a title for each one of the expenses claimed, it really stretches my willingness to believe it was a good-faith error,” Chaleff-Freudenthaler said.

Mammoliti said he had done “everything according to the law.” And he lashed out at Chaleff-Freudenthaler and his colleagues.

“We’ve got no concerns at all,” Mammoliti said, “except the fact that we think this is a bit of a conspiracy going on with a few individuals wanting to get to the right-leaning councillors. That’s not really what this structure was put together for. So we’re looking at actually suing the individuals that are doing this.”

via Mammoliti alleges ‘conspiracy’ over audit requests – thestar.com.

When your first line of defence against an allegation is to claim that there’s a conspiracy against you, you know you’re in deep trouble. (A much better line of defence for Mammoliti would have been to produce details, including a date and location, of the fundraising event in question. But maybe that would just be playing into the conspiracists’ hands.)

Fair Elections Toronto’s biggest challenge through this process will be to convince skeptics that their actions are not politically-motivated. That all the sitting councillors targeted for audit happen to be allied with the mayor is difficult to ignore.

But either way, these allegations are serious regardless of motivation. Municipal elections are tooth-and-nail, grassroots efforts, where every dollar spent and every vote cast matters. Allegations that Councillor James Pasternak overspent by a mere $2,500 may seem trivial, for example, until you consider that he won Ward 10 by only 382 votes, garnering less than 20% of the popular vote. A hundred fewer signs or flyers and that race could have easily gone a different way.

Those claiming that these allegations are politically-motivated also have to contend with the fact that Fair Elections Toronto seems sincerely devoted to the idea of reforming the Municipal Elections Act. The Reform page on their site outlines four changes to the Act that would improve accountability and fairness, and justifies the necessity of the current round of audit requests:

Litigating complaints against candidates who, we allege, broke election laws is only the first step in bringing fair elections to Toronto. Fundamental changes need to be made to the Municipal Elections Act to increase accountability and transparency, eliminate the gray areas that candidates systemically exploit, and better reflect the realities of big city elections. As the City of Toronto’s Auditor General reported following the 2006 election, 29 of 45 councillors broke election laws in one way or another. While we have only filed audit requests on the four councillors we believe gained a material advantage from Municipal Elections Act violations, we believe that the culture of non-compliance that was identified in 2006 remains today.

via Reform | Fair Elections Toronto.

Regardless of outcome, the audit process and legal proceedings are expected to drag out for quite some time.

feature — Comments Off on What we talk about when we talk about Jarvis
24
Jun 11

What we talk about when we talk about Jarvis

At yesterday’s meeting of the Public Works & Infrastructure Committee, while discussing Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong’s new bike plan, Councillor John Parker moved an amendment to kill the bike lanes on Jarvis Street.

Here’s the text of Parker’s amendment:

City Council rescind its decision related to the bicycle lanes on Jarvis Street.

via Agenda Item History – 2011.PW5.1.

Council will debate the item at the July council meeting. If approved by a majority of council, the lanes will be removed.

No Justifiable Reason

I’m going to have lots to say about this over the coming weeks, but let’s get some stuff out of the way. First, the big one: as far as city planning, traffic engineering and economics go, there is seemingly no justifiable reason for removing the bike lanes on Jarvis.

The city’s own numbers tell the story. Since the lanes were installed, traffic levels for cars has remained at the same level as previous. Travel times increased by about two minutes in the morning, and three to five minutes in the afternoon. If that latter figure seems a tad high, staff agree, and are taking steps to correct it:

Much of the increased travel time could be attributed to the delays and queues experienced at the Jarvis Street/Gerrard Street East intersection, particularly in the northbound direction during the p.m. peak period.

The introduction of an advanced left turn phase in the northbound direction at this intersection, scheduled this summer, will reduce the delays at this intersection and the overall travel times between Queen Street East and Charles Street East.

via Bikeway network — 2011 Update. (pg 17)

Most notable, however, is that the total number of vehicles (cars + bikes) using the road in both directions during daily peak eight hour periods increased from approximately 13,290 to 14,180 after the installation of the lanes. 100% of this increase comes from bikes.

In other words: a $63,000 one-time investment in infrastructure increased the daily utility of a Toronto roadway by about 7%. That’s an incredible value-to-dollar ratio.

