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Transit City Plan

Which transit plan do you prefer?

  • Transit City

    Votes: 95 79.2%

  • Ford City

    Votes: 25 20.8%
  • Total voters
    120
gweed123 said:
But it's contrasting TC a full Transit City as the alternative. It's not. A stripped-down Transit City is the alternative.
Click to expand...
Whatever Rob Ford has proposed is the alternative. There's nothing stopping him putting forward a $16-billion 15-year subway plan. He has failed to do that. It's not necesarily strictly comparable on a $ basis - but the fact that the Mayor of Toronto hasn't even bothered to put forward a transit plan that would utilize 100% of the funding that Ontario and Canada have already commited between now and 2020 says a lot!
 
gweed123 said:
We need more "I call bullshit" from the left directed on those towards the right. Countering BS with more BS won't get anything accomplished. All it does is create uninformed lemmings on both sides.

What the left needs to do is put the facts out there in a clear, concise form (I think this has been Obama's biggest failure btw), and let the public decide for themselves. If there's one thing the right is really good at, it's finding their message and sticking to it (ex: "we need to stop the gravy train"). Keep hammering the facts home, and eventually they will sink in.
Click to expand...

The challenge is that the right uses over-simplified messages that often don't hold up when closely examined. But the Left can't respond to "STOP THE GRAVY TRAIN!" with "careful analysis of recent City Budgets show, in actuality, that many efficiencies have already been realized and furthermore blah blah..." They tried it. It doesn't work.

I'm not defending the graphic - the report is a different matter - but if it causes people to look at Ford's transit 'plan' and start questioning what's going on, I'm not going to lose any sleep because the creators were disingenuous with their comparison.
 
nfitz said:
Whatever Rob Ford has proposed is the alternative. There's nothing stopping him putting forward a $16-billion 15-year subway plan. He has failed to do that. It's not necesarily strictly comparable on a $ basis - but the fact that the Mayor of Toronto hasn't even bothered to put forward a transit plan that would utilize 100% of the funding that Ontario and Canada have already commited between now and 2020 says a lot!
Click to expand...

I'm not saying Ford's transit plan is the right way to go, far from it. But the comparison that was drawn included neighbourhoods that will likely never see those lines that were proposed in TC materialize. The intersection of Jane and Lawrence West isn't going to be seeing rapid transit for a while down the road. Ford's plan was designed to work with the money that is currently allocated. Comparing it to a plan that will never be built in its entirety is disingenuous at best.

I'm not in favour of Ford's plan (personally I think Metrolinx is going to find the best middle ground), but comparing it outright to a full TC is a lie, and it should be treated as such. If they would have compared it with the FUNDED portions of TC, I would have had no problems with it at all. But the information, and the way it is presented, is purposely presented that way to deceive naive people into thinking that a) the TC that is funded and the TC that was initially proposed are the same thing, and b) all those pretty lines that are shown on the TTC map are going to actually be delivered if Ford's plan is shot down. Neither of those two premises are true.
 
GraphicMatt said:
The challenge is that the right uses over-simplified messages that often don't hold up when closely examined. But the Left can't respond to "STOP THE GRAVY TRAIN!" with "careful analysis of recent City Budgets show, in actuality, that many efficiencies have already been realized and furthermore blah blah..." They tried it. It doesn't work.
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It is true that 'Republican values' do appeal more to people's baser instincts (ie: "me me me"), but it's not impossible to simply the left's message into something that's understandable by someone with sub-average intelligence. The key with countering simple slogans like that is to highlight how those 'changes' would affect the people in question. "Hate being stuck on a bus on Eglinton? If you vote Ford, it'll stay that way". Factually accurate, but still simple enough to understand.

GraphicMatt said:
I'm not defending the graphic - the report is a different matter - but if it causes people to look at Ford's transit 'plan' and start questioning what's going on, I'm not going to lose any sleep because the creators were disingenuous with their comparison.
Click to expand...

