This is a panic-postscript to today's blog.
I opened with a comment about the plan to rip up the streetcar routes and replace them with buses, a plan that would include billions to build more subways.
I am incensed at what I just heard on TV News. Mayor-elect Ford seems to be waffling (if you believe his brother) over his plans to replace streetcars. Ford himself, with that cocky grin he always shows, says he is going to talk to the Premier!
Worst yet - if I understood correctly - did Mr. McGuinty actually say that in the matter of the transit system for Toronto that "the people have spoken!?
Do I hear our Premier saying that he's open to the inane Ford plan to build expensive subways, to repudiate the deal already made for a whole revised transit system, and to embark on a prohibitively expensive subway program?
If I am hearing right - what do we have to do to stop the madness?
I can believe that people fell for bis "Respect for Taxpayers" slogan, but how many really voted to uproot the streetcar system and replace it with buses? Noisy, polluting buses? Buses that carry a fraction of the passenger load of streetcars?
Have we fallen into some kind of fairy-tale hole? Can I expect the March Hare and the Mad Hatter to show up.
We can't let this happen.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
WELCOME TO WHERE THE CAR IS KING
The bad thing about sour grapes is that they not only taste bad but they cast you as a sore loser. That’s me all over. If Toronto wants Mayor Ford, as Phil Givens used to say: “People don’t get what they want, they get what’s coming to them.” I’m prepared to wait and see.
I can’t believer though, in spite of my insistence that I resign myself to reality, that the “issues” Rob Ford paraded were so compelling that more people voted for him than the other two guys combined. I still don’t believe there are enough angry car drivers in Toronto who believe tit would be a good idea to tear up streetcar tracks and replace the street cars with buses. That’s a complete non-starter. First of all, congestion doesn’t happen because the roads are too restricted. It happens because there are too many cars. Parkinson’s Law says that “use expands to fit the space available.” Roads made wider or more accessible almost immediately become clogged as they attract more cars. I’m not making that up. It’s a statistical fact.
The idea may have resonated with grid-locked car slaves, but we are too far along, including funding from two other levels of government, with our new transportation plans, to reverse it.
(I am also puzzled by two conflicting “facts:” that people are angry at City Hall, but that, according to surveys, if David Miller had run again, he would have won. Perhaps the reality is that Ford is not that good, but the other guys are even worse.)
Perhaps the larger issue was the inspired slogan (hark! – do I hear Mike Harris redux?) “Fairness for Taxpayers.”. People who pay taxes always complain that they pay too much. I have yet to have it proved that our taxation has directly led anyone into bankruptcy. To use issues like a $14,000 farewell party for Kyle Rae as evidence of “waste” is pure rubbish. It is a small amount, less than most people spend on a wedding. Kyle deserved a decent send-off and parsimonious nonsense just doesn’t make sense. But that’s Rob. And nearly 50 percent of the people who voted (nearly half stayed home) love him. Like they loved Mel Lastman.
Taxpayers in Toronto get value for their money. Toronto is one of the most vibrant cities on the continent because we invest in ourselves. I simply don’t know what he’s talking about.
We are so tax-averse that, at every opportunity, many of us will break the law. When was the last time some businessman said: “pay me in cash and I won’t charge you HST? The government is cheated out of billions every year but otherwise law-abiding “folks” who protest taxation by being scofflaws. Maybe Rob Ford, who loves law and order should set up a department of “finks” who would lure contractors and others into offering a no-tax cash deals and then clap the handcuffs on them. That would be law and order. But Mayor Ford’s idea is to put more cops on the street and prosecute graffiti vandals.
Front page of the Toronto Star is a picture of Mayor Rob and a statement that if you want to talk to him, just phone. He is well-intentioned, but he is a headline grabbing populist and demagogue. He has no use for reality. He makes it up as he goes along.
I am hoping that he will be confronted with a gridlocked council that will not let him have his foolish ways.