This isn’t some hippie pinko gut-based opinion. This is black-and-white fact. The Jarvis Street bike lanes aren’t preventing people from moving through the city. They’re enabling people to move through the city.

Let’s ignore cyclists in this debate

But, on this issue, we might be best to ignore cyclists. I have a very real concern that if we let this debate spiral into the same tired car-versus-bike war we’ve seen a dozen times before, bikes will lose. And lose bad.

Rob Ford car-friendliness isn’t just a part of his character. It turns out it’s also what drives some of his most bedrock support. In a post at OpenFile yesterday, John Michael McGrath took a look at an academic paper by doctoral candidate Zack Taylor at UofT, which laid out the strong correlation between people who commute by automobile to work and those that supported the mayor:

The other strong predictor in Taylor’s paper was car ownership and use. No surprise, the man who ran against “the war on the car” picked up the support of Toronto’s most car-dependent areas. “Toronto isn’t the only place you’re seeing this happen. Once you own a car, once you experience the street as a car—a car driver—you experience anything that impedes you as an annoyance,” says Taylor.

via Why suburban motorists voted for Ford, and why this is news | OpenFile.

If the Jarvis lanes are simply held up as a key battleground in the ever-ongoing war between cars and bikes in the city, Rob Ford likely still has enough clout on council and enough popular support to kill the lanes. It’s as simple as that.

You bike guys had your way with the previous council, they’ll say, but things are different now. We have to give the people what they want.

What Jarvis Street means

Jarvis Street was, for much of Toronto’s history, a place for Toronto’s well-off. One of the richest thoroughfares in the city, it was lined with trees and huge mansion homes setback from the roadway. To illustrate, BlogTO’s Derek Flack compiled a beautiful-then-sad series of images that sets the scene.

Spacing’s Shawn Micallef described the old Jarvis in an Eye Weekly column as “once the most beautiful street in Toronto” that “has been reverse-gentrified and turned into a fat arterial traffic pipe between North Toronto and downtown.”

The widening of Jarvis street and the installation of a reversible centre lane — one that flowed south in the morning and north in the evening — immediately changed the character of the roadway.

During the first debate over what to do with Jarvis, a local resident told the National Post’s Allison Haines that “many consider Jarvis Street to be a freeway and it’s not – it’s a downtown city street.”

Yes, Jarvis is a downtown city street. It’s a street with numerous homes — and more coming, with a recent condo proposal for the once-thought-uninhabitale Dundas intersection — businesses and institutions. The National Ballet School calls the northern part of Jarvis Street home, as does a public high school and a large downtown Toronto park and conservatory.

The Jarvis bike lanes were not part of the original plan to revitalize Jarvis Street. The thought was to instead improve the pedestrian realm with wide sidewalks and landscaping. The idea was that the street would look like this:

 

via Jarvis Street Streetscape Improvements Class Environmental Assessment Study (2009) pg 13

That may have been a better option in the long-term than what we got — further improvements to the streetscape on Jarvis seem to have stalled out after the bike lanes were installed — but the two approaches carry one thing in common: both called for the removal of the reversible fifth lane.

Removing that lane under any context was a huge win for Jarvis Street.

It’s unclear at this point whether Parker’s motion means that the fifth lane will be reinstalled if council approves his amendment, but it is important that councillors understand that Jarvis Street about far more than just travel times. It is a downtown city street with all that entails: a place for people to live, learn and work.

Any further discussion about what to do with Jarvis must take that into account. It is not and should never be again thought of as a mere urban arterial, where speed is king, and nothing else matters. Not only does that sort of argument shortchange the growing number of people who call the area home, it also ignores the huge economic impact a revitalized Jarvis could have.

feature — Comments Off on Scenarios wherein the mayor is not a homophobe
23
Jun 11

Scenarios wherein the mayor is not a homophobe

So Rob Ford confirmed yesterday that he will not be marching in this year’s Pride parade due to a previous commitment to be at the cottage with his family on the long weekend. This comes on the heels of the mayor’s conspicuous absence at a string of Pride- and LGBT-related events, some of which took place within shouting distance of his office at City Hall.

This will be the first time a Toronto mayor has missed the parade in more than a decade. June Rowlands was the last Toronto mayor to not march.

