Tag Archives: Eglinton LRT

It Takes Two To Tango Badly.

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Just a further thought on Wednesday’s meeting of minds between Mayor Rob Ford and Premier Dalton McGuinty.

While it is so very, very easy to jump all over the mayor for his scattershot approach so far in his dealings with the province — we don’t need any money, we have a spending problem, the new Sheppard subway will be privately funded (and for more on the absurdity, nay, incompetence of it all, take a look at this at Ford For Toronto) — let’s not let the premier off this hook on this. A good chunk of our woes currently are due to his push me pull me attitude toward the province’s financial obligations to our public transit.

Since 2003, he’s been promising to resume funding of 50% of the TTC’s operating costs as had been the case pre-Mike Harris. Eight years later, we’re still waiting for that to happen.

Early in 2010, the McGuinty government reneged on about $4 billion for Transit City, citing the economic meltdown that had put stress on the coffers at Queen’s Park. This destabilized a plan to put much needed transit to areas in the city severely under-served. It also paved the way for an all out attack on Transit City by a number of the leading contenders for the mayor’s office during last year’s municipal election campaign. None better than the eventual winner who immediately declared Transit City dead upon being elected.

In the face of the new mayor’s swagger, Premier McGuinty further helped undermine transit in this city by agreeing to reallocate funding for other LRT lines to bury more of the Eglinton Street plan and make possible Mayor Ford’s dream/nightmare pronouncement of a Sheppard subway extension entirely funded by the private sector. Impossible, most knowledgeable transit minds suggested and even worse, serving far fewer people and communities than the plan the mayor was singlehandedly trying to murder. With this week’s awkward ask for some $650 million in seed money to get the project rolling (and, quite possibly, to keep the feds on board), Mayor Ford proved his critics right.

Further assisting in aggravating the system, the premier quickly pushed through the essential service bill that the mayor and council wanted passed which, if history is anything to go by, ensures higher labour costs down the road for the TTC, meaning a higher operating budget. But hey. What’s the premier care? It’s not Queen’s Park money that’ll be going toward it.

Now, I understand that it’s a campaign year here in Ontario and Premier McGuinty is seeking a third term. He has to perform a delicate dance to try and avoid enraging Ford Nation while at the same time not pissing off the rest of Ontario who erroneously see any money given to Toronto as their money being flushed down the drain. Still, it seems odd that if the premier is going to try and frame at least some of his election run on an environmental platform that he’s doing his darndest to undercut public transit in this city.

Of course, principled stands are frequently set aside for political expediency by our premier. That’s not unique to him, of course. And maybe if he is able to beat back the tide of Ford Nation come October (or if the mayor and/or Tim Hudak succeed in doing that for him), an entirely different dynamic between the two men will emerge. Premier McGuinty will be the one holding the upper hand in their relationship and can stop cowering in fear of Mayor Ford.

That’s the thing though. As premier of Ontario, McGuinty already has the upper hand. He is our undisputed overlord and can do anything he so desires with the city, any city in the province. If he’d stood up from the outset to the mayor’s poorly thought out plan, Transportation City, and pointed out the folly both strategically and financially to such drastic reworking of something that had support at all 3 levels of government, even if he’d just made the case that the mayor had to take his plan to the new council before these changes could be considered, and the election hadn’t given the mayor carte blanche to push his wacky scheme foward, he might’ve been able to score points with all sides. He wasn’t saying no to Ford Nation. He was just saying that democracy isn’t only about winning elections. It’s about process. And he’d also show to those living outside the 416 area code that he wasn’t giving in to a pushy Toronto.

By immediately rolling over and granting the mayor his ludicrous wishes, Premier McGuinty showed himself more interested in his own political future than Toronto’s. How exactly did he hope to win our support that way? It should be a question we ask every Liberal candidate who comes knocking at our doors after Labour Day.

— jazzily submitted by Cityslikr

The Naked Untruth

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I’m not going to lie to you, folks. It’s really and truly getting damn near impossible to come up with new and exciting ways to have this discussion. Concerns over kicking a dead horse, jumping the shark and all that. The trouble is, it just needs to keep being said. Over and over again in the hopes that finally somebody clicks and gets a big, bright idea. The proverbial lightbulb. A sudden gush of much needed and long awaited wisdom.

It always starts with the same question.

What is it with fucking right wingers and their refusal to deal with the truth? I’m not necessarily talking about outright lies although that plays an integral part of their everyday discourse. It’s the half truths and distortions of facts and figures that really do the trick. Dissembling, prevarication, misdirection and misleading statements. Their reliance on what Stephen Colbert dubbed ‘truthiness’. If it looks like the truth and quacks like the truth etc., etc.

Witness the Twitter exchange for the last couple days over the plan to remove bike lanes on Jarvis Street. On one side are those against the move. The other comes from Mayor Ford’s side of the fence offered up by Mark Towhey, the mayor’s director of policy and strategic planning.

