All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

The Road To Irrelevancy

Posted on March 14, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

It’s very easy with our 21^st-century hindsight (such as it is) to look back through the history books and scream in frustration at the mistakes made by our predecessors. “It’s the fleas, you dimwits!” you yell at the poor bastards suffering through the plague. In the sixth century. And again in the fourteenth century. And the seventeenth.

Clear out the rats! Stop living in such squalor! It’s a bacteria! No, flowers in your nose won’t help! Invent antibiotics, already!

Progress is a slow march, sometimes imperceptible. The scientific method was a long time in coming and still hasn’t fully taken hold. Iterative trial-and-error, plugging in acquired knowledge as it becomes available to us. We proceed humbly with the best information we have at the time, knowing it’s not always going to be perfect or even correct.

Educated guesses. Informed assumptions.

Or there’s this.

A Transportation Town Hall for the residents of Councillor Mike Del Grande’s Scarborough Agincourt ward. “Transit And You. Subways. Public Transit. (TTC/GO Transit) Hwy 401. Road.”

The evening’s guest speaker? Put your hands together for Mr. Frank Klees, MPP and the Progressive Conservative Transportation Critic. Yes, folks. That Frank Klees. Member of the Mike Harris government that buried the hole where an Eglinton subway would’ve run and cut the provincial contribution to the TTC’s annual operating subsidy. Mr. Frank Klees, everyone.

(Full disclosure: I did not attend the event and am only relaying the sense I got via social media. Grain of salt not included.)

Mr. Klees pleaded for transit planning to move “beyond politics.” Too many times in the past we have seen incoming administrations simply trash can the work of their outgoing counterparts for little more than partisan reasons. Marking the territory. Male lions, taking over a new pride, killing the offspring of its defeated rival.

Hard to argue with that. I mean, Mayor Rob Ford unilaterally killing Transit City. The aforementioned dispatch by the Harris government of Eglinton subway. Such crass politics should be called out, detrimental as they are to healthy city building.

But strangely if not unsurprisingly, Klees ignored those examples and hopped into his way back machine in order to trot out… wait for it, wait for it… the Spadina Expressway! Yep, folks. The Opposition’s Transportation Critic at Queen’s Park sees everything that’s wrong with transit planning in this city traced back to the ignominious end of the Spadina Expressway at Eglinton Avenue.

Again, I was not in attendance, so can’t be entirely sure of Mr. Klees’ exact point. Was it just the reversal that he believed wrong or the fact that the Expressway would’ve been a boon for transportation? Whatever, but it seemed to establish a tone for the evening where the car needed to reclaim its exalted position atop the transportation hierarchy, all public transit must run underground and, why not more bridges?

Bridges? Yes, bridges. Where there are more bridges, there is less gridlock.

“Resident says for 50 years roads have been considered dirty words. Same with cars. And trucks. And bridges.”

Look.

Sixty-five years ago or so, there was a different prevailing view. After a Great Depression and World War, after nearly 20 years of selfless sacrifice, there was a little breath of freedom in the air. Land was plentiful. The energy to get people to those far flung places was cheap. So the approach to designing cities reflected those sensibilities.

Why wouldn’t they? It was based on the best information at hand. Thus, places like Scarborough Agincourt were planned into existence.

More than half a century on, we’ve realized a couple of those key suppositions turned out not to be quite right. Land is plentiful but the sprawl that followed was not really sustainable or economically viable. Energy, or at least a cheap version of it, turned out not be in infinite supply and it also happened to be hazardous to our collective health.

Again, life is not an exact fucking science. Best laid plans and all that. Mistakes happen. You learn from them and seek to correct them with the knowledge you’ve gained from experience.

What you don’t do is insist on repeating them in the hopes of a different outcome. We all know what the definition of that is.

Frank Klees, Mayor Ford and Councillor Del Grande are all conducting a flat out assault on reason when it comes to transit planning. (It’s especially galling from the councillor who leaves no opportunity wasted to tout how he as the former budget chief removed the “emotion” from the budget process.) They either don’t know or don’t care about any evidence that’s emerged that runs contrary to their strongly held opinions, apparently forged in steel in the 1950s and 60s.

It’s reactionism at its worst and a complete abdication of leadership and responsibility. Leveraging parochial resentment for political opportunism, they insist on spreading mistruths and false hope. No, guys. More roads don’t lead to less congestion. They are deniers of reality and need to be dispatched to the trash heap of irrelevancy.