And, sure, if he was missing the parade but had committed to make an appearance at another Pride event, I’d cut him some slack. It’s nice to be out of town for the Canada Day weekend. But it is impossible to separate the mayor’s refusal to attend the Pride parade with his continued and apparently deliberate snubbing of any event put on by the LGBT community.

Is the mayor homophobic? He’s making it difficult to conclude otherwise. Not only does his voting record include bombshells like voting against accepting provincial money for HIV screening programs and hanging banners for the International AIDS Conference, he has also expressed support for “traditional marriage”, backed an anti-gay candidate in a council race, openly expressed the retrograde opinion that HIV is a gay disease and — this one bothers me the most — couldn’t be bothered to leave his office for twenty minutes to raise a flag on the roof of City Hall for Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays alongside the General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It’s a lot to take in, and the mental gymnastics necessary to avoid landing on “backwards homophobe” are daunting. But we — the collective we — hate labels, naturally, so let’s try. Let’s try and come up with scenarios where the mayor is not a homophobe.

Scenario #1: This is all just a big misunderstanding

You know how it is. Sometimes you’re just going about your duties as a politician in Toronto and one thing leads to another and — through no fault of your own — suddenly people are calling you a homophobe. And, yes, you can see how some might come to that conclusion but really it’s just a big misunderstanding.

Put it this way: Maybe Rob Ford and the LGBT community are like the principal characters in the John Cusack romantic comedy Serendipity. They’re meant to be together — they yearn to be together — but a series of unfortunate coincidences keeps them apart. Eventually, though, after years of confusion and near-miss chance encounters, they’ll meet in a park with falling snow and kiss and kiss and kiss.

Let’s give the mayor the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there is a remote possibility that his schedule has just not allowed him to attend events like the aforementioned PFLAG flag raising or the “Proud of Toronto” event or the coming reading of the Pride proclamation. You might find that hard to believe considering that, within only the last couple of months, the mayor has found time to attend events as varied as McHappy Day celebrations, an ice cream party thrown by Ivanka Trump and the grand opening of the studios for the Sun News Network. He’s also continued to find time to coach high school football in Etobicoke.

So, yes, hard to believe. But stranger things have happened.

Scenario #2: The mayor buys into the Post-Mo theory so whole-heartedly that he sees no reason to attend Pride-related events

Bear with me on this one, as it sort of hinges on the mayor being a bit of an intellectual who reads alt-weekly newspapers. But let’s consider that Rob Ford read Paul Aguirre-Livingston’s “Dawn of the New Gay” cover story in The Grid a couple of weeks back and has now fully embraced the notion that Toronto has moved past all this LGBT stuff and Pride is an unnecessary relic; a boozed-up and needlessly decadent spectacle that’s no longer politically relevant. The struggle is over.

Sure, this requires ignoring that gay bashing hate crimes still happen in Toronto. And that GTA area publicly-funded school boards are banning both Gay-Straight Alliances and, seriously, rainbows. And that local commenters are currently flooding newspaper comment boards with anti-gay slurs in support of the mayor’s decision to go to his cottage. But still. Let’s chalk that kind of thing up to omelettes and eggs.

Maybe Rob Ford is a visionary. Ahead of the curve. Maybe what he’s saying is that all of us — gay, straight, whatever — should head to their cottages during Pride, celebrating inclusivity with collective exclusivity. Let’s be together alone.

Note that some of you — especially those that are not savvy enough to hold stake in a multi-million dollar family business — will have to go to cottages in your imagination.

Scenario #3: Something about secret agents and robots

I won’t bore with you the details but consider for a minute that the mayor is currently leading a double life, spending half his time undercover working against rogue elements seeking to subvert the gay agenda….

Wait, no, this is dumb. No one will believe this.

I’m spent. I can’t justify these decisions Rob Ford has made, and it doesn’t make sense that the mayor of a city like Toronto — the Toronto I know — would make the choices he’s made. About the only thing I can say in his defence sincerely is that I think Ford is a man who doesn’t do well in situations that might be awkward and uncomfortable. He craves control and familiarity. These aren’t necessarily bad qualities for a person to have, but the way those qualities are influencing his behaviour as mayor are justifiably disappointing to a wide cross-section of the city he was elected to represent.

