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• TTC gives green light to drug tests for key staff [ Toronto Star ]
• Proposal for drug tests on TTC drivers rejected [ Globe and Mail ]
• TTC adopts non-random drug testing [ National Post ]
• TTC union rips drug testing [ Toronto Sun ]
• Short by $87M, transit eyes subsidy [ Toronto Sun ]
• Montreal fare warning for GTA [ Toronto Star ]
• Miller and McCallion applaud Liberals’ ambitious blueprint [ Toronto Star ]
• Councillors advocate outing tax shirkers [ Toronto Star ]
• Lake is not great [ Toronto Sun ]
• Neighbourhood near Sunrise explosion given clean bill of health [ CBC.ca ]

6 comments

  1. Kinnear should have a drug test as something has obviously affected his common sense. And it’s chronic.

    If you have nothing to hide where’s there a problem other than union entitlement?

    Frankly anyone refusing should be fired.

  2. I really disagree with the “if you have nothing to hide” argument, but I do agree that an employer should have the right to require drug tests, just as the employee has the right to find another job if he doesn’t like the conditions where he is.

  3. Drug tests with with cause make sense to me but random tests do not. People should not be penalized for activities they do on their own time after work.

  4. scott d: I also do not support random drug tests, but that doesn’t mean they penalize people for what they do on their own time. The tests (whether post-incident, post-violation, post-treatment, applicant, reasonable cause, or yes, random) are all designed to measure impairment alone, not residual levels. The TTC policy doc says: “nothing in the proposed Policy that will prevent employees from engaging in alcohol and/or drug use on their own personal time as long as they report fit for duty.” gotta love Canada.

  5. The shoreline cleanup is hopeless. At one point the garbage my local shoreline included:

    1. 3 or 4 vehicles embedded in the rocks (for decades)
    2. a bank safe
    3. Hindu religious items
    4. random drug related items
    5. a bizarre number of coconuts
    6. a fair number of shopping carts
    7. a zillion Tim Horton mugs
    8. various other stuff blown out of recycle bins or dumped

    The worst of this got buried by construction rubble to build the new Scarborough linear park. A nice TD initiative, but maybe government should actually take some responsibility?

  6. I’m wondering about the smart card….

    If such systems increase convenience and save money, then they are loved and succeed, if not then they are hated, and fail.

    For example I walk into a TTC station, the signs say I need a card, I go to the machine, pop in my debit, credit card, or cash and buy a smartcard, with the option of putting money on it. Maybe it costs me $5 for the card, and I put $15 on it, so total of $20. Now one option, and I think this would be a good one, is instead of passes, it breakpoints on trips, so after 3 trips, further trips that day are free, effectively a day pass. After 11 trips, further trips that week are free, effectively a weekly pass. After 39 trips, further trips that month are free, effectively a Metropass, This is actually very close to the existing fare structure. Machines will tell you that you have a “free” trip if your past a breakpoint and always give you the balance left on your card.

    Computer wise, time based transfers are much easier to implement, just need the smartcard code number and ending date/time in a database table. Same goes for “passes”, smartcard number, date and number of trips taken.

    You here a lot about the millions of dollars such systems cost, but you don’t hear about how much the existing system costs. The TTC prints transfers for each bus and streetcar route, many of those are wasted at the end of the day, because they are route and date specific, so can not be reused, you need to print more then you need, so that you do not run out. It also costs money to clean up the used transfers that end up left on buses and streetcars.

    They also need staff to collect and go through the fare boxes, then you need to sort the coins, Then you need to package up tokens, and distribute to stations again, along with “till” change. You need to remove tickets and discard those, Remove bills and sort those. Then the remaining coins need to be transported to a bank, for deposit, the banks sometimes charge for large numbers of coins, and the TTC gets hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of coins every day. I would suspect that the TTC spends millions of dollars a year on these activities as well.

    Given the history of how the TTC does things, they will find a way to muck things up. For example, you will need to go to Davisville, fill out a 9 page form, and stand in line 3 times for 6 hours each to buy a card, The only way to fill a card is to go to the grumpy puss in the collector booth and pay cash….. What machines there are will only collect cash, and the only ATMs will be inside the “paid” area of the station, so if you don’t have a card, or don’t have enough money on your card, your walking home. They will require you to pick a pass, by going to a station, and talking to grumpy puss again…. In other words, they will make it as inconvenient and expensive as possible, and then blame Metrolinx when nobody wants to use it.