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link — Comments Off on Blunt Address
07
Jan 11

Blunt Address

Natalie Alcoba, quoting a speech delivered by City Manager Joseph Pennachetti to staff:

“We have invested great talent, time and creativity in programs and strategies to address the priorities of the previous mayor and council. It is natural to become attached to things that you have created. It requires leadership to adapt to new ways of thinking,” he said. “Our job is not to say, ‘That can’t be done.’ Our job is to work out, ‘How can that be done?’ ”

via City wants to be “At Your Service” | Posted Toronto | National Post.

The whole thing is a good read, as it sort of underlies the weird position staff are in. They have to adapt to a new reality that’s not really based on hard facts but rather perception and reputation.

link — Comments Off on This week’s other battle
06
Jan 11

This week’s other battle

Natalie Alcoba:

The Toronto Police Services Board has put off making a decision on the force’s ever-expanding budget after Mayor Rob Ford’s allies questioned the cost of the second-most expensive agency in the city.

via Questions for police over budget | Posted Toronto | National Post.

The police want a 3% increase (which is essentially a flat budget), while the Ford administration is pushing for a 5% decrease. Good on the council members on the board — so far, anyway — for sticking to their guns and not making an exception for the police.

link — Comments Off on More on Transit
06
Jan 11

More on Transit

It’s a transit-heavy news day.

Steve Munro has a good overview of the sorry state of transit in the GTA with his article A Grand Plan: 2011 Edition. It’s very critical that transit planning in the GTA become about long-term planning and not short-term politics. Easier said than done.

Munro is also quoted in this Marcus Gee column, which should be titled “Shut The Hell Up About St. Clair Already.”

link — Comments Off on Bagging on TEA
06
Jan 11

Bagging on TEA

Kelly Grant at the Globe brings us an article that’s pretty good but made worse by its stupid headline: The TEA and Pembina transit reports, debunked.

I said below that I think the graphic is problematic, but it’s proven effective at turning attention to the staggering stupidities behind Ford’s transit plan. While it’s true that the Jane, Don Mills and Waterfront West lines are not currently funded – and will likely never be funded – they are, at very least, part of a cohesive long-term plan for Transit.

Ford’s plan for two subways to Scarborough, on the other hand, is the extent of his transit vision for the city.

link — Comments Off on Figurative Gravy, Literal Trains
05
Jan 11

Figurative Gravy, Literal Trains

Tess Kalinowski, for The Star:

Penny-pinching Mayor Rob Ford’s subway plan would cost three times as much as the proposed Transit City light rail lines and attract only half as many riders, according to a study released Wednesday by a sustainable energy think tank.

Although Ford hasn’t officially endorsed a transit expansion plan, the study suggests the mayor would be spending about $344 million per kilometre on subways that would attract about 65 million rides annually.

The light rail plan Ford has disparaged would accommodate 126 million rides annually at a cost of $111 million per kilometre, says the report, Making Tracks to Torontonians, by the Pembina Institute.

via Subways would cost more and serve fewer, group says – thestar.com.

None of this is surprising, but it’s nice to see the facts laid out so nicely. The chart above, put together (I think) by the Toronto Environmental Alliance, is problematic when it comes to the particulars – there’s no chance many of the Transit City lines pictured will ever be built, so the total cost is in an entirely different ballpark – but, still, part of me loves that activist groups within the city are fighting back with the same kind of short, easily shareable messages that were so successful when they were used by the Ford campaign.

As a postscript, Kalinowski also reports this:

Metrolinx and the TTC are expected to present Ford with a hybrid plan of light rail and subway by the end of the month. It’s likely that plan will include light rail running underneath Eglinton Avenue and an extension of the Sheppard subway to the Scarborough Town Centre.

Anticipated light rail on Finch could be converted to a busway.

That compromise plan is very unlikely to work within funding constraints, unless Eglinton is significantly shortened. Completing both the Sheppard Subway to Scarborough Town Centre and replacing the Scarborough Rapid Transit Line with subway technology (also to Scarborough Town Centre, where the party is) are both far more expensive than the Transit City options. You don’t gain much funding room cancelling Finch, as it was to be the cheapest of all the lines.

link — Comments Off on A Shocking Turn of Events
05
Jan 11

A Shocking Turn of Events

Kelly Grant and Anna Mehler Paperny for the Globe:

It’s one of Mr. Ford’s major pledges butting up against reality as the city tries to balance a challenging budget on a breakneck schedule that even City Manager Joe Pennachetti says is “rushed.” And while the mayor has promised no “major” service cuts, Mr. Pennachetti warned in an interview Tuesday that Torontonians should expect cuts in next week’s budget.

via Ford backs off campaign vow to hire more police officers – The Globe and Mail.

I believe that left-leaning councillors actually have him on the record saying ‘no service cuts’ as part of the first Executive Committee meeting.

link — Comments Off on Stinks to high heaven
04
Jan 11

Stinks to high heaven

Enzo Di Matteo’s  Council watch: a look ahead at 2011 in last week’s NOW had an interesting tidbit about the libel suit Ford is facing from the owner of Tugg’s in the Beaches neighbourhood.

link — Comments Off on Gravy Fighter
04
Jan 11

Gravy Fighter

John Lorinc at Spacing:

At some point in the year to come, reality will jump up and bite Mayor Rob Ford on the nose, forcing him to depart from his tightly-scripted waste ‘n subways agenda. Of course, I have no idea what form his encounter with the untidy world of urban politics will take. But that moment of reckoning is lurking out there, waiting to mug him and his merry band of gravy-fighting conservatives.

via LORINC: When will reality bite Ford? « Spacing Toronto.

Monday’s fire at a Heritage Building on Yonge Street certainly doesn’t qualify as a crisis on the level of the ones Lorinc lists in his article, but I do think the mayor’s silence (thus far) is conspicuous.

New Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam issued a nice statement.

link — Comments Off on Politics of Transit City
04
Jan 11

Politics of Transit City

The Globe’s Marcus Gee brings us a good column today. His writing’s been inspired since the Ford win. If nothing else, the next four years are going to be glory days for newspaper columnists.

Of Metrolinx, Gee writes:

Metrolinx [is] a bureaucratic animal whose role is to study and advise and implement decisions, not make them. Its leaders, chairman Rob Prichard and chief executive Bruce McCuaig, no doubt have their opinions about what kind of transit would be best for Toronto. Mr. McCuaig told me, for example, that the projected demand for transit on Sheppard is about one-fifth the level that would justify a subway on paper. But Metrolinx is looking more and more like a cipher in the transit debate, with no heft of its own.

Metrolinx is the most interesting player in this whole Transit City debate because, on their end, it’s a fight to be relevant. One of Metrolinx’s reasons for being was to allow for long-term, apolitical transit planning in the GTA. If they get steamrolled by Ford, they’ve proven themselves generally useless.

Which helps to explain why the official Metrolinx Twitter account has been touting the virtues of Transit City-style light rail for the past few weeks:

Metrolinx Tweet

link — Comments Off on Now you downtowners can afford to drive!
03
Jan 11

Now you downtowners can afford to drive!

Seriously

via Ford ends personal vehicle tax – 680News.

Just in case you missed it: Ford held a press conference at a downtown Chrysler dealership early on New Year’s Day to promote the end of the vehicle registration fee.

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