This TTC fiasco story won’t end soon, it looks like — Moscoe may step down from the the TTC Chair position. From Jeff Gray in the Globe and Mail today:
With the Toronto Transit Commission in crisis and some placing the blame at the feet of its combative chairman, Howard Moscoe, the long-time local politician said yesterday he is thinking of stepping aside. But not yet. Yesterday, Mr. Moscoe said he was at least considering giving up his post as TTC chairman after the Nov. 13 election to make way for TTC vice-chairman Adam Giambrone, who has taken on a bigger role speaking to the media since the May 29 strike that stranded more than 700,000 transit users for most of that day. “It may be time at that time for me to hand it over to Councillor Giambrone, who has done an excellent job during this difficult period,” Mr. Moscoe told reporters yesterday.
To that I say: step aside for Giambrone? He’s in his late-20s and has only been a councillor for 2.5 years and you want to put him in charge of the transit commission? He has been the chair of the Toronto Cycling Committee and is Toronto’s cycling advocate. What has happened under his bike leadership? Almost nothing. Last year 1km of bike lanes were built. The year before? Something like 20 km. We may get a few more lanes this year too, but with each passing month we seem to fall further and further behind on the city’s Bike Plan. If Giambrone can’t convince enough councillors to put a few bike lanes in their wards, how he is going to handle the demands and pressures of the TTC? And all this bitchy commentary is coming from someone who likes Giambrone — he his smart and articulate, but he is a “model” politician who doesn’t seem capable of taking a risk. Each sentence is very calculated. Someone like Joe Mihevc who has much more commission experience and the respect of a lot of councillors may make a better choice.
Also, I found this article from a 1999 Eye Weekly with the headline: “The War on Moscoe: With the TTC chairman in a battle to keep his job, is anyone fighting for our cash-starved transit system?” Just kinda interesting for historical context.
Recently-resigned/ousted Rick Ducharme is making the media rounds: today he talks to Kevin McGran at the Star about how the car is dominating Toronto.
“This is a transit city? Oh, my God,” chuckles Rick Ducharme, the city’s pre-eminent expert on the matter, who took some time between packing boxes in his office at TTC headquarters to talk about his seven years as chief general manager of Canada’s largest public transit system.
“The car rules. That’s just Toronto; North American city.”In a wide-ranging 90-minute interview in his soon-to-be-vacated office overlooking the Davisville subway station, Ducharme laid the blame for his departure at the feet of Toronto Transit Commission chair Howard Moscoe and Mayor David Miller, both of whom he said meddled in union matters that were better left to management. And he fretted about the future of transit in Toronto, which looked solid when the province announced subway funding in its spring budget. Ducharme says transit’s future now may not be as rosy.”The province has changed the rules since the budget,” Ducharme said. “There’s no such thing as consistency in this stuff.”
8 comments
Now you’re talking Matt. I would love to see the TTC Chairman directly elected by Torontonians.
I don’t think anyone could argue with Ducharme’s ideas. The ideas sound well thought out. It seems everyone wants the same thing– a better, more efficient transit system, but it gets stymied by typical city bureaucracy.
Why can’t Toronto replace all the streetcars with electric busses? They use them in Vancouver. It would eliminate the danger to cyclists, they could pull over to the curb and allow traffic to flow around they while they stop, and increase the safety and disability access to their users while boarding/departing the service? On top of that they wouldn’t have any new infrastructure in terms of track overhauls to deal with. The existing streetcar wires could power the busses.
I like the idea of right-of-ways, but only if they enable the traffic light priorities (which I think was mentioned on this blog earlier). But if the city just simply won’t build them because they get hit with a lawsuit, then lets not waste our money trying to maintain the status quo. It obviously isn’t working!
Well, replacing streetcars with buses would require more buses (since even the regular-sized ones are larger) and on narrow downtown streets I don’t think everyone’s in agreement that the increased frequency, plus having to pull to the curb every block and then merge back into traffic, would actually lessen congestion.
What’s unsafe now? Cyclists hitting people getting on/off? With buses you get bike lanes being blocked at every intersection. Tracks? I guess, but bikes tend to be in the curb lane. There is an advantage for the disabled. I’m not sure what the TTC will do once they get accessible streetcars.
Also, trolley buses need two wires instead of one (they’re on rubber wheels so unlike streetcars they can’t just use the tracks to return current.) You couldn’t just drop them in right away. You’d have to rewire everything.
Lastly, the constant track overhauls are due to TTC incompetence in decades past. Hopefully they’ll be less frequent now that they’ve remembered what they’re doing. Hopefully :/
Cars rule the roads if we let them. Though it’s hard to argue with his comments.
I find that buses and cyclists do not mix well. Buses tend to travel at a slightly slower speed then cyclists. As a cyclist I often end up behind a bus because it is slower, but unable to pass it because it so large. If I do pass it, it will often catch up and pass me, leaving me behind the bus again.
Streetcars are always in a different lane, so aren’t a problem.
The main problem with buses, is that they can change lanes, so they are expected to go into the curb line to pick up passengers, then have to murge into the middle line again which can be a difficult process.
Transit activist Steve Munro sympathizes with Ducharme’s problems with political interference, but he can’t allow all of Ducharme’s comments to pass unanswered. His interesting commentary can be found here:
http://www.stevemunro.ca/?p=170
It’s difficult to ascertain exactly what Moscoe, Miller and Ducharme did and what their roles and responsibilities truly are, but if there was any real risk of a second strike last Monday then I believe it was up to all of these folks to do everything in their power — whether it be by the book or not, to ensure there was no strike and the TTC was operating. None of these folks egos or jobs are worth risking Torontonians their public transit system for another day.
Hm. I have to say, though, that Giambrone is responsible for the only two good TTC projects I’ve even heard of in the last few years–bike racks on buses and expanded night service in the suburbs. I have a friend who got a chance to meet him recently, and he says he’s working on giving streetcars priority at traffic lights and putting bike lockers at TTC stations. This all sounds good to me.