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daniel

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Posts posted by daniel

  1. I find it sort of humorous that someone would be urging a collection of political junkies like us to vote. I bet there is a vastly higher proportion of posters here who vote than almost any other demographic you could choose. And what are the odds of changing someone on this board's vote at this late date?

    I know of one person in these forums who don't vote when it's raining.

  2. ….

    Street cars traveling on streets do not get around quickly, since they physically move slowly, must wait in traffic and at lights, and they do not reduce street traffic since they travel on the streets.

    Typically, subway stations are two kms apart from each other. So unless a patron lives within 1km of a station, he or she is likely to get there either by car or by bus. If he gets to the subway station by car, he’s (and the subway plan is) not helping to ease traffic. And furthermore, he’s going to need a place to park his vehicle at a price. Currently the parking lots along the Sheppard subway line are closed to subway patrons during rush hour – makes sense, huh?

    Secondly, if he takes the bus to the station, he’s going by a surface route which is what the Transit City already is.

    Bus and streetcar stops are typically at every street block or two. These surface services are much more accessible to a lot of patrons than subway stations. A bus would take the patron to the subway station, but the streetcar would take the patron to his destination. And because of their ease of accessibility, patrons can easily visit businesses along the way. And because of their ease of accessibility, most patrons won’t need to drive to the streetcar stop. A streetcar carrying 100 riders can represent 100 cars off the road. That's one streetcar waiting at a traffic light instead of 50 to 100 additional automobiles doing the same thing.

    Replacing Transit City with subways is not a km-by-km comparison. Subways cost 3x more than the Transit City plan. Building a subway would in fact reduce the geographic area of service and thus reduce the impact it would have on mitigating traffic congestion simply because its routes would be 1/3 that of the planned Transit City routes. Imagine replacing 50kms of service for 17kms.

    And of course there's the wasted money for work already done and the impending penalties. Not a good start for a Mayor who is supposed to be a penny pincher.

  3. Change the header to "Mayor Ford, Best Mayor Mississauga could hope for"

    http://www.thestar.com/news/transportation/article/902712--mississauga-only-too-pleased-to-take-toronto-s-light-rail-money?bn=1

    Premier Dalton McGuinty needn’t worry – if Toronto Mayor Rob Ford doesn’t want it, Mississauga will be only too happy to take the province’s money to build light rail transit (LRT).

    That’s the cheeky offer proffered by Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion in a letter to Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne on Friday.

    “If any Toronto transit contracts are cancelled I want to inform you up front that we could use the money that has been allocated for those projects, for transit projects in Mississauga,” says McCallion in a letter obtained by the Toronto Star....

  4. Ford is just playing politics. If he's as good a business man as he claims to be, he would have known well before the election campaign started all the contracts and penalties related to Transit City. But these kind of details won't get you elected. (Like Ann Coulter would say, these facts are "so boring"). So campaign on snippets that sound good. They don't have to be correct. The tough job is for his opponents the explain why he's wrong. And explaining takes longer than one sentence - election lost.

    His game now is at least show he's trying to keep an election promise. Knowing full well, his subway plan won't go through, he'll eventually "admit" defeat. His supporters would forgive him this second time (remember his first broken promise?) because he tried and then all the blame will be pointed at the Provincial Liberals, the TTC, MetroLinks, and of course David Miller. (You just wait for this forum to be lit-up with excuses why it's ok for Ford to break promises.)

    But by chance he succeeds and goes ahead with the subway plan, the $8billion already earmarked would be plain wasted taxpayer's money. And guess what - the rightwingers (on this forum) as well as all the communities outside of Toronto will simply blame the Provincial Liberal government for more financial mismanagement.

    It's a winning situation for Ford either way. The fools are those who believed his campaign.

  5. Just a reminder of what was said two years ago:

    ...The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term...
    ...You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. ...

    ...There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.

    People are so short sighted. They think that eight years of destruction can be fixed in two years.

  6. When GWB did it, they blamed it on 911. When Stephen Harper did it, they blamed it on the recession even though it didn't start until 6months later in October and Harper himself in August wasn't acknowledging there was a recession yet.

    So I wonder what the excuses will be or what the blame will be when Ford turns the budget into another deficit like the right-wing usually does.

    Tell it like it is, a man of his word, will keep all his promises - until he starts breaking them. But as Ann Coulter would say about the facts, "it would be so boring".

  7. I think overall Toronto for the most part has done really well. Toronto has run mostly balanced budgets. There have been tax increases but I believe the last one was 3%. I'm in York Region and the last one we had was on the order of 9%. It runs some really good services. The TTC compared to York Region is great. Runs frequently and costs a dollar less per ride.

    People naturally get upset about money, but that's the Conservatives motif. Doesn't matter how well the budget is, if a Liberal or otherwise is in charge, they're taxing and spending. I love how a lot of the people who call into these conservative radio shows complaining about waste can't actually come up with examples of money being flushed down the toilette. Oh well.

    When I hear my councillor spew the phrase "get our house in order" I ask him what he did during the Lastman years when he was going cap-in-hand begging for money from Harris every year. I understand that Rob Ford is going to consult with Hazel McCallion about running the city. I wonder if he'll take her advice when hears about that 9% property tax increase.

    I can also imagine the last laugh will be shared amongst Miller, Pantalone and Ford. As Ford breaks his promises one at a time, Miller will have his foresight and vision confirmed. Pantalone would have been bashed for sure for keeping his election promises. And Ford would be chuckling as the right-wing clamour to defend those broken promises being too stupid to realize they are now defending the continuation of Miller's Transit-City plans.

  8. See, I actually think Miller was quite good (if not quite as great as I hoped for) and will be remembered that way:

    http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/880076--face-it-torontonians-miller-time-was-good

    Miller had a vision to modernize the city and prepare it for future growth. To address traffic congestion, we needed to get people out of cars. That's where his transit plan and bike lanes would work. Streetcars were selected (after feasibility studies)to be the lowest cost best accessibility. Funding came partly from the Province and from vehicle registration - that kept property tax increases low.

    To address the garbage problem and mitigate having to transport our waste to other municipalities, he aggressively implemented recycling, composting, green bin and the 5cent charge on plastic bags (cheap compared to other world cities that charge 6 to 10x more). For those who actually practiced recycling and bag yard composting, the garbage strike could have lasted an additional 3 weeks. For those who didn't, they just whined about it.

    One and only one strike after five years in office is a good record for Miller. Compare that the Lastman/Harris when we endured a continuous lineup of disputes depending who in the population the Common Sense Revolution would attack next.

    McGuinty/Miller never needed to embarrassingly do the Lastman thing by begging for money from Harris every year to balance the budget. The Toronto Act gave Toronto to power to raise it's own funds and Miller did it. The article described how Miller had achieved a budget surplus in 2008. As far as I know, 2010 has a surplus of $100million. Compare that to Stephen Harper who inherited a $20billion surplus and eliminated it six months before the recession started.

  9. It's ok for Rob Ford to throw around allegations of corruption at a restaurant owner without having any evidence, much like Stephen Harper's serious allegations against Helena Guergis without having any evidence either. However it's not ok to remind people of the documented actions and quotes of Rob Ford.

    Councillor Ford leaked out that Mayor Ford isn't planning to scrap the existing street car plans. Either Rob Ford's brother is a bigger bumbler than Rob Ford, or Rob Ford wasn't telling it like is, but saying anything to get elected. Not that I'll be upset at this decision, we knew there were two possibilities:

    1) break his promise

    or

    2) drive up expenses with contract penalties to implement a subway plan that's triple the cost and adding further delays.

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