All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Uber Allies

Posted on November 20, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I am what you would call a late adoptor. In no way am I anti-tech. I have a smart phone. I know my way around the internets. My music is all digital.

But I know I just barely scratch the surface of it all. There is so much more I could be doing, to my advantage. It just doesn’t interest me. I don’t say that proudly. It’s just a matter of fact. I use what comes easily to me. Let’s call it ‘tech lazy’. (I’m sure there’s an actual term for that I’m just not aware of.)

I know even less about the taxi industry here in Toronto. My cab trips are few and far between. One is usually around when I want it. I have no solid price comparison with many other places to know if we’re being gouged or not. My main interaction with the city’s cab happens when one nearly knocks me down or cuts me off in a bike lane when I’m riding around.

There was a big debate this past term at City Hall about taxi licensing. People wearing opposing coloured shirts. I think it had much to do with who owned what kind of license or something or other. Frankly, I tuned out. Let’s call it politically lazy. Since it didn’t have much impact on my life, I couldn’t really be bothered.

So imagine my surprise, sitting here, writing something about a ‘car-summoning’ internet application, Uber, being hit with a cease and desist injunction by the city’s licensing staff for its continued disregard of taxi rules and regulations. Oh wow. Tech versus taxi. How deliciously dull.

Look. I have no reason to suspect that Toronto’s bureaucracy isn’t stodgy and slow-moving in its bid to maintain the status quo. We only have to look at something like the great food truck debate last year as proof of that. Certainly, the staff’s claim of safety concerns in seeking the court injunction ring, I don’t know, a little hollow and manipulative.

And there’s little question too that there are some very vested interests in the taxi game here in town who are well looked after as their phalanx of lobbyists at City Hall can attest to. An argument could be made (by someone much more knowledgeable on the subject than I am) that serious, serious reform is needed. A real shake-up might be nice.

Is Uber the one to do it?

Maybe. I don’t know. I guess we’re going to find out.

Meanwhile, they’ve been breaking the rules in conducting their business in Toronto. 35 by-law infractions, I believe it is to date. They’ve simply ignored them, and carried on carrying on. Toronto is not alone in coping with the new reality introduced by Uber. The company has tended to run afoul of the authorities in many of the places it touches down (as well as some it hasn’t even arrived at yet.)

Somehow though, the city has become the bad guy in all of this.

Even more disturbing is how, to many, the corporate titan Uber has become some sort of saviour. The necessary oomph needed to whip the bureaucracy into 21^st-century shape. A righteous vigilante, stepping up, busting heads and taking questions later.

You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, am I right?

Fine. Renegade away. But spare me the indignation when there’s some official pushback. You want to flout the law? Deal with the fallout.

Couldn’t the city’s injunction against Uber be something other than just a luddite reaction to shut the service down and box out the future from coming? The company is clearly content to continue ignoring the law, shrugging off each and every bylaw infraction notice. Maybe the injunction is just a shot across the company’s bow. Do we have your attention now, Uber?

You know, if maybe this was some actual David and Goliath fight, I could get more behind it. If it struck me as a justifiable bit of civil disobedience that was out to right some sort of wrong, to make the lives of everyone involved – owners, drivers, customers – better, maybe I might be more sympathetic. Right now, however, it only seems like, I don’t know, more corporate disobedience. I’m a lot less comfortable with that.

There’s a real strain of libertarian thought coursing through the politics of this. If we can do it, why can’t we? Who are you to tell me how, where and when I can grab a cab? Why should some bureaucrat determine what and what isn’t a taxi? Damn your restraints on innovation!

Technology trumps governance.

What the fuck is wrong in saying, look, there are rules and regulations in place here. Obviously, they need to be re-thought according to current realities. Let’s take a step back and sort through this. How can we best try to accommodate everyone’s best interests in this?

Uber doesn’t seem that interested in accommodation. As Ted Graham, “innovation leader at PWC, a professional services network”, told Matt Galloway on Metro Morning, Uber’s approach seems to be to flood a market, build up consumer demand and let the chips fall where they may. We’re here. Deal with it. Tellingly, Mr. Graham avoided answering Galloway’s question about why the onus to adapt should be on the regulators and not the company.

Because… Disruption!

Clearly the plan is working. Many have come to Uber’s defence from a consumer’s standpoint. It’s convenient. For me. It’s cheaper. For me. Why should I have to play by some company’s rules? I want this service. You can’t stop me from having this service. This is the future. You can’t stop the future.

Yeah well, you don’t necessarily have to hand over the keys to the future no questions asked. Who said the future has to be free of regulation and oversight? Grateful consumers not concerned citizens.

— stubbornly submitted by Cityslikr

Scarborough Subway Debate, Part ??