Just like the experts who blamed the plague on the humid air. Only, let’s not wait as long to see that it happens.

— impatiently submitted by Cityslikr

The Problem Is Us

Posted on March 13, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Now, I’m no brain doctor or mind scientist but it seems to me that a disturbing number of people – a majority of whom write for or read newspapers like the Toronto Sun* – lack what you might call an important neural bridge, an inability to make a synaptic leap from a point to its logical conclusion.

Here’s the second paragraph from the Sun’s Saturday editorial, Time to come clean on ‘Big Move’:

We’re skeptical because the people promising to fix the problem of traffic gridlock in the GTA — provincial and municipal politicians — are the people who created it in the first place.

Yeah!

Politicians! Refusing to build transit! We ask and we ask for more transit, and what do we get? Congestion! That’s what we get!

I’m stuck behind the wheel in this traffic jam and it’s all the politicians’ fault.

The idea that somehow, left to their own devices, politicians have failed to deliver, or rather, that politicians have delivered us into this transit mess is staggeringly simple minded. I know, I know. It’s the Sun we’re talking about. Still…

I’m not letting our politicians off the hook here. For the past two decades or so, our elected officials have sat on their collective hands, unwilling to tell the hard truths about the absolute necessity for transit expansion throughout the GTHA and the only way possible to get it done. That’s a major abdication of leadership, no argument.

But why would they be like that, one might venture to ask if one weren’t writing an editorial for the Toronto Sun. Why would politicians jeopardize the economic and social well-being of a region, a city, a ward, a neighbourhood by neglectfully refusing to build transit in a timely manner? Spite? Laziness?

Try, out of sheer political pandering.

We have the transit system and traffic congestion that we deserve. That we’ve paid for. The only ones we have to blame for the mess we’re currently in is ourselves.

And maybe, the Toronto Sun.

For its 40+ years of existence, it has championed the cause of small government and low taxes, touting any like-minded politician and vilifying those who weren’t. There was no major public expenditure it couldn’t see as a boondoggle or tax increase that didn’t pick the taxpayers’ pockets. I’ll go out on a limb here and bet my bottom dollar that back in 1995, the Toronto Sun endorsed Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservatives to be the new government of Ontario. The very gang that, when in power, filled the hole being dug for an Eglinton subway spur. A hole being dug back out, some 18 years later.

This cesspool of suspicion and tightwadedness has tended to make politicians a little gun shy in terms of transit building. You want what? Well, it’s going to cost about x m(b)illions of dollars. Too much? Right. Well, let’s just ignore this conversation then, shall we?

Worse still, there’s this phantasmagorical alternate reality out there, where politicians claim they can build whatever transit the folks want wherever the folks want it and it won’t cost anybody a thing. Just say the word. Clap your hands twice and click your heels three times [h/t to @christ for that image].

The Sun itself is out there promoting utter nonsense in terms of transit funding. Misinforming Torontonians for over 4 decades now.™©® You want new transit, Toronto? Easy peasy.

We believe much of the money can be raised by charging developers for the increased benefits to them of an integrated transit system, by eliminating waste in government, and by dedicating to public transit the new tax base generated by a proposed Toronto casino-resort.

Uh-huh.

And I believe much of the money can be raised by eating quarters and shitting out five dollar bills.

Once again, the Toronto Sun is spouting rubbish and muddying the debate about transit funding. According to Feeling Congested, the Sun’s preference for using Development Charges to pay for new transit will amount to about $90 million annually. In the spirit of increased benefits from new transit, I’ll throw in the $20 million Value Capture Levy from increased property values. So that totals $110 million a year which means that we’ll only need the additional one billion, eight hundred and ninety million dollars from a new ‘casino-resort’ and more government efficiencies.

Done, and done.

It’s beyond laughable that these people think they’re contributing constructively to the transit debate. This is the same kind of shirking of responsibility and refusing to make tough choices that have got us into this mess. They are not being honest brokers with their readers.

The fact is, the two billion dollar number being given for the Big Move is a very, very conservative number. It’s going to cost us a lot more than that, and I’m just considering operational costs right now. Never mind, the additional transit that really should be built to noticeably improve transit matters in the GTHA. Don’t believe me? Ask Oakville mayor Rob Burton. Or read some Steve Munro.

There are no easy fixes to this, folks. This is the high cost of procrastination, selfishness and negligence. Everything the likes of the Toronto Sun has been encouraging since its inception. It’s never been serious about investment in the public sphere. Don’t start thinking it’s suddenly changed that tune.

