• Sneak preview of $5-million facelift [ Toronto Star ]
• Toronto taxes are lower. No, higher. Wait, they’re both [ Toronto Star ]
• Lots of fixes, no solutions [ Toronto Sun ]
Sunday’s headlines
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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered
17 comments
they’re only letters in the Star, but mentions of bike lanes on Bloor/Danforth got into both Sat. and Sun. papers. Maybe they’ll say “we’ve covered the issue” but it’s still helpful.
This emphasis on cleaning up subway stations is another great example of the TTC putting a lot of money and attention in the wrong place. Not only will it compromise the unique look of the stations, but it’s ultimately a fruitless exercise. Had the commissioners of the TTC ever traveled, they would know that.
I’ve had the great benefit of a job that requires substantial travel. A working trip rarely affords the same time for exploration that a vacation does, but you gradually learn how to make time to see the things that are important. The first lesson you learn, is that if you want to maximize your time, you’d better be comfortable with transit.
So I’ve ridden subways or trams in London, New York, Paris, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Singapore, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and more.
And if you want to find common themes among them, it’s that the older the system, the dirtier it is and the less people care. The older stations in NY look their age. In London, you can still see the blast doors in some stations that came down during the blitz. In Paris…well…it’s even older and generally no cleaner.
All these cities clean their stations, but it’s clearly not a high priority, certainly not compared to service. Furthermore, (and London is a great example) they don’t mess with the heritage of the stations. But then, Europeans understand heritage in a way we never will.
Why is Toronto so resistant to following the teaching of other cities. If they did, they might learn 2 amazing things:
1) You don’t mess with your heritage.
2) It’s the service, stupid.
Pape Station and the TD Centre are not the same thing.
Best quote of the week (from the first bullet above): “The subway stations speak clearly to a time period in Toronto. I have no problem with crazy-ass subway stations that will come with the Yonge extensions, but don’t mess with your heritage.”
Knocking down the TD Centre and knocking down Pape station’s walls aren’t the same thing, either.
Your move, Scott.
“TTC chair Adam Giambrone says he’s getting “positive” feedback from riders.”
Uh-oh. We’ve heard that before.
Still trying to figure out if Greg Smith, 3 comments above, likes the quote or is ridiculing it.
And how can Giambrone get positive feedback from riders? Riders have no idea if the stations will look better or be designed nicely! Just look what happened to College, Dundas, and King stations. He’s only getting feedback on whether people like the stations now, and those reactions will be about stations that have been neglected for over a decade. Even those in the article who are defending the subway’s visual heritage say they wish the stations looked cleaner, were better maintained.
Giambrone is fine as the commissioner but he really needs to listen to those who care about the more trivial matters. He can negotiate contracts, try and steer the the TTC towards a better system, but he shouldn’t try to micro manage and, in turn, ignore some of the system’s must dedicated advocates.
Regarding the “positive feedback” TTC Chair Adam Giambrone has gotten regarding the station, maybe he did get a few comments.
Of course, if the TTC had bothered asking most patrons (which they didn’t) whether any surplus money should be spent on what amounts to redecorating a few stations or on some other things such as improving service or improving cleaning and maintenance in the system, I’m sure that few would have opted for the high-priced makeovers of a few stations. Why exactly is public money being spent on these makeovers when so many stations are lacking features that would make them accessible for disabled and elderly patrons?
Talk about misplaced priorities. Of course, this is the same TTC Chair who just a few months back floated the idea of shutting down the Sheppard line as a possible cost saving measure for the City.
My goodness.
All this time I’ve been saying Rob Ford is the worst councillor in Toronto and it might be Adam Giambrone.
Bollocks, you say? Well, riddle me this…which one can do the most damage? The wind-bag who won’t stop talking or the TTC Chair who won’t start listening?
Giambrone hears everyday from the average rider that they want something new and modern. Bloggers and alt-weekly writers just aren’t the majority.
If you want the stations preserved, you’ve got to have a more compelling reason than “people like them” because there’s no proof that that’s really the majority opinion. Legit arguments are that it’s a waste of money when simple maintenance and adequate accessibility features are what’s really necessary.
But if station designs are what make or break a TTC chairman’s reputation for you then you’re a special kind of person. I, and surely the vast majority of TTC riders, rather a chairman that gets us more buses on the streets and spearheads Transit City. Giambrone’s doing that pretty well, all things considered.
How do I trust Giambrone and the TTC? I can’t. Giambrone is the guy who says the stations are clean, but us riders aren’t recognizing that they’re clean. It was patonizing, and false, because the station are dirty.
