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Saturday’s headlines

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TRANSIT
• Slow federal funding slows York subway plan [ Toronto Star ]
• The rapid route to boom town [ Toronto Star ]
• Rail report proving elusive [ Toronto Star ]
• Opposition blasts plan for rail line [ Globe and Mail ]
• One more person, and this subway’s gonna explode [ National Post ]

ENVIRONMENT
• Hampton fears monopoly is blowing in the wind [ Toronto Star ]
• Toronto man builds environmental dream home [ Toronto Star ]
• From Manila and Bangkok, it’s not a kilowatt contest [ Toronto Star ]

MISCELLANEOUS
• If only the heart were beating [ Toronto Star ]
• Food Bank asks help to fill larder [ Toronto Star ]
• Icy walk makes woman,89, prisoner in her home [ Toronto Star ]
• Queen West’s literature row [ Globe and Mail ]
• Dethroned condo king Stinson makes play for Hamilton condo [ National Post ]

16 comments

  2. A whole 30%? That’s almost impressive. People don’t usually favour user fees for services that they actually use.

    They might get a higher proportion of people willing to pay if the question were put in starker and more honest terms:

    [ ] Pay tolls. Pay even higher tolls as time goes on.
    [ ] We stop ploughing and fixing the roads and eventually they fall apart completely.

    Expressways don’t grow on trees…

  3. Remember bob Rae (the toll troll)????Looks like the NDP love of tolls hasn’t changed.Tolls are coming.

  4. George – when it comes to trolls it just might take one to know one, given the joy you seem to take in posting agitatory comments on Spacing. I mean there’s scepticism (and I’m certainly sceptical) and then there’s the hostility which you bring to virtually every post.

    Please petition the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to set up a blog for you to vent with your fellow travellers and give the rest of us a break eh?

  5. Tolls have been a staple of the Land of the Free (or not so free) for years and are increasing there (as well as pretty much everywhere). If it is good enough for the land of freedom then it should be good enough for George. Examples can be found from Texas to Pennsylvania. Oh but of course, it must be part of a giant US based NDP conspiracy.

    (Did I mention that many cities in the US have sales tax? Oh well lets not move too quickly.)

  7. I think tolls might be a goer if they were rolled out on every highway that received an extension or a widening. In this way most of Ontario’s 400 series highways and Parkways such as DVP would be tolled over the next few years.

    Citizens clamouring for highway extensions such as on 410/404 would realise the direct impact on their pocket of their demand and start looking at demanding transit solutions which reduce the load on existing infrastructure. The notion of urban vs. rural is less acute because if the highway is “needed” then it should by corollary have enough demand to be self-financing.

    The question then becomes – what becomes of the money saved by the Province?

    I favour a renegotiation of the 407 ETR contract where Ontario essentially buys back the billing database from ETR which would make ETR a maintenance company only, and the ETR system become be a province wide standard rather than having different systems throughout the province and billing screwups and licence withdrawals would (hopefully) be more directly accountable to public scrutiny.

  8. Kevin: Yes, as comical and stitch-making as your adam vaughan rants. Two peas in the crazy-fringe pod, you two.

  9. mark> you favour a renegotiation of the 407 ETR contract?Please read the contract first, the Liberals tried to take the matter to court and lost miserably.It is clear that the private consortium has control over that road and there is little we can do to stop it.

    But what is more diapointing is that the “profits” from the highway leave the country and don’t contribute to the tax base which was the promise Bob Rae made when he instituted that toll road.It was the solution to higher taxes and problems relating to high priced road repairs.It’s the same argument that the Miller company is using in Toronto.Can we be fooled twice?Is it possible?Well he was elected nuff said!

  10. George,

    Yes, “’nuff said” indeed. Please stop posting.

  11. I think he has just as much right to post as anyone else. While I don’t usually agree with what he has to say, he has just as much right to say it as anyone else. Unless of course, spacing begins to censor posts, which I don’t think will happen considering it’s supposed to be a forum for discussion.

  12. Just one word on this…..
    Bob Rae did get the idea of tolls from the americans,in fact many proposals for this city come from the americans.So it isnt an NDP american conspiracy after all LOLOLOL (was a great try at humour though)but it just goes to show that the NDP on council just can’t seem to come up with some original ideas for this city ,like cut back spending or letting the auditor general have the power to do so.Or at least do what the people wanted during the election a tax hike limited only to the cost of living.

    And if you really want to know Trent some of my posts have been deleted or not allowed.But thats ok I have always known that this city has difficulty understanding what it is to have “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech”.Blood was shed to allow us to retain those rights,we must be vigilant to make sure that price is not forgotten.

    Remember I ran in the last election I know what it is like to be censored by the media.

  13. I ran in the last election

    On a platform so successful that you spend all your time here arguing that the people who won the last election are the ones who are out of touch with the voters.

  14. Trent, he has a right to say whatever he wants, but we have the right to agree he’s a mouthbreather.

  15. George – there is a difference between unilaterally forcing a party to a contract to do something, as the Liberals tried to, and to renegotiate.

    ETR would not agree to such a transfer for nothing. While it would stick in the craw for many to spend taxpayers money to buy back something which arguably should never have been private, the ability to buy-in a system which is up and running is more attractive than purchasing a new system which would line the pockets of consultants like Accenture and then probably take five years to work out the bugs and in the end you have two tolling systems in the GTA.

    An alternative to a direct payoff might be to promise ETR a contract extension or to let them maintain other parts of the system – for example, the OneStop proposal for next-bus-display involves TTC extending their subway contract to (I think) 2018.