* except for Reporter Don Peat

— dismissively submitted by Cityslikr

Mayor Or May Not

Posted on March 12, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

For the record, I think city council is doing a pretty bang up job at this moment. All things considered. And by all things I mean, the mayor. Besieged and absent most of the time, he contributes nothing more than an occasional grunt of consent (casino, yes) or dissenting snort (tolls, no way).

Locked into a near submission hold early on in this term by a beast with a mandate, a more passive, compliant group was hard to imagine than our city council. Kill Transit City. Wait, what? Cut the VRT. OK, but how do we replace the reven–Cut office budgets. OK but that’s still not going to replace the revenue from–Privatize waste collection. Can you at least give us proper numbers? Oh, never mind. Whatevs.

Who’s the boss? You’re the boss, boss man.

But then, in a classic dumb wrasslin’ move, Mayor Ford didn’t finish off his opponent when he had the chance. He let up on the choke hold and tagged his partner to take over the beating. But when his partner-brother-councillor got in over his head, his nifty manoeuvre on the Port Lands rebuffed and then used to pummel him, the mayor was too distracted to help out. Oh, look. Football season!

He never really recovered.

And we as a city are the better for it.

City council has stepped up and ably assumed control, as best it can with an obstructionist mayor who, when he’s paying any attention at all, throws nothing more than blocks and hissy fits in order to in any way seem relevant to the civic discourse. Yes, transit plans were delayed by about 18 months but, I’d say, council was third on the list of those responsible for that, after the mayor and the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty who could’ve stopped the assault in its tracks, so to speak, but instead chose to play politics with it. Actually, fourth if you factor in Tim Hudak’s inane blathering about subways, subways, subways.

For sure, this type of unplanned (but not unsurprising) leaderless style of local governance is not optimal. It appears to have opened things wide for outside influencers, let’s call them, on the casino question. The mayor’s inability to build a majority of councillors to approve a casino has now slowed the proceedings to a halt as staff calls for more information from OLG (which is not necessarily a bad thing) and given more time to lobbying efforts. But it’s also just prolonged the time, space and resources this debate takes of the public discourse. Important matters are not dealt with in the most expeditious of manners.

On the other hand, in the absence of a strong mayoral hand, city staff have seized control of the transit file and pushed it to the forefront. In fact, I might argue that led by our Chief Planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, along with TTC Chair Karen Stintz, the public discussion about tolls, taxes and fees needed to pay for Metronlinx’s Big Move have outpaced the efforts done by the province. With Mayor Ford bleating ineffectually along the sidelines, there have been forums, town halls and other information sessions that have inserted the topic firmly into the region wide discussion. All of it occurring in spite of the mayor’s adamant disapproval.

Pointing to the possibility that while having a mayor contribute positively to the running of the city is preferable, it isn’t absolutely essential. Order does not break down and chaos reign. Sure, it can be something of a circus but I would argue that’s more a product of this particular administration than it is any sort of proof that the system cannot function if a mayor doesn’t prevail.

What we absolutely don’t need is to bestow more power in the mayor’s hands to make sure this kind of gridlock doesn’t happen, as some have talked about repeatedly, not mentioning any names but it’s exactly the same as the mayor’s and rhymes with ‘bored’. No, just the opposite. Until we undertake a radical restructuring of the municipal system here with an emphasis on more city wide representation outside of the mayor’s office while giving more power and say to citizens at the ground level, we might want to harken back to simpler times.

Let’s stop directly electing the mayor of Toronto.

Instead, our mayor will be chosen from the 44 councillors who’ve just been elected. That way, there’s already a momentum toward consensus going forward into the term. There’s a working majority at council from the get-go.

An added bonus would be extra interest in the councillor races because the one elected to be mayor would give up their council seat and be replaced by the candidate coming in second to them in the ward race. Four years down the road, the mayor would have to fight for the ward again, possibly facing the incumbent who’d replaced them. So, there’d be none of this petulant sulking, impatiently waiting for the next election to get your way since you’d have someone else trying to contribute positively to the running of the city who you might just have to face off against in your ward in order to be re-elected.

It’s not perfect, no. But if the office of the mayor has not proven to be indispensable to the running of the city, why pretend that it is? Let’s treat it like it is, a first among equals to borrow a phrase. Only as powerful as the individual holding the office can make it or as strong as the rest of council allows.

— helpfully submitted by Cityslikr