So i won’t put my trust in Giambrone until he stop talking to me, the public, like i’m either stupid or an NDP drone.
Right on the money Bernard. If the stations are in good shape, as the Commissioner has claimed, why do they need to be renovated.
And to Ms. Stein: I ask you to consider a city that was truly governed by majority consensus. Don’t see any pitfalls? If you think I have problems with the councillor just because of this issue, then you’ve got some catching up to do.
Mr. Giambrone has a tendency of coming down on the wrong side of an issue. Be it Lansdowne (oops, didn’t want majority consensus there!), the Matador (ok, ok…eventually he came around), the Tax vote fiasco (we’re ruined, shut the Sheppard…oh wait) or this. And don’t give him too much credit for spearheading Transit City. It’s a transit initiative and he’s the TTC chair…what else is he going to do. If Mickey Mouse was TTC chair, he’d be championing Transit City. He could be the poster-boy for opportunistic politicians, only listening to the people that are saying what he wants to hear. And just because we expect that of politicians, doesn’t mean the people should accept it, even special people like me, eh.
The station preservation concept has been less than compelling, even on Spacing it seems the postings have been luke warm.
The TD Centre is of international design interest and Canada’s own history.
Pape Station is not. Sorry they are just not the same.
I am all for preserving some stations and I get the heritage part but the “unique” colour coding on the Bloor Danforth line, that nobody knew about or really cared about and doesn’t serve any real purpose anyway, is not valuable enough to warrant holding all the stations and their passengers hostage in a design timewarp.
I think scott just doesn’t like the tiles, which is fine, but not a reason to scrap heritage. We’ve lost loads of stuff because of feelings like this — stuff that “isn’t the TD Building” or whatever.
Scott, I too dislike being hostage in a dirty subway station where there is smeg on the walls, worse when I am told there is no smeg by somebody I am supposed to trust.
Well, now a failure to knock down walls constitutes “holding all the stations and their passengers hostage.†You heard it here first.
“Giambrone hears everyday from the average rider”
The average rider is a statistical measure. I have no objection to the TTC using a survey firm to find out what people want but am unwilling to simply take Adam Giambrone’s observations, coloured as they are by his membership of the Commission and by his stated preferences, as knowing what the average rider wants.
This is particularly true if he asked push questions like “wouldn’t it be nice if we revamped the stations”, rather than asking if a cleaned up existing station was preferable to a tarted up one at 60% public expense (Museum – $1m TTC, $2m Ontario, $2m donors).
I do note that of the 2,200 responses to Torontoist’s survey, cleaning and fixing stations was requested by 18% of responses, third after fares and service, although redesigning stations wasn’t a default option which may skew that somewhat.
Personally I respect the heritage argument but my main beef is priorities. While elevators for disabled access are being rolled out at a glacial pace I feel the desire of TTC commissioners like Sandra “art background” Bussin for ribbon-cutting legacy projects is quite simply misspending infrastructure dollars.
$5m spent on Museum, $1m coming from TTC and there’s still no second exit and no elevator and no guarantee of having them before 2014. That said, 80% of money did come from outside the TTC. If the Commissioners were forced to guarantee that all the other refurbishments will only cost TTC riders/City of Toronto 20% of the dollar cost, that would likely kill this nonsense.
“Giambrone hears everyday from the average rider that they want something new and modern. Bloggers and alt-weekly writers just aren’t the majority.”
Debbie, how could you possibly know this? I’m not calling you a liar, but I find the veracity of this statement questionable to say the least.
It’s one thing for politicians to opt for a certain course of action. It’s another thing entirely for a politician to justify his/her chosen course by pointing to a phantom mass of people and claiming that they support what he/she is doing. Sorry, in my view, the politician in this example has used this tactic more than once.
If public opinion is claimed to be a factor in how a politician or political body defends a position, then that process needs to be transparent and all need to be able to participate. A politician who defends his/her actions on the basis of what they are “hearing from people”, is, I think, playing a very insidious game if there is no transparency regarding the feedback process. Who’s to say whether they are actually hearing from these people or not or from how many people? And who’s to say whether he/she isn’t actually hearing from many more others who favour an opposite course of action?
I don’t recall TTC patrons every being polled on this issue or being asked about it — so who’s to say what people want?
By all means, politicians have every right to justify their chosen course of action (though I think these funds could have been better used). But to do so by pointing to “what they are hearing from people” when nobody seems to have been asked about the issue in the first place is to make a mockery of public consultation.