By the way, in all the talk about new subways, he is committing the poor taxpayers to billions of dollars to build those relics. Most people, and Ford knows it, don’t know that dedicated surface transit with an underground component in busy traffic areas, is a fact of life. It is the way of the future. Even Paris, where people ride on the best subway system in the world, is now turning to surface trolley trains to ease their traffic problems.
So if you voted for lower taxes and an end to “lavish” spending on parties for outgoing councilors; for putting the car back into its proper place; for stopping “waste” you may be sorry you asked for it. I don’t think he can do it.
I’m sorriest about one thing: that Toronto voters have succumbed to the rhetoric I thought belonged only to the Tea Party movement: blind, mindless, angry protest.
I can’t believer though, in spite of my insistence that I resign myself to reality, that the “issues” Rob Ford paraded were so compelling that more people voted for him than the other two guys combined. I still don’t believe there are enough angry car drivers in Toronto who believe tit would be a good idea to tear up streetcar tracks and replace the street cars with buses. That’s a complete non-starter. First of all, congestion doesn’t happen because the roads are too restricted. It happens because there are too many cars. Parkinson’s Law says that “use expands to fit the space available.” Roads made wider or more accessible almost immediately become clogged as they attract more cars. I’m not making that up. It’s a statistical fact.
The idea may have resonated with grid-locked car slaves, but we are too far along, including funding from two other levels of government, with our new transportation plans, to reverse it.
(I am also puzzled by two conflicting “facts:” that people are angry at City Hall, but that, according to surveys, if David Miller had run again, he would have won. Perhaps the reality is that Ford is not that good, but the other guys are even worse.)
Perhaps the larger issue was the inspired slogan (hark! – do I hear Mike Harris redux?) “Fairness for Taxpayers.”. People who pay taxes always complain that they pay too much. I have yet to have it proved that our taxation has directly led anyone into bankruptcy. To use issues like a $14,000 farewell party for Kyle Rae as evidence of “waste” is pure rubbish. It is a small amount, less than most people spend on a wedding. Kyle deserved a decent send-off and parsimonious nonsense just doesn’t make sense. But that’s Rob. And nearly 50 percent of the people who voted (nearly half stayed home) love him. Like they loved Mel Lastman.
Taxpayers in Toronto get value for their money. Toronto is one of the most vibrant cities on the continent because we invest in ourselves. I simply don’t know what he’s talking about.
We are so tax-averse that, at every opportunity, many of us will break the law. When was the last time some businessman said: “pay me in cash and I won’t charge you HST? The government is cheated out of billions every year but otherwise law-abiding “folks” who protest taxation by being scofflaws. Maybe Rob Ford, who loves law and order should set up a department of “finks” who would lure contractors and others into offering a no-tax cash deals and then clap the handcuffs on them. That would be law and order. But Mayor Ford’s idea is to put more cops on the street and prosecute graffiti vandals.
Front page of the Toronto Star is a picture of Mayor Rob and a statement that if you want to talk to him, just phone. He is well-intentioned, but he is a headline grabbing populist and demagogue. He has no use for reality. He makes it up as he goes along.
I am hoping that he will be confronted with a gridlocked council that will not let him have his foolish ways.
By the way, in all the talk about new subways, he is committing the poor taxpayers to billions of dollars to build those relics. Most people, and Ford knows it, don’t know that dedicated surface transit with an underground component in busy traffic areas, is a fact of life. It is the way of the future. Even Paris, where people ride on the best subway system in the world, is now turning to surface trolley trains to ease their traffic problems.
So if you voted for lower taxes and an end to “lavish” spending on parties for outgoing councilors; for putting the car back into its proper place; for stopping “waste” you may be sorry you asked for it. I don’t think he can do it.
I’m sorriest about one thing: that Toronto voters have succumbed to the rhetoric I thought belonged only to the Tea Party movement: blind, mindless, angry protest.
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