Save Our Transit

[W. K. Lis]

Save Our Transit from the anti-transit, automobile-addicted, streetcar-phobia influences of Rob Ford and his loyal underlings.

From the Globe and Mail, at this link:

Doug Ford hatches public campaign to save mayor’s subway plan

Elizabeth Church
Globe and Mail Update
Published Monday, Feb. 13, 2012 7:41PM EST

Councillor Doug Ford wants to rally the people of Toronto to save the mayor’s subway plans.

The Save our Subways campaign, or S.O.S. as he is calling it, is still in its infancy, but the Etobicoke councillor is predicting it will sway the McGuinty government to see things the mayor’s way – just as the voters of Oakville managed to halt construction on a power plant near their homes in the runup to this fall’s provincial election.

“McGuinty folded on that power plant there. Is he going to fold here?†Councillor Ford asked. “The mayor respects the will of council and always has. The council is not respecting the will of the people.

The plans for the public campaign come less than a week after Toronto’s subway-loving mayor suffered a stunning defeat of his transit plans at the hands of city councillors. Last week at a special transit meeting, a majority of councillors led by TTC chair Karen Stintz endorsed a plan that included street-level light rail on Eglinton Avenue east of the Don Valley and Finch Avenue West. It also created a expert panel to study the mayor’s campaign pledge for a subway expansion on Sheppard, with a report due next month.

The move runs counter to a deal signed last year by Premier Dalton McGuinty and the mayor to use $8.4-billion in provincial transit funding to bury the entire Eglinton Crosstown line, an agreement that failed to get the required support of council.

While the city waits for the next move from the province, Councillor Ford said it is time for the public to get involved. “We are going to have to start some organization like the lefties do,†he said, vowing to use e-mail, automated calls and “10 little Mrs. Jones,†making calls to drum up support.

The mayor’s office, he said, has received more calls supporting subways than any other issue and the polls show subways are what the public wants. Councillor Ford hopes to open an S.O.S. office on Eglinton Avenue East for starters and then move the focus to Sheppard and eventually Finch.

Political foes of the Ford administration may think they have scored a win, but Councillor Ford, his brother’s campaign manager during his campaign for mayor, said they are paving the way for more years for the mayor.

“You can’t win the city unless you win Scarborough and Etobicoke,†he said. After the council defeat, the councillor said, he was “high-fiving†his brother. “I told him, this is positive. This is a clear agenda. You’ve got it. It’s done.â€

Councillor Adam Vaughan, a critic of Mayor Ford said, all the slogans in the world won’t address the $1-billion funding gap that exists for extending the Sheppard line.

“There are a billion reasons why we can’t give you a subway,†Mr. Vaughan said he would tell Scarborough residents. “It’s $1-billion in new taxes and $1-billion in new development charges that come from massive condominiums that sprout out everywhere.â€

Mr. Vaughan said attempts to drum up support for subway projects – such as the mayor’s weekly community walks – will not change the transit plan endorsed by council that delivers transit to more residents in the east end. “They can walk around malls until they are blue in the face, council has made a decision,†he said. “There are folks all over Scarborough who are celebrating.â€

From The Star, at this link:

Mayor Ford’s executive pushes ahead with subway expansion dream

David Rider Urban Affairs Bureau Chief

Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee has voted to push ahead with plans for a Sheppard subway extension.

Monday’s vote came five days after a specially called meeting at which city council largely derailed Ford’s subway vision with a 25-18 endorsement of a return to a light rail plan.

While explicitly confirming support for a partially buried LRT on Eglinton Ave. and a surface line on Finch Ave., council stopped short of completely dashing Ford’s multi-billion-dollar dream of extending the Sheppard subway to Scarborough Town Centre primarily through private investment.

It authorized creation of an expert panel, including former mayor David Crombie, Ford’s point man on Sheppard subway financing Gordon Chong, and U of T transit expert Eric Miller, to report back on Sheppard options by March 21. They meet for the first time Friday.

Ford has dismissed council’s vote as “irrelevant†and is lobbying the public and the province to ignore it and proceed with his plan for a buried Eglinton LRT and a Sheppard subway.

Members of executive, after hearing Chong’s defence of his report advocating subways, and listening to visiting councillors attack him for relying heavily on a 20-year-old environmental assessment, sided firmly with Ford and subways.

“It is time to stop thinking the only part of the city that deserves good rapid transit is the downtown,†said Councillor David Shiner (Ward 24 Willowdale).

Norm Kelly (Ward 40 Scarborough Agincourt) said council is thinking small by only considering what it can finance from the province’s promised $8.4 billion.

“What we need in this debate is what Steve Jobs brought to Apple,†Kelly said.

Ford’s allies approved his motion to have city manager Joe Pennachetti report back with “recommendations on a process to move forward with the development of a plan to complete the Sheppard subway.â€

Pennachetti is also tasked by council with reporting back on the findings of the expert panel, which includes LRT advocates.