From Towhey’s twitter feed (@towhey):

  • Actually, wrong. Staff report shows travel times are up by 1/3, ie 130% on average #justthefacts
  • Wrong, actually. Report says 2-3 mins is average over 8 hour survey period. Peak delay is much, much higher #justthefacts
  • But your argument was about environmental impact, not social activism. Even the lefties say you’re, in a word: wrong #sosad
  • Pembina Institute says Ford plan reduces more GHG and takes more cars off road compared to Transit City #topoli
  • When did TEA stop being about the environment and start being an NDP front group? Was it always?
  •  #justthefacts 94% of Jarvis commuters use cars not bikes. Commute times for cars have increased; 33% Gridlock costs T.O. $billions each year

It’s hard to know where to start. There are so many distortions, cherry picking of facts and misuse of statistics at work here that it reads like a lesson plan on How to Win an Unwinnable Argument. Mr. Towhey obviously isn’t interested in having a debate but, instead, wants to print off bumper sticker slogans.

The Pembina Institute report he makes reference to does indeed suggest that the mayor’s transit ‘plan’ would take more cars off the road and reduce more greenhouse gas emissions than Transit City. That is, once the Sheppard subway is built. You know, the mystical, magical subway that the mayor believes will appear if he claps hard enough. Otherwise, the plan such as it is now is simply Transit City with more of the Eglinton LRT buried underground minus the Sheppard and Finch LRTs which, according to the Pembina Institute will take fewer cars off the road and won’t reduce more greenhouse gas emissions than Transit City (not to mention serve less riders.)

Towhey also attempts to conflate the very real problem of congestion in the GTA with the bike lines on Jarvis. He does this by taking reports that traffic times along Jarvis Street during peak rush times have risen by 1 or 2 minutes since the bike lanes were installed and blowing them up to eye-popping but meaningless numbers. 33%! 130%!! The power of Big Numbers and False Analogies. Congestion is costing us money. Jarvis bike lanes are causing congestion. Therefore, bike lanes equal money lost.

He does all this with such condescending assuredness (“Wrong, actually.” “Actually, wrong.”), utilizing dismissive Twitter hashtags like #justthefacts, #wrongwayonJarvis and #neverwasaplan that any reasonable person would conclude that he couldn’t possibly be bullshitting. Only someone absolutely certain would state things so emphatically. But remember what the master of modern propaganda told us. It would never come into their heads [the people] to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.

For the Twitter uninitiated, you might be thinking that serious debate cannot occur in 140 characters. That’s true, but imagine Twitter as a delivery system for abstracts. Here’s a thought. Here’s a link. Let’s have a discussion.

Note how in none of Towhey’s tweets does he link to any of the data he’s citing. It’s all about flooding the social media with empty talking points that supporters can run with. Unlike someone like, say, Matt Elliott at Ford For Toronto. He tweets and links to reports and articles that explore issues fully, thereby making a deeper discussion possible. Read through just a couple of his takes on the Jarvis bike lane issues (here and here) and then let the debate begin.

But that’s the nub of the matter. Right wingers don’t won’t a serious debate. Why? My instinct tells me that, again citing Stephen Colbert, ‘reality has a liberal bias’. They can’t win on facts and figures. Their politics are based purely on ideology not reason or logic. So they must do what they do best. Fudge facts. Disfigure figures. Misstate. Misrepresent. Dissemble. Prevaricate.

So we charge into next weeks’ city council debate on the fate of the Jarvis Street bikelanes. An item that arose in stealth near the end of the last Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting when another lackey of the mayor’s, Councillor John Parker, sandbagged his colleague, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam whose ward the bike lanes are in, with the removal motion after the deputations about the wider bike plan had finished. No debate. No discussion. No transparency.

Mayor Ford said on the campaign trail last year, “It would be a waste of money to remove it if it’s already there, that is unless there was a huge public outcry in the area.” So, where’s the ‘huge public outcry’? Funny you should ask. Just this week the mayor stated that 70% of the phone calls he’s received have been in favour of removing the bike lanes. But as HiMY SYeD tweeted today, when he called to register his pro-bike lane view a staffer for the mayor informed him they weren’t keeping track of who called or their position on the matter. Where’s the mayor’s information coming from then?

Bringing us back full circle here. How do fight a phantom? If the old saying is true that ‘a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes’ (and that was pre-internet), how do we rein it back in? Do we start hitting back below the belt, fight fire with fire, and heap on layers and layers of bullshit? It seems counter-productive and, more disheartening, takes us further and further from the truth.

After all, that is what we’re trying to achieve, isn’t it. Arriving at the truth. At least, that’s what I was raised to believe.

— reasonably submitted by Cityslikr