Mayoral Race
• Debate gets personal [Toronto Star]
• Taxes and public services help build a better city [Toronto Star]
• Next Question: A more prosperous Toronto [ Toronto Star ]
• Smitherman vows to freeze property taxes for one year [Globe & Mail]
• Smitherman campaign risks crash by veering left and right [Globe & Mail]
• Mayoral candidates compete for position of most fiscally-restrained [Globe & Mail]
• Reality check: Premier not the one to approve Smitherman’s travel [Globe & Mail]
• Rob Ford transit plan focuses on subways, roads [ Globe & Mail ]
• Municipal Election Feature: Eight months later, mayoral race begins in earnest [National Post]
• Posted Toronto Political Panel: The union kiss of death? [National Post]
• George Smitherman promises to freeze property taxes, be his own budget chief [ National Post ]
• Smitherman sounding more like Ford [Toronto Sun]
• Smitherman’s brother backs Ford for mayor [Toronto Sun]
• Ford vows subways over streetcars [ Toronto Sun ]
GTA Elections
• One more time: McCallion to run again [Toronto Star]
• Di Biase back in the fray in Vaughan [Toronto Star]
Other News
• G20 detainee files $1-million suit [Globe & Mail]
• Editorial: Don’t cancel air show [Toronto Star]
• Fiorito: Dispatches from the Bedbug Wars [Toronto Star]
7 comments
Does anyone know where we can read more about Ford’s transit plan? I fear that switching out streetcars for buses would lead to capacity problems. Would they address this by using articulated buses like in Ottawa and elsewhere?
It doesn’t seem like the strongest plan.
You can find the complete plan on his website…. frankly, I don’t think its worth the time or effort to read. Making parking less confusing may be the only good poing he made.
Let me get this straight. There will be an initial capital cost for the purchase. A storage or disposal cost for the streetcars. Training or re-hiring for maintenance.
Are running buses more economical in the long run based on energy consumption and maintenance costs? As Ben mentioned, will the buses be larger or will there be more of them?
Is the reason for all this so that cars don’t have to stop for streetcars while loading and unloading passengers?
You also need 3-4 times as many buses for the same capacity as an LRV. Plus, rail vehicles last much, much longer without overhaul than buses (less vibration wear and tear, etc) so in the long run you need to buy still more buses. Finally, we don’t know the terms of the contract with Bombardier for new LRVs, and if Miller was savvy (as he probably was) there is a significant penalty for canceling or shrinking the order.
I’m also not sure what the accounting implications would be of abandoning a huge amount of infrastructure that’s just coming to the end of a decade-long overhaul (ie the tracks). Presumably that involves a significant paper loss in the City’s books, no?
This is not even to mention that the Ford plan proposes scrapping the approved, funded, designed, and ready-to-go Eglinton LRT (vehicle and tunnel boring contracts already signed, folks!) and the already under construction Sheppard LRT. Because if there’s anything Toronto transit needs, it’s stopping the expansions that are already underway.
But that’s a fault common to the Ford, Thomson, and Rossi platforms. I am not sure when Toronto voters and candidates will begin to understand that in Ontario the alternative to ‘something’ for transit that’s underway isn’t something better–it’s nothing.
More buses instead of streetcar = more unionized drivers and a higher headcount at TTC. 1 x 30m Flexity streetcar gives the capacity of about 2.5 x 13m buses (only one driver space required, no space taken up by a rear engine, etc.)
What would Rob Ford say to a plan which increased driver numbers?
As for building that much subway by 2015 – that’s just hilarious. Not only is his diagram incorrect,
* Kennedy has to be reoriented so that the subway can run up the SRT alignment
* the Sheppard stations have to be extended to 6 car length,
* need more trains to run through the extended lines
* a subway yard somewhere near Agincourt…
try 2020 and a LOT of cash.
At this rate, Ford will turn us into a laughing stock. I saw him this morning at a local bus stop campaigning and i wanted to get off and punch him in the face.
If they cancel one LRT project, make it the Sheppard LRT. It doesn’t matter that it has federal funding and that preliminary work is underway, it’s a stupid line which will mean an arbitrary transfer for many decades.