But all that will do is get people pissed off when the lines that they were "promised" on that graphic don't materialize. That map would have had the exact same impact had it have been representative of what's actually funded.
 
I don't think there is any problem comparing two plans that cost different total amounts. Isn't that exactly what several people did back in October handing out flyers with Smitherman's more extensive plan in comparison to Ford's?

In this case, one plan is what TEA wants, the other is what Ford wants. I don't think it should be a surprise, or it should in any way invalidate the argument, that TEA wants to spend more in total on transit than Rob Ford.
 
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grey said:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...bina-transit-reports-debunked/article1858803/

What a pathetic debunk attempt by the Globe and Mail.

Transit city isn’t real, so we can’t say its better than the Rob Ford plan. It might be, but we can’t say it is, so we shouldn’t assume that it is.

*slow golf clap*
Click to expand...

That's not really what the article is saying. What the article is saying is that comparing a plan that theoretically could work given the amount of money currently allocated to a plan where over half the lines on the map have not even had the thinnest hint of funding ever being attached to them isn't a fair comparison. The exercise SHOULD have been "look at how many more people we can serve with $8.15 billion", not "look at how many more people this fantasy map (because let's face it, until there's enough money in place to fund it, that's all it is) would be able to serve!". Comparing FUNDED Transit City to Ford's plan would be a valid comparison. Comparing Ford's plan to a plan where over half the lines on the map are just that; lines on a map, is not a fair comparison.

It's like saying "look how much better this Porche is", when all you have money for is a Civic. If you want a more reasonable comparison, compare the Civic to a Focus. You may find out at the end of it that the Civic is still in fact better, but at least you've made a meaningful comparison.
 
So is Ford's plan FUNDED? Does he have firm explicit commitments from all levels of government that offered money for Transit City for his plan? Or is his plan just as speculative?
 
Tulse said:
So is Ford's plan FUNDED? Does he have firm explicit commitments from all levels of government that offered money for Transit City for his plan? Or is his plan just as speculative?
Click to expand...

No, but the idea is that it COULD be funded with the $8.15 billion currently allocated. Hence, it is a valid comparison to TC from a dollars perspective. If the dollar amounts line up, you can more accurately measure the benifits and downsides of each of the plans.
 
100% of the blame cannot go to Ford. Some of these Councillors have been complaining about inadequate transit in their Wards for years but then tell the mayor that subways are the better choice for their constituents.

Councillor Raymond Cho :rolleyes:
 
gweed123 said:
No, but the idea is that it COULD be funded with the $8.15 billion currently allocated.
Click to expand...

I'd like to see much more solid numbers before I'd conclude that. And I think that statement misses the point, which is that regardless of how much money was "allocated", it was committed for Transit City, and there is absolutely no guarantee that it would be re-allocated to a different plan with different priorities and agendas.
 
Good to know the Left is as purposely misleading as the Right.

EDIT: Although I don't even know if this is a Left vs Right issue. But it sure seems to becoming that. Ford = Right = Subways. Miller = Left = LRT. It's so simplistic and meaningless.

Really, we need to wait and see what Ford's compromise plan is to be able to say for sure whether he's completely against LRT or not.

My feelings haven't changed since Ford was elected.

I imagine the Eglinton LRT will go forward at the very least the tunnelled portions.

SRT will be replaced with a subway from Kennedy to STC.

Sheppard East LRT cancelled. Sheppard subway from Downsview to STC ultimately. How much we build now remains to be seen.
 
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Tulse said:
So is Ford's plan FUNDED? Does he have firm explicit commitments from all levels of government that offered money for Transit City for his plan?
Click to expand...

Are the WWLRT, Jane LRT, Don Mills LRT, SMLRT, and sections of the ECLRT and FWLRT? Nope. But that didn't stop them from throwing them onto the map and using them for the comparison.
 
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