Posted on October 22, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

In an election that has boiled down to essentially restoring order back at City Hall, a return to civility and decorum, one city united, this explosive deuce got dropped into the proceedings. “Fate of Sheppard East LRT depends on results of city election” goes the headline of Mike Adler’s article in the York Guardian. Hey Toronto. Enjoy the quiet while it lasts because Scarborough subway, Part 3 is coming soon to a public debate near you.

While other incumbent councillors have been busy seeking re-election for the past few months, it seems the outgoing Deputy Mayor, Norm Kelly, has been hard at it concocting a new way to wreak havoc on the city’s already havoc wreaked transit planning.

“The plot against the LRT line is being quietly led by Norm Kelly,” Adler writes, “Toronto’s deputy mayor, who hasn’t talked to Tory about his plans.”

“We’ve not had a tete-a-tete on this matter,” Kelly said in an interview, suggesting it may not matter if Tory, as mayor, chooses to fight for the LRT line or another planned for Finch Avenue West.

“The last chat I had with John, I tried to get across to him the nature of political life at Toronto council,” where members aren’t bound by caucus discipline, and a mayor’s position on issues “will be tested just like that of any other member,” Kelly said.

Talk about setting the agenda. I thought that was the mayor’s job? Kill the Sheppard LRT or your mandate gets it.

Now, you might chalk this up as little more than the babbling of a city councillor with too much time on his hands and too much time spent in public office doing a whole lot of nothing but it would seem Kelly’s not alone in his thinking. A couple more Scarborough incumbents spoke out in favour of stopping the LRT as well as the new M.P.P. in the area, Soo Wong.

“As your M.P.P. I have listened to the community, and heard that the vast majority of you want a subway, and that is what I will continue to work for,” Wong told a crowd during last spring’s provincial election.

The provincial Transportation Minister, Stephen Del Duca, certainly didn’t rule out the possibility in a conversation this morning with Metro Morning’s host, Matt Galloway. When asked about the government’s plan on proceeding with the LRT along Sheppard Avenue, Del Duca said:

Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words…

Pressed further by Galloway on his government’s support of the Sheppard LRT, the minister continued filling the space with words.

Well the bottom line is that we ran on an election platform, of course, throughout May and June, and we passed a budget, and there are a number of public transit projects for Toronto and elsewhere that were contained including the Scarborough subway… the Sheppard LRT is in our plan and it’s the mandate we were given by the people of Ontario, and my focus is on going forward with implementation.

Now, a whole lot of shit jumped out at me from that paragraph.

According to the minister, the Scarborough subway was included in the recent budget. If so, does that mean the Master Agreement with Metrolinx has been altered to make official the change from the planned LRT extension of the Bloor-Danforth line into Scarborough to a subway? I certainly heard no news about that.

And while the minister claims the people of Ontario gave the Liberal government a mandate to proceed with the Sheppard LRT, the M.P.P. in the area certainly doesn’t seem to see it that way. Soo Wong, as you might remember from a few paragraphs ago, is committed to building a subway along Sheppard, mandate from the people of Ontario be damned.

But don’t get yourself too tied up in knots about it. The minister’s ‘focus is on going forward with implementation.’ Implementation of what, the LRT or the subway? He conveniently didn’t say.

So once more, provincial politics and internal Liberal party machinations land smack dab in the middle of City Hall and threaten the progress of transit building in Toronto.

All this, of course, should renew questions being asked a few months back of John Tory’s decision not to include either the Sheppard or the Finch LRTs on his SmartTrack transit maps. “I want the LRTs to proceed,” Tory assured skeptics of his commitment to the LRT plan. “I will move them forward. I have no problem with them proceeding.”

Sounds… definitive, I guess, in a way that also leaves an opening for Tory having no problem if things change in a more subway-like direction. SmartTrack and the Scarborough subway will be his priorities. The Finch and Sheppard LRTs can fend for themselves.

“Things that are on track (e.g.: the Finch and Sheppard LRTs),” Team Tory spokes person, Amanda Galbraith assured us, “don’t need the full force of the mayor behind them to keep them on schedule.”

Is that right, Ms. Galbraith? Norm Kelly seems to think otherwise. ‘A mayor’s position on issues’, as we quoted earlier, “will be tested…”

As stated here countless times before, the mess our transit plans have descended into is not to be blamed solely by the noisy know-nothingness of the Ford boys. There’s been too much internal party politics at play, too many other politicians cravenly pandering for votes and not standing firm with expert advice on the matter, for this to have been nothing more than a two-man shit show. John Tory’s expressed ambivalence has helped feed the beast, and now he faces a real dilemma if he’s elected the next mayor.