Councillor Doug Ford told reporters that the public pressure campaign he and Mayor Rob Ford are launching will be called Save our Subways, or S.O.S. As well as personal appearances, they hope to open an office and use mass emails and phone calls to lobby the public and pressure councillors who voted against the mayor’s subway plan and Premier Dalton McGuinty, who controls $8.4 billion in promised transit funding.

Council Adam Vaughan (Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina) called Chong’s report fatally flawed, saying it relies on 20-year-old projections, most of which were proven wrong in a 2011 review by the TTC.

Executive also approved Councillor Michelle Berardinetti’s motion asking staff for a report on using incentives to entice retailers to donate proceeds from the five-cent mandatory plastic bag fee to the city’s fight against the emerald ash borer bug thinning Toronto’s tree canopy. The committee rejected Councillor Paul Ainslie’s motion to look at ways to scrap the bag fee altogether.

Councillor David Shiner comment that “It is time to stop thinking the only part of the city that deserves good rapid transit is the downtown,†is very wrong. 1978 was the date year that ANY underground electric railway line construction occurred within the boundaries of the of city of Toronto. Since 1978, all subway construction occurred, is presently occurring, in the "suburbs" (including now Vaughan). Only with the Eglinton Crosstown construction will there be construction for an underground electric railway line.

There has been streetcar right-of-way construction, but not rapid light rail transit construction until now.

 

[kEiThZ]

At this point. Honestly. I'd like to see a referendum on the issue. Settle this once and for all. Put it to the voters. Do they want subways and the higher taxes they entail, or would they prefer LRT which would be slower, cheaper and provide wider coverage.

Let the different groups do their best to convince the public. And let them accept the public's decision.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

I'd second that: a good clear question put to the public to settle this.

Then perhaps we might get around to building something and addressing the fact that transit must be about 20 years behind the needs of the city.

 

[tendim]

At this point. Honestly. I'd like to see a referendum on the issue. Settle this once and for all. Put it to the voters. Do they want subways and the higher taxes they entail, or would they prefer LRT which would be slower, cheaper and provide wider coverage.

Absolutely. The Fords say that they are giving the people what they want, and so do those who voted against an all-subway solution. I don't remember anybody asking me, or anybody I know, what they want. At the end it is a dollars and cents activity. Personally I love subways, but everything I've read subways don't make sense financially so I support LRT.

 

[rbt]

At this point. Honestly. I'd like to see a referendum on the issue. Settle this once and for all. Put it to the voters. Do they want subways and the higher taxes they entail, or would they prefer LRT which would be slower, cheaper and provide wider coverage.

Let the different groups do their best to convince the public. And let them accept the public's decision.

I wouldn't mind that but such a question would not be asked by the current administration; nor has there been any consideration for operations funding of the subway.

You cannot hold subsidies at $400M/year and expect to add $2.5M/km of subsidized subway operations to it.


Fastest way for the city to fund subway construction is to give charities like Salvation Army $100M/year to hand out passes/tokens to people who need (55,000 people ride for free or 110,000 for ~$60 per month) and make TTC cost recovery from farebox 100% (~$4.50 one-way cash fare). Now take the remaining $300M/year and direct it toward capital to build 1km of subway per year or 3km/year if you can get matching provincial and federal funds.

Unlike a sales/income tax, no legislation needs to change. Unlike road tolls there is no multi-year delay to acquiring funding.

I don't think Ford has the stomach for a $10/month/spot parking tax as that would be larger than the car registration fee he eliminated and pretty much the same people.

A levy would take decades to build Sheppard subway. It isn't practical by itself. Not only that but it stands in the way of gaining additional property tax revenue by making Toronto construction more expensive. I'm not certain a 50 year projection of total revenues would show the levy as making much.

Tell people a $4 token fare (plus normal escalation) gets them subways. See where they stand. We may find with a $4 fare that we no longer require subways

 

[CityPainter]

But sometimes just asking the public what they want isn't all that helpful, unless the question is worded very well, and people actually read and understand the implications of the question, which many wouldn't.

- Ford is correct in that we all PREFER subways, but the reality is that we can't afford them, or enough of them to make any major improvement to our transit structure as a whole. Simply asking random people out of context if they prefer subways or LRT is about as useful as asking people if they'd prefer a subway or a shiny new red Ferrari for every citizen... its irrelevant if we can't afford either.

- I believe what Ford is proposing on Eglinton is actually a buried LRT, not a subway like the existing Yonge and Bloor lines, so this entire subway-vs-LRT debate is oddly misleading to begin with.

- Many "supporters" of subways are actually taking that point of view because they are primarily drivers who simply don't want any changes to road surfaces or construction interruptions. Is it not reasonable to wonder whether those who have no intention on using transit should have as much input into these important decisions as those who rely on transit daily? This type of me-first thinking also doesn't take into account the larger picture, ie. that a better transit infrastructure as a whole would lead to fewer cars on the road, making driving easier for those who do require it.

 

[CDL.TO]

This thread, as far as I can tell, doesn't cover anything that isn't already covered in other threads such as "Transit City Plan Debate" and "New Funding Sources".

As such, I'm closing it.