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Mayor John Tory's Toronto

Anyone who has ever stepped foot in Bloor-Yonge on a weekday morning or afternoon will understand - intuitively - that building GO, ahem, "Smart Track" stations in Markham will do nothing for them. While we're at it, can we please do away with the hackneyed name? Who came up with something that lame? You can't name a mass transit line like that. I suppose it serves a marketing purpose, but it's stupid as anything.
 
I'm genuinely shocked there aren't any "DumbTrack" twitter parodies. Unless there are.
 
W. K. Lis said:
Doubt John Tory will be in drunken stupors, refuse to answer questions, or not play well with others. Could be boring, but I may prefer John instead of Rob.
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All Mayor Tory would have to do is not smoke crack more than once and he'll still be more successful than Ford. How crazy is that?
 
Wonder when, not if, John Tory becomes becomes "Mayor of all the people of Toronto", he'll get rid of the "record every vote" procedure at city council and replace it with "negative voting"? If absent, the councillor's vote counts to whatever direction the Mayor votes for.
 
Our city will start getting back to normal. Council will work together on most projects with a healthy amount of sincere debate, and the requisite amount of childish bullshit. Tory should be a reasonable mayor. He's smart enough and at least somewhat open-minded. I do think being a rich business man lends a certain perspective, but it's also limiting. Will he recognized that importance of supporting and providing services for the low income and vulnerable people in Toronto? Hopefully he won't consider these things as dispensable if there were a budget crunch.
 
While I don't particularly like Tory, if there is even the slightest chance Ford might squeeze up the middle between him and Chow I'd swallow my pride and cast a ballot for Tory. This needs to be a two candidate race to ensure Ford is unemployed next month.
 
howl said:
While I don't particularly like Tory, if there is even the slightest chance Ford might squeeze up the middle between him and Chow I'd swallow my pride and cast a ballot for Tory. This needs to be a two candidate race to ensure Ford is unemployed next month.
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The narrative that drives me up the friggin' wall. I won't do it.
 
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Tory would have been a great mayor in 2004, but we are in 2014.

"Smart Track" and his take on Eglinton Connects are incredibly worrisome, and someone who retorts to such nonsensical populism should not come anywhere near the mayor's chair.

Pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders, will not find an ally in John Tory if he stays truthful to his campaign promises. Toronto's civil society may have to impose a sensible agenda for council to follow once more.

Just like with Mel Lastman and Rob Ford, we are going to get a mayor who is thoroughly disconnected from those who make the Old City of Toronto one of the best places to live in North America. This may cost us dearly in the long term, as we will fall further behind Montreal and Vancouver in terms of liveability.

Tory will likely stay strong within the 28% of commuters who come downtown by car:

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(keep in mind this is 2011 data, which means the number is in all likeliness well under 28% today)

From that position he will dictate how transit riders, pedestrians, and cyclists, will have to make concessions to cars so that 'congestion can be alleviated'...
 
Maybe I have too much faith in Tory's reasonableness, but I do not believe he will be anything like Ford or Mel. Ford could not take advice. Mel was a North York wardheeler, which got us Sheppard.

Tory's take on Finch/Sheppard LRT is reasonable. Let's see if EgConnects was a blip or trend. SmartTrack is mostly accelerating others' good ideas, without a lot of extra contribution. I find it hard to believe that those initiatives can cause too much alarm.
 
Metrolinx was created while Miller was Mayor of Toronto, in 2006. Under Ford, Metrolinx really "took over", because of Ford's "disregard" of public transit. Maybe under Tory, Toronto may try to start some projects, such as SmartTrack, but I feel Toronto has lost the leadership in guiding transit growth. Its in Metrolinx's control these days. The TTC may have some input, not what it was under Miller.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Maybe I have too much faith in Tory's reasonableness, but I do not believe he will be anything like Ford or Mel. Ford could not take advice. Mel was a North York wardheeler, which got us Sheppard.

