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City Building
• Hume: Vancouver’s mayor speaks for all [ Toronto Star ]
• Road paint chemical in short supply [ Toronto Star ]
• City sticks by development charges deal [ Toronto Star ]
• Goar: Urban leaders cling to fading dream [ Toronto Star ]
• T.O. roads: Beyond the eve of destruction [ Toronto Sun ]

TTC
• Smitherman will vow to expand subway, LRTs [ Toronto Star ]
• Smitherman wants to let seniors ride TTC for free [ Globe & Mail ]
• Subway audit not necessary, says TTC chair [ Toronto Star ]
• TTC wants you to tell it what to clean [ Globe & Mail ]
• Scheme for transit input draws scorn [ Toronto Sun ]
• Comment: ‘The Better Way’ is in New Delhi [ National Post ]
• Union boss back on board with TTC safety [ Toronto Sun ]

G8 / G20
• Miller scolds Ottawa over G8/G20 spending [ Toronto Star ]
• G8-G20 spending $1B price tag sparks audit calls [ Toronto Star ]
• Ottawa won’t cover G20 protest-related damage [ Toronto Star ]
• Sonic gun ‘like a root canal,’ former G20 protester says [ Toronto Star ]
• Toronto Police take up to $100 million of G20 security funds [ Globe & Mail ]
• Toronto Police call sonic guns ‘communication tools’ [ Globe & Mail ]
• One arrest in Toronto G20 vandalism spree [ Globe & Mail ]
• G20: Council of Canadians will dole out free ear plugs to counter sonic guns — ‘sound cannons’ [ National Post ]

Other News
• Former city manager on heat seat over veto clause [ Toronto Star ]
• Redemption and the couriers dad [ Globe & Mail ]

11 comments

  1. It is hard to sympathise with the building industry regarding development fees. Toronto cannot continue to subsidise the construction, and the continual operating expenses, of residential construction. It is seeding its own demise. If the charges were near the average of the other GTA municipalities they city would have an extra 200 million per year.

  2. “Smitherman wants to let seniors ride TTC for free”

    Sounds like a smart idea. Help the seniors, increase ridership during off-peak hour, and probably will help take the pressure off a bit at peak hour. Let us wait and see how he plan to fund it, maybe through his friends at Queens Park?

  3. Smitherman wants seniors to ride free? Smells like a transparent vote buy to me.

  4. Why are Toronto journalists so insular? It does not take a whole lot of research to discover that SEPTA in Philly has a totally free program for seniors on all buses, streetcars and subways and $1 to $2 for their version of GO.

    http://www.septa.org/fares/discount/senior.html

    This would have been valuable to have discussed within the context of the article, but no, this is Toronto where we pretend other cities do not exist, especially failed American ones that somehow now have better, cheaper transit systems than we do. Argh.

  5. In Ireland, free offpeak was deemed “unfair” and extended to peak on a politician’s whim. The commuters (now more crammed in and morally obliged to yield a seat if they have one) don’t vote as reliably as seniors do.

    The reality of demographic shift is that senior benefits are going to be both increasingly expensive and increasingly hard (politically) to revoke.

  7. I would also like to speak out against George Smitherman’s “Proposition 305” (mooching war widows!).

    To be serious, though, the current discount ($2.00 cash fare, 10 tickets for $16.50 vs. 10 tokens for $25.00) is on the low end of the spectrum. For example, GO charges a half-fare for seniors, though other systems like Brampton charge the same cash fare to everyone, though gives a big discount ($1.50 vs $2.50 each) on tickets and half-price passes.

    Though with a growing senior population, many of whom work beyind age 65 in this day and age, I can’t see it working for a transit system with an obscenely high fare recovery ratio. I was hoping for better from George, as this is something I would expect from Georgio (George) Mammolitti.

    And despite riding SEPTA, I’d hardly say it’s a better system. There’s some really neat stuff they’ve got: trolley buses, rebuilt PCCs on one route and modern streetcars on suburban and subway-surface routes, an interurban railway and a regional rail system; but frequencies suck and the Broad Street subway is decrepit. It’s a perhaps more interesting system, but not a better system, regional rail (vs GO) excluded.

  9. Seniors get almost everything free already. They are starting to seem like welfare bums to me.

    Smitherman is a cynical SOB. And he looks like he ate a suckling pig for breakfast every day for the past few years. He’s got that in common with Ford.

  10. Sean, you’re not wrong and I was trying to draw out the snark, but if Philly were not such a mess I’m sure SEPTA would be quite a bit nicer to ride. No transit system can survive the physical or financial abuse if the vast majority of its riders live under extreme socio-economic stress. It’s not said much in Toronto but the fact that the wealthier neighbourhoods provide many of the commuters and casual riders is a major factor in keeping the TTC usable.

    If Toronto had SEPTA’s low fares and airport train and all-day regional rail service though … wow, heaven.

  11. Re: One arrest in Toronto G20 vandalism spree

    It’s amazing. Police are quick to make an arrest when someone is putting up anti-corporate graffiti, but when a corporation does the same thing no action is taken, even when the perpetrators sign their name.