There’s nothing here to be proud of.

feature — Comments Off on Ford’s transit plan: still unapproved, still lacking
21
Jun 11

Ford’s transit plan: still unapproved, still lacking

On Monday, Rob Ford’s Executive Committee briefly discussed the City Manager’s response to Councillor Janet Davis’ administrative inquiries regarding the mayor’s transit plan and the steps necessary to officially adopt his plan over the previously-approved — and started — Transit City plan.

You’ll recall that the City Manager confirmed in his response that “any agreements to implement the Memorandum [between the province and the city, regarding the new transit plan] will require Council approval.” That’s a requirement that Rob Ford has continued to ignore.

Still, Ford was defiant at the meeting, as reported by the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat:

“We’re working on [my transit plan], everyone is going to see it, everything is on track, pardon the pun,” Ford told reporters.

He dismissed Davis’ concern that his transit plan hasn’t been approved by council.

“I campaigned for close to a year, I was crystal clear that I want to build subways and that I was going to kill Transit City or Streetcar City or whatever you want to call it…the people spoke loud and clear.”

via Ford’s opponents try to block his transit plan | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

(For sanity’s sake, let’s just ignore the bit where the mayor seems to imply that things he perceives as popular don’t require council approval.)

While Ford did campaign for close to a year, his transit plan was not unveiled until his team released it via YouTube on September 7, 2010. A mere 48 days before election day.

Before the YouTube reveal, Ford’s comments on transit did tend to stick close to his “subways good, streetcars bad” position, but it was never a top-of-mind issue when he was campaigning. His supporters were, I’d argue, most moved by the “stop the gravy train” rhetoric. His other policy positions were background noise.

Ford’s anti-LRT position hinges on a number of incorrect assumptions. First, he wrongly believes that LRT as proposed with Transit City is synonymous with the city’s downtown streetcar network. It’s not. Second, he believes that LRT will inevitably remove road space used by vehicles. But it doesn’t. Transit City didn’t propose any loss of lanes for cars.

He also believes — and I think this is the prime motivator — that on-street LRT construction is inherently more disruptive to businesses and residents (In the campaign-era article I referred to above, he argued “Once you’re going underground you won’t affect the stores and the businesses as much as you did on St. Clair.”). Thus by avoiding on-street construction we avoid situations like we saw on St. Clair, where businesses suffered and children cried and so on.

But the mayor has never really understood that the St. Clair construction –and the recent project on Roncesvalles, for that matter — was about more than just installing a streetcar right-of-way. It was about street beautification, improving the pedestrian realm and doing necessary utility upgrades, among other things.

Now that construction for the coming Eglinton LRT has shifted underground along the length of the route — at a cost of two billion dollars — some of the same businesses Rob Ford would seek to protect by avoiding another St. Clair situation are actually complaining. Turns out they wanted the streetscape improvements they would have received with the original on-street LRT plan.

The Globe & Mail’s Josh O’Kane:

[The Eglinton light-rail line] was originally was originally planned to be a largely above-ground project, but this spring the province gave in to Mayor Rob Ford’s desire for underground transit, agreeing to fund $8.2-billion for the Eglinton line. Because it will be mostly dug by a tunnel-boring machine, there’ll be few disruptions on the ground. But at Tuesday’s meeting, there was concern that the underground project would mean no revitalization for the midtown artery.

“The street is a mess,” local business owner Arnold Rowe told The Globe. “We need improvement for pedestrian facilities … and the use of roadways.” He asked the city and provincial representatives at the meeting – TTC chairwoman Karen Stintz, Ontario Minister of Transportation Kathleen Wynne, Eglinton-Lawrence MPP Mike Colle and Ward 15 Councillor Josh Colle – if there were plans to work on the street itself as part of the project.

Mike Colle said that there no concrete plans, but that he hoped the launch of the rail line would mean the “reshaping, revitalizing, improving above ground – starting now.”

via Metrolinx seeks to calm anxieties over Eglinton LRT | The Globe and Mail. (Emphasis added.)

