Mike Smith writes about the first meeting of Toronto’s new city council in this week’s NOW. The meeting itself was uneventful, says Smith. Of greater interest will be the many meetings to come and how things will change under the new governance structure:
The governance changes of which the mayor speaks don’t make good TV (they barely make good print), so little has been said of them recently. Still, it’s the little changes that may prove to have the most impact. Changing the number of seats on a city committee from seven to six, for instance, seems superficial but on a well-balanced committee could change the dynamic so that ties are more likely and consensus-building more attractive.
Similarly, the expansion from six standing committees to eight, and the downloading of transactional business (mostly traffic planning) from city council to community councils are cautious baby steps toward decentralization, potentially allowing council to focus on more important issues.
But while there are new procedures to make councillors’ work more efficient and, theoretically, give them more time for constituent issues, there are no new provisions for public involvement. The decentralization measures are aimed at making the city more effective as a body in its negotiations with the province and the feds. In other words, they’re not necessarily clearing the table for you and me.
Over at Eye Weekly, readers respond to last week’s Making Transit Rapid editorial with suggestions of their own for how to improve the TTC. Writes Fred Spek:
Other ideas (neither new nor expensive): another staffer or new recruit to help the driver, especially on those double-sized streetcars; some kind of display or announcement telling where the streetcar is, so riders can make decisions; how about an easy-to-understand transfer that’s good for, say, two hours, like they have in Vancouver? And Toronto has cold, windy winters, so how about some decent transit shelters! Every councillor should have to wait for the eastbound streetcar at Queen and Roncesvalles in February.
3 comments
The TTC Transfer is a language within itself, so once you fnd out how to read and understand it, you can really stretch the value of how much you paid for the TTC’s service.
I don’t consider it “cheating” the TTC, but more “penny saving” towards the student (me) with the empty wallet (also me).
In his article, Smith notes that De Baeremaeker and Nunziata have new hairstyles. Does anyone have pictures?
I think one reason people don’t like transfers is because you need them in some parts of the system but you can make a trip of multiple segments without them – say Eglinton East-YUS-BD-Royal York bus. This is why smartcard-only transit is the way forward as it eliminates the multiple fare media and handles transfers more predictably.