Wednesday’s Headlines

17 comments

1. The last article: Toronto Police enforcing TTC lanes? I never thought I’d see the day. I guess this is the “Silver Lining” to the cash crunch.

   As for Michael Walker telling City Hall to change its culture, and saying “Mayor Miller is the sole architect and ringleader of this culture of divisiveness”, well that’s rich.

2. Sean,
   If Miller is not the sole architect and ringleader of the culture of divisiveness at City Hall, he is certainly its master proponent. I am not a conservative, yet what I find so galling with this mayor is that he expects things to go his way even when he has not made a successful case — either with others on Council or with the public. We all know that Toronto ended up with the short end of the stick with provincial downloading. However, this Mayor and this Council have done an appalling job of demonstrating any sort of fiscal accountability — not even a pretense of accountability. I also find it galling that this Council should be proposing tax increases on this scale when any discussion about this was sorely lacking in the recent municipal election. Either the Mayor and his Council mates are stupid, or willfully dishonest and contemptuous towards the electorate.

3. Since I started working 2 months ago, I’ve been taking the Don Mills bus to Sheppard station every afternoon. And since the day I started I’ve wondered why the police weren’t out there nailing single drivers and people on motorcycles driving in the HOV lane. Because:
   a)They’re blocking hundreds of people stuck behind them in buses and increasing the time of their commute
   b)There’s money to made in the process. Lots of money.

   Coincidentally, for the first time, I saw a motorcyclist getting a ticket on Monday for being in the lane. Indeed, this is a silver lining.

4. Laws actually being enforced? Outrageous! Get out the pitchforks and torches.

   Some of the cases were clear victims of overzealous officers, but too many people get off scot-free for obvious offences. Maybe this hunger for cash means people who shoot past streetcars, obstruct the road for others, and generally needlessly inconveniencing citizens or endangering lives will actually be punished.

   Only the Toronto Sun would paint the hard-working or the pious as immune to the law.

5. Whichever police officer said that they didn’t want to enforce the diamond lanes should be reprimanded. Bay St. is a major pet peeve of mine. Even the city cycling chairman is saying he is afraid to bike down the diamond lanes on Eglinton.

   We shouldn’t feel sorry for the people who are getting the tickets. From the story, you can tell they were all breaking laws or by-laws. Why does the columnist feel so sorry for them?

6. Putting a cop on the corner of King and Bay to ticket people who turn right when they shouldn’t and to ticket taxis parked in no-standing parts of the street would be awesome for streetcar users.

7. Boy, you got that right Sean,

   The biggest morning laugh I’ve had so far was reading Micheal Walker’s op ed. He spend the majority of the article talking councillors needing to work together and that the budget was killed because of partisanship and then…ZING…he throws a partisan dig at the mayor!!

8. Ben: Because it’s the Sun. How dare the city punish and fine citizens according to the law … our hard-earned money is our hard-earned money, even when we have forfeited it due to our own illegal actions.

   … Now I remember why I don’t read the Sun.

9. I wrote about the unenforced Diamond lanes in the current Eye Weekly….nice to see for once it is happening.

   There MUST be conversations in the Sun newsroom about the irony of being the law and order conservative paper then wondering aloud about this ticket blitz. They’ve got to at least laugh about it. I wonder what their (Sun editorial/writers) honest opinion of their readers is. That would be interesting to hear.

10. Shawn,

    You should keep in mind that there aren’t many people left in the Toronto Sun editorial room. It seems likely that if an article is malcontented enough, it gets in.

11. One wonders how far off the day is when Sun staff has been cut so far, the paper’s primary writer is a computer using a “Mad Libs” program.

12. Maybe the police will start ticketing cars that stop/park in bike lanes, but I’ll try not to get my hopes up.

13. Cops don’t want to write tickets? No wonder, when the Chief doesn’t want to make cuts.

14. Well it’s all extra hilarious when there’s another article in the Star this morning about how Julian Fantino is starting to take shifts as a regular traffic cop handing out speeding tickets and the like.

    I never much liked the guy, but you can understand why other police officers are so fond.

15. There was a story in Metro today about how deferring councillors may try to un-defer the vote and move it up to September because the province won’t bail out the City.

    Any chance of this happening?

16. As much as I’d like that to happen, Kevin, I just don’t see it in the cards. To re-open you need a 2/3 majority and you can bet every councillor will be there. So that means you need 30 votes and there were 23 in favour of considering the issue at the last meeting.

    Even if you add Ashton, Augimeri, Hall, Jenkins, Perruzza and Saundercook to those 23, you’re still a vote short and none of those votes (except Augimeri) is a lock to support a re-opening anyways. Though if Miller did get to within a single vote of re-opening, he could probably get Milczyn or Feldman to vote with him for the right price (Milczyn likes his TTC commissionership and Feldman was bought all last term after accepting his purely symbolic deputy mayoralty.)

17. And then there’s the idling bylaw. Has anyone EVER gotten a ticket for that? If they put a cop on my street (downtown) they could snag a few of those tour buses that like to sit and run their motor for no apparent reason.