It should be noted that underground subway construction is no picnic for businesses and residents that live along the route. Stations still need to be constructed, and stations require on-street access.

feature — Comments Off on City Council Scorecard Update: Selling TCHC homes
21
Jun 11

City Council Scorecard Update: Selling TCHC homes

Toronto Council Scorecard

June 20, 2011 Update: Download (PDF) – Download (PNG) – Google Docs

Last week’s council meeting was light on major decisions, as some of the hyped-up media items (shark fin soup and a second NHL team, for example) were deferred without much debate. The only new addition to this month’s City Council Scorecard is the item regarding the sale of 22 TCHC homes.

New Votes

The vote added:

  • EX6.5 — As written, this vote referred only to the sale of 22 single-family homes owned by the TCHC, located mostly in downtown wards. Several of the houses are currently vacant, waiting very costly repairs. There was a lot of discussion as to how many of the homes listed are actually eligible for sale under various provincial and municipal regulations. Regardless, the debate council had on this item was only nominally about the listed homes. (Council has often sold TCHC properties in the past. Here’s an example from last summer.) Opposition councillors seemed more concerned with the precedent set by the sale — especially considering Case Ootes’ recommendation to sell another 900 homes — and the belief amongst Ford-allied councillors that selling properties represents a scaleable solution to Toronto’s housing problem. As such, even after speaking at length with concerns about the sale, several left-wing councillors — including Kristyn Wong-Tam, Sarah Doucette, John Filion and Glenn de Baearemaeker — ultimately supported the sale. Notably, Councillor Adam Vaughan drew some flack from the mayor’s team for sitting out the vote in protest.

Trend Watch

I didn’t deem it notable enough to include in the Scorecard, but a vote on an amendment moved by Councillor Raymond Cho on the same item was interesting. Defeated on a tie vote of 22-22, the amendment would “[urge] the Federal and Provincial governments to immediately fund an ongoing and sustainable social housing renovation and repair program so that social housing repair needs in Toronto are met and the backlog eliminiated. [sic]”

In other words: tell the provincial and federal governments that they’ve kind of screwed us over with this downloading-of-responsibilities thing.

Voting for it included the left-wing of council (minus Shelley Carroll, who missed the meeting due to an out-of-town funeral, and — oddly — Maria Augimeri), the ‘middle’ group of councillors, and Gloria Lindsay Luby and James Pasternak.

Questions

Questions about the Council Scorecard? Read my notes on methodology. Also, you can email me.

feature — Comments Off on Bike Plan to Nowhere: Three ways the new bike plan report falls short
20
Jun 11

Bike Plan to Nowhere: Three ways the new bike plan report falls short

Staff released their report (PDF) on Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong’s much-ballyhooed bike plan last week. It’ll be debated this Wednesday at the meeting of the Public Works & Infrastructure Committee, after which it will, if approved, go on to City Council for final consideration.

The Toronto Cyclists Union has served as a somewhat unlikely ally to Minnan-Wong as he’s talked up his plan for a network of four separated bike lanes across the downtown core. They’ve even visited with neighbourhood groups across the downtown to build support for the idea of protected bike lanes.

The release of the staff report appeared to throw cold water on that budding friendship, however.

The union’s response:

This report was released today and the Toronto Cyclists Union, representing over 1,100 members, is disappointed with the lack of progress in the report. It is not bold enough to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of Torontonians who ride bicycles. In fact, several of the recommendations outlined in the report set the City back on cycling progress.

via Statement on 2011 Bikeway Network Report | Toronto Cyclists Union.

To Minnan-Wong’s credit, he told the Toronto Star’s David Rider that he “wishes staff had taken a ‘bolder’ approach” in their report.

So why does the report — let’s just say it — kind of suck? Let’s count the ways.

Reason One: It’s a bike plan that eliminates bike lanes

First, it’s a bike plan that actually floats the idea of eliminating established bike lanes in Scarborough and previously approved — but not installed — lanes on Bloor West.

Councillor Michelle Berardinetti, one of the Team Ford members that sometimes breaks ranks, pushed for removal of the two Scarborough lanes — one’s on Birchmount Road while the other is on Pharmacy Avenue — as part of her election platform (PDF).

Though staff report that the two lanes “do not have a significant adverse effect on the traffic operations and parking situation” on the two roadways, and advise that removal of the lanes will cost more than $200,000, Berardinetti told the Toronto Sun that she would continue to support their removal because “[this] is what the residents want.”

It’s populist thinking like that that make me wonder why we don’t just replace our elected officials with a series of online polls.