He’s vowed to proceed with the Scarborough subway because re-opening up the debate will only cause further delays. Now there’s a new eastern front, demanding we re-open that debate on the Sheppard LRT. Again. How’s a self-proclaimed uniter and get along facilitator going to delicately balance those competing interests?

So if you’re hoping to see a more consensus minded city council in the next term, a kinder gentler dynamic, I’d suggest not holding your breath. Politicians of all stripes and from all levels in Scarborough are already pounding the drumbeat of discord over transit. Recent history has shown us we should expect no quiet resolution.

— sick-and-tiredly submitted by Cityslikr

Suburban? Moi?

Posted on October 11, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Just in case you think city council’s Scarborough subway decision put an end to the conversation once and for all, let me disabuse you of that flightful bit of fancy. While the LRT plan to replace the aging SRT may’ve had the plug pulled on it, we’ve now moved to which subway are we going to build. That battle’s just begun and, as reported in Spacing yesterday, doesn’t look like it’ll be resolved any time soon.

*sigh*

A more theoretical and interesting discussion cropped up following the subway decision in, of all places, Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly’s Twitter timeline. No, no. That’s no typo. And let me be clear, it was not a conversation intentionally instigated by the long time Scarborough councillor but one, like much of the city business that swirls around his presence at City Hall, he just occasionally and unwittingly runs smack into.

You see, the deputy mayor like most of the Scarborough subway supporters have embraced the technology almost exclusively for its world classiness. They take every opportunity to point out all the glitzy international destinations that have subways running underneath their grand boulevards. New York. London. Paris. Madrid. Ipso facto, if Toronto truly wants to consider itself world class, it needs to start playing subway catch up.

The fact that many of these same cities are also building LRTs as a part of their transit network is usually greeted by silence when it’s pointed out to the likes of Deputy Mayor Kelly and other subway-philes.

But yesterday, he chimed in with a new counter-argument. “Madrid builds subways in the city,” the deputy mayor tweeted. “Scarborough is IN the city. Madrid builds LRT’s in the suburbs. Our suburbs are in the GTA.”

Wow.

That is either the dumbest assertion I have heard in a while or a stroke of pure ingenuity in rationalization.

Given the source, I’ll assume the former but, probably not coincidentally, it’s a line of reasoning I encountered a few days earlier. Another subway advocate told me he was all for LRTs but “… in the ‘burbs (like Markham, Durham and Oakville)”. Apparently, with the expansion of growth out into the wider GTA, almost exclusively built on a suburban model, the former suburban municipalities that are now part of the legacy city of Toronto should no longer be viewed as suburbs and therefore, need to be treated accordingly.

With subways. Like they have in every other city worth mentioning.

It reminds me of the punch line to a joke never told in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. “I’m not Saul. I’m Paul. And this guy’s the Jew.”

Scarborough’s not a suburb. Markham’s a suburb. They should be the ones getting an LRT.

You can’t just simply ignore intensive post-war design and development based almost exclusively on private automobile use and single family detached housing by pointing out that newer cities around you are more car dependent and single family house-y. That doesn’t make a place any less that because other places are more so. Inner suburb. Outer suburb. Note the similar word in both those descriptors.

It’s as if grafting a transit mode associated with a densely populated urban core will magically transform the suburban landscape of Scarborough into Manhattan. That’s like me envying a bird and wanting wings sewn to my back so I can fly. It doesn’t work like that. I’m simply not built for flight.

I know this is not your grandpa’s Scarborough. Much has changed over the course of the last four decades. The demographics. More intensification. A bigger population.

But just a head’s up. Subways aren’t going to make you any less suburban. No one’s going to suddenly mistake you for Madrid. Or downtown Toronto even.

Besides, as long as this kind of stuff keeps happening, any claim that Scarborough has moved from its suburban roots is kind of suspect. In reaction to an application to build 50 townhouses on a vacant lot in his Scarborough East ward, Councillor Ron Moeser said, “I’ve got a single-family community that wants to stay that way.” For the record, Councillor Moeser voted in favour of the Scarborough subway.

This is not to say Scarborough (or Etobicoke or North York) can’t change. That the city’s suburbs shouldn’t endeavour to build healthier communities and neighbourhoods by decreasing their reliance on private vehicles. It’s just that there are better approaches that reflect the current reality on the ground than mindlessly demanding a type of transportation designed for an entirely different built form.

Scarborough is now a part of the city of Toronto, a big chunk too, nearly a suburban quarter of it, occupying its eastern boundary. Insisting on more subway stops isn’t going to alter that. Demanding better transit sooner will go a whole lot further in making the entire city more connected, more inclusive and, yes, maybe even a little less suburban.

— non-judgementally submitted by Cityslikr