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TTC: the bitter way

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TTC: the bitter way


April 13, 2010

BY Chris Bilton

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Read More: http://www.eyeweekly.com/city/ttccentral/article/88033

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Forget about the so-called war on the car: Toronto’s new battleground is the war on transit. This is a much subtler struggle, not easily defined by bike lanes and car lanes. And it’s one that has many fronts. The past week’s TTC headlines beamed with significant public response to two major developments: the storage and deployment of our new streetcar fleet, and the ongoing debate about customer service.

The first discussion centred on the need for a larger and more modern yard to house the couple hundred new streetcars Toronto will be acquiring over the next three years. Since these fantastical low-floor cars are a little over twice the size of the ones in the current fleet — essentially, five articulated cars that stretch for 30m from one end to the other — they are far too bulky to fit in the current yards at Roncesvalles and Russell respectively. The solution: build a new yard in Leslieville directly north of the Ashbridges Bay sewage treatment plant.

The second talk was just that: a public town hall hosted by the transit union called “Let’s Talk: TTC riders and workers,” wherein the union hoped to diffuse the tense situation that some of its lacklustre employees fueled during the early part of this year.

As we saw a few weeks ago, David Miller’s legacy of building a Transit City endured a critical blow when the provincial government delayed substantial funding that would have seen many projects get underway in the final days of his tenure as mayor. Instead, the “slowdown” threatens the whole endeavour, as it’s doubtful that anyone will be willing to take up the Transit City cause in Miller’s absence. The only frontrunner mayoral candidate to openly chastise the setback is Joe Pantalone.

These events represent an increasing culture of disillusionment with all things transit, a mentality that could prove to be a terminal flaw in our thinking as a city during a time when wedge-issues have the potential to become campaign centrepieces (Rocco Rossi’s anti-bike lane stance) and decades-dead visions (Rob Ford and Sarah Thompson wanting more subways) considered to be viable mayoral platforms.

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