Here’s a nifty video showing a cyclist riding the Pharmacy Ave. lane during rush hour. While hardly the definitive word on this sort of thing, it does not, to me, resemble traffic chaos.

Reason Two: It’s a bike plan that barely recommends new bike lanes

The authors of the report essentially hedge their bets on every major recommendation. The only protected lane they recommend without further study is a small installation over the Bloor Viaduct. They’re also a little bullish on protected lanes on Sherbourne and Wellsley, recommending them for 2012.

The other proposed lanes in Minnan-Wong’s network, including a lane or Richmond or Adelaide — which the report notes “would have the greatest benefit for cyclists” –, are pushed off into the future, noting that more studies must be done.

I’m being critical of the report’s authors, but I should note that their timidness to recommend lanes is grounded in reality, considering the views the mayor and Minnan-Wong have expressed in the past.The report includes a lengthy section in the summary that serves as a kind of disclaimer for councillors who once fought hard against bike infrastructure:

It is important to understand, however, that the implementation of other separated bicycle lanes will, in most instances, result in a reduction of vehicle traffic or parking capacity. It is with this understanding that this report seeks authority to undertake further in-depth assessment, including a comprehensive consultation and design process, to evaluate the different design options for this separated bicycle lane network, and to identify impacts and recommend potential mitigating measures

In other words: We really don’t want to spend a zillion hours producing a bunch of reports for bike lanes on Richmond Street if you’re going to inevitably dismiss any bike lane that might impact the free movement of cars.

Reason Three: It’s a bike plan that works against, rather than with, the cycling community

In addition to floating the idea of removing lanes in Scarborough, the report also calls for the cancelling a previously-funded environmental assessment that would “develop an innovative design and implementation plan for developing a bikeway along the Bloor-Danforth corridor, and identify short and long-term design options, including evaluating the feasibility of physically separated bicycle lanes.”

Minnan-Wong justifies the cancellation by saying “we only have so much money and we only have so much staff” and pointing to better uses of the funds set aside from the EA. The cycling community, apparently, would disagree:

Hundreds of cyclists hit Bloor St. Saturday for the annual Bells on Bloor ride with the simple message ringing out — build bike lanes from one end of Toronto to the other across the major artery.

via Cyclists pedal hard for bike lane | Toronto Sun.

The disconnect between what the plan actually proposes and what the cycling community is asking for is disappointing. I guess it should be noted that another term for cycling community is taxpayer community.

For those playing along at home, the best way to rapidly expand cycling infrastructure in this city is to aggressively design and approve pilot projects, in the style of New York City’s Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

Minnan-Wong’s stated desire to take a “bolder” approach is the one thing that gives me hope out of this disappointing report. Bold is what cyclists should get. Bold is what this city deserves.

feature — Comments Off on Name your price on naming rights
16
Jun 11

Name your price on naming rights

The idea of selling naming rights for transit stations, public parks and other things hit the news again this week, and received the hearty endorsement of the Ford brothers:

Next stop: Spadina-McDonalds station.

“Whatever. If it brings in revenue, I honestly don’t believe anyone cares,” Councillor Doug Ford quipped Tuesday afternoon.

via TTC looking at renaming stations – thestar.com.

The Toronto Standard has blessed us with two good articles on the issue. The first, by Tabatha Southey, takes the idea to its logical extreme and imagines a Toronto where everything is named after something corporate:

Ten years ago, in 2015, most of us in Toronto and Firkin accepted the suggestion that we attempt to “build relationships” with the private sector with good grace. The motion passed at the somewhat expanded Pizza Pizza City Council 967 to 11, with 11 abstaining, as every motion must now pass in order for the heat to stay on in Telecity Hall through the winter, if you take my meaning.

via All the Names | Toronto Standard.

Ivor Tossell, being a bit contrarian, penned a follow-up, which essentially reminds us that we have to name our roads, parks, subway stations and buildings after something, so maybe this isn’t a big deal.

And I agree, mostly, that it doesn’t have to be a big deal. I don’t think there’s a reasonable argument to be made that Nuit Blanche is a lesser cultural event because it’s called Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. These sorts of sponsorship arrangements, at the very least, support events that likely wouldn’t receive enough government support to survive on their own.