Tory's take on Finch/Sheppard LRT is reasonable. Let's see if EgConnects was a blip or trend. SmartTrack is mostly accelerating others' good ideas, without a lot of extra contribution. I find it hard to believe that those initiatives can cause too much alarm.
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I agree. Re: Eg Connects, he may only adjust the part between Mt Pleasant and Avenue Rd, which is a very small part of the Eg Connects plan, to be 4 lanes like the rest of Eglinton in the plan, if it's even possible at this point.

The rest of the plan, midrise development, improved pedestrian realm, bike lanes, big trees, some re-zoning to commercial etc, should be safe.

He's clearly stated that the LRTs will proceed. SmartTrack is just an adjustment of GO RER to add more stops and have it costs TTC fare. GO RER is happening under Metrolinx regardless.

W. K. Lis said:
Metrolinx was created while Miller was Mayor of Toronto, in 2006. Under Ford, Metrolinx really "took over", because of Ford's "disregard" of public transit. Maybe under Tory, Toronto may try to start some projects, such as SmartTrack, but I feel Toronto has lost the leadership in guiding transit growth. Its in Metrolinx's control these days. The TTC may have some input, not what it was under Miller.
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That's really my impression. Metrolinx is now in charge of transit expansion. Toronto Council can request things, Metrolinx can ignore or fulfill the request as they please.
 
ehlow said:
I agree. Re: Eg Connects, he may only adjust the part between Mt Pleasant and Avenue Rd, which is a very small part of the Eg Connects plan, to be 4 lanes like the rest of Eglinton in the plan, if it's even possible at this point.

The rest of the plan, midrise development, improved pedestrian realm, bike lanes, big trees, some re-zoning to commercial etc, should be safe.

He's clearly stated that the LRTs will proceed. SmartTrack is just an adjustment of GO RER to add more stops and have it costs TTC fare. GO RER is happening under Metrolinx regardless.
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Tory keeps flip flopping on the LRT issue. I think he is just trying to get Olivia Chow to stop talking about this. Also the Ontario government is short on money and needs a lot of money for GO expansion (which is clearly its top transit priority now) which means building underground levels under Union Station etc.; killing unpopular LRT proposals, Sheppard especially, makes it easier for it to afford this.

The Sheppard LRT proposal is terrible. No other city would ever force a weirdly located transfer on people on Sheppard East like this, and no one else in the GTA has to put up with something like this; also this area probably has the largest or one of the largest concentration of new condos in Canada that is not in a downtown core. None of the other LRT proposals have problems with too many transfers (assuming Finch gets extended east to Yonge) though I fear that Eglinton will have capacity problems; if we built a subway instead on Eglinton that would inevitably mean a shorter line and more transfers. This is why there was the whole controversy over the Scarborough LRT vs subway issue, to eliminate a transfer at Kennedy (at great expense, and at the cost of not serving Centennial or Markham/Sheppard). I think that Metrolinx/the province is trying to silently kill this proposal by indefinitely delaying it into the future. Finch is much more likely to get built. I have a suspicion that Metrolinx wants to build Hurontario (maybe Hamilton as well) and the Sheppard LRVs will end up getting moved there, because Hurontario has stronger political support. Go look at the recent Metrolinx board meeting report, it mentions Eglinton LRT, Finch LRT, UP Express, GO expansion projects and various BRT projects but Sheppard LRT is barely mentioned and seems to basically be a dead proposal that is sitting in a filing cabinet in the Metrolinx office somewhere that is unlikely to be built.

I think that bike lanes are a really bad idea because the safety of bike lanes is questionable. Even "separated" bike lanes have the problem that right turning cars can hit bicycles, so they are not as safe as they appear, and on Sherbourne cars often parking in them. The percentage of people near Yonge/Eglinton who bike to work is around 2%, just like the rest of the city. Also the Eglinton bike lanes proposal comes with an outrageous price tag. My opinion is that bicycling is basically a fad because it is too dangerous, with or without bike lanes, and will disappear within the next 10 years; the failure of Bixi is an early indicator of this.
 
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