So, yes, there’s nothing wrong in principle at looking at the idea of naming rights as a way to offset construction or management costs. But I did have a few objections to the tenor of the discussion regarding naming rights this week.

First, there’s this idea that naming rights represent a massive pool of untapped revenues. This is unlikely to be true. Steve Munro points out that our crumbling subway stations might not appeal much to image-conscious corporations. It’s also hard to imagine much value coming from renaming a park — how many local parks can you recall the names of, off the top of your head?

Which brings me to my second objection, which is a matter of standards. From all the comments in the media this week, it’s clear that everyone believes certain things are off-limits for renaming. “We’re not going to call it Doritos City Hall,” Doug Ford assured the National Post. But why not? Can anyone define why some city-owned properties are up for renaming and others aren’t? What’s the differentiating factor? Is it heritage? Political importance? Tourism and culture? A gut feeling?

This goes for revenue standards too. Obviously there’s a point at which the revenue from naming rights is too small to be worthwhile. If Company X offers us $5,000/year for naming rights to Spadina subway station, we’d rightly dismiss the offer out of hand. But, again, why? No one seems to have any clue what fair value for naming rights is.

We’re working blind here. We don’t know what’s on the table and what the value of the table is. If, at the very least, this debate can help define a concrete policy for the sale of naming rights, it will have been somewhat worthwhile.

Lastly, and most critically, what corporations would be after with so-called “naming rights” for transit stations — not to mention other pieces of infrastructure — could very well go beyond slapping their name and logo on a TTC sign. Would they be looking for permission to use the transit station as a showroom or glorified retail space? Would people be okay with vendors trying to process riders’ credit card applications at platform level?

Much of this probably sounds like needless panic at this point, but the city has a sad history of brokering bad deals with the private sector. The street furniture contract with Astral Communications is a sad example of the city willingly getting screwed by a private partner. They got free advertising on city streets, where we got free garbage cans that don’t work very well. (Sometimes they catch on fire.)

feature — Comments Off on Arena deal reveals downside to contracting out
16
Jun 11

Arena deal reveals downside to contracting out

The National Post’s Natalie Alcoba:

The City of Toronto is looking to take over a new four-pad arena in Etobicoke that is dangerously close to defaulting on loans guaranteed by the municipal government.

Lakeshore Lions Arena, also known as the Mastercard Centre for Hockey Excellence, was built to replace an ageing single-pad facility run for some 55 years by the not-for-profit Lakeshore Lions Club. It’s the home of the Etobicoke Dolphins, the Faustina hockey club house league, and most notably is used as practice space by the Toronto Maple Leafs and Marlies.

via City looks to take over debt-troubled Etobicoke hockey arena | Posted Toronto | National Post.

Though the venerable Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy tried to spin this story as a lingering failure left by the David Miller administration, I’m really not sure that holds up to any kind of scrutiny. If anything, this works as an example of how contracting out a service to the private sector can sometimes not turn out as well as governments might hope.

The private sector is not and has never been the magic elixir that automatically makes government smaller and reduces costs.

This arena deal still seems like something the current administration would salivate over. A private, not-for-profit company assumes responsibility for building and managing the arena — which provides a tangible benefit for local residents — keeping it out of the hands of the city bureaucracy. The city is only the hook to back a loan issued to cover construction costs.

What’s not to love? It’s hockey without bureaucracy. And they even sold naming rights to Mastercard to sweeten the deal. Conservatives love selling naming rights.

But it didn’t work. Sometimes these things don’t work. Construction costs went up as the arena was constructed, requiring the city to increase their loan guarantee. Once completed, commercial space in the complex didn’t lease. Something had to give.

Mayor Rob Ford told the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat that he’s “furious” about the arena’s financial problems, which have led to a staff recommendation that would essentially in-source control of the facility:

“(The arena) is completely mismanaged,” Ford told reporters at City Hall. “I’ve voted for it and I regret doing that.”

via Ford ‘furious’ over arena bailout | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

And okay, fury is an acceptable emotion, but the revelation of this scenario isn’t that Ford and the previous council were wrong to vote for the deal — on the surface, it was a pretty good deal — but that, with contracting out, you inevitably give up something that’s incredibly valuable: oversight.

That’s an important thing to consider as council continues down this road of contracting out everything not nailed down.

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