ELECTION AFTER-MATH
• Did Ford campaign’s tricks knock Tory out? [The Star]
• Why Carolyn Parrish lost the election [The Star]
• Ford campaign admits playing tricks on Tory [Globe & Mail]
• City Hall finances: The high and low costs of council [National Post]
• Posted Political Panel: What does the surplus mean for Rob Ford? [National Post]
• Matt Gurney: For Ford, Bussin was worth every cent [National Post]
• Kuitenbrouwer: Managers spill campaign secrets [National Post]
• Kuitenbrouwer: How the mayoral race was won [National Post]
• Selley: It’s our money, so we want to know what you’re doing with it [National Post]
• Labour talks with cops looming [The Sun]
• Levy: Goodbye Gravy Train leaves early [The Sun]
REBEL MAYOR
• Revealed: The true identity of Twitter’s Rebel Mayor [Globe & Mail]
• With muskets muted, the man behind Rebel Mayor finally speaks [Torontoist]
CITY BUILDING
• Newly magnificent Bloor ready for its closeup [The Star]
• The Fixer: College St. a boulevard of broken bikes [The Star]
• The Fixer: Bicycle locking posts are rock solid [The Star]
• Kuitenbrouwer: Making a mess of Nathan Phillips Square [National Post]
TRANSPORTATION
• Toronto stumped on how to fix high taxi rates [Globe & Mail]
G20 AFTERMATH
• Final G20 security tab expected to hit $676 million [The Star]
• RCMP watchdog launches G8, G20 probe [The Star]
• Toronto police budgeted $125M for G20: Blair [The Star]
• A look inside the G20 ‘kettle’ at Queen and Spadina [Globe & Mail]
• G8, G20 summit expenses started to mount before meetings began [Globe & Mail]
COMMUNITY
• Community hubs connect newcomers with vital services [The Star]
• James: City facing questions about KKK dress-up in Parkdale [The Star]
• Hundreds in Toronto protest slaughter of Iraqi Christians [The Star]
• Reservists honour fallen comrades [The Star]
• Hume: Bringing the suburbs in from the cold [The Star]
• Human books come alive at the Toronto Public Library [BlogTO]
ANIMALS
• Snakes alive! Couple finds second python in their washing machine [The Star]
• Owner fears for gentle snake on loose in highrise [The Star]
• Will Panda Fever 2 sweep Toronto? [The Star]
• Zoo trying for deal on pandas [The Sun]
• Humane Society donations plunge 50 per cent after year of bad publicity [Globe & Mail]
CULTURE
• Where true love lies: it’s the Blue Jays who are happy to see you [National Post]
• Trying your hand at tailgating? Start with learning Kan Jam [National Post]
• A Royal Winter Fair primer: Five things to know [National Post]
• The new bar exam: Pub quizzes are back! [National Post]
• Nostalgia Tripping: Cabbagetown and Regent Park in the 1960s [BlogTO]
• Storm clouds loom over Fort York’s revitalization plans [BlogTO]
• Historicist: At the front with “Monty and Johnny” [Torontoist]
6 comments
From “The Fixer”:
“[this abandoned bike mess]does not reflect well on the cycling community, which sees itself as righteous tenants of the high ground on transportation-related issues”
I love it. “The Cycling Community” is jointly responsible for random people’s bikes.
If somebody loses the key to their bike lock and leaves their Supercycle to rust on College, it’s your fault! You should be out there with bolt cutters, or something.
Damn hypocritical cyclists.
There isn’t really a cycling community.
Quick, someone call the wahmbulance! Kuitenbrouwer is upset.
Two comments on different articles:
1) Abandoned bikes, I think a lot of it has to do with theft, someone steals parts off a cheap bike and it’s cheaper to just buy another one, so why bother collecting the old one. Some of these derelicts may also bikes that were stolen, had cheap locks applied and when the thief found a nicer bike, they left the old one.
2) Taxi rates, it makes sense to add a fuel charge to taxi rates, this could be computed based on gasoline prices, each month The CITY would set the amount of fuel surcharge for the next month, based on the average gasoline price for the previous month.
Taxis — so much wrong with Toronto’s taxi net, and wasted potential. Needs the heavy hand of govt to intervene, unfortunately, as the haphazard privatized approach to date has not cut it. It’s not only about cutting costs, it’s also about getting more value from the network. To follow the NYC model:
1) Track their every move! Want to drive a taxi? Get a black box that turns all sorts of data over to the city. This can later be used for all sorts of insight into where pickups happen, speed of traffic on a road before and after a bike lane, etc. That data is priceless. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/nyregion/24traffic.html?ref=roads_and_traffic
2) Also mandate credit card readers. No reader, no taxi.
3) Put some thought into the number of available medallions. Get them down over time until per-capita matches cities with similar size, density and transportation modal splits. Seems there are too many taxis chasing too few fares, which perversely causes fares to be higher since cabbies claim they need higher fares to survive.
4) Gas in Canada is expensive. Consider giving cabbies a discount on fuel tax in some form of rebate. Taxis are a form of public transit after all.
5) Mandate introduction of hybrids. New York is up to 25% hybrid at this point. Over time, this can be done without much cost. NYC has created the market for hybrid taxis, and Toronto can now take advantage of it. Makes sense on many levels.
6) Mandate safety cameras for safety of riders and drivers.
7) Branding matters. Time to unify the fleets under one color or pattern scheme. You’re not a world city unless you have an identifiable taxi color. Orange seems to be popular in Toronto – go with it. Riders don’t care which company is the operator – they just want to know which car is a cab.
8) Set up a proper taxi commission like New York or fold into public transit oversight like London so that the public has a much easier way of interacting with the licensing agency and the agency has a more dedicated focus. See http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/home/home.shtml and http://www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/taxisandminicabs/taxis/1136.aspx
9) Make effort to use metrics to keep licensing fees and fares in the middle of the pack of a peer set of cities. Eye must be kept on context with peer cities – can’t just run up fares in isolation (although TTC has certainly done this and is now also the most expensive transit system on the taxi fare list of cities). No one said driving a cab was supposed to be a high-paying job that put your kids through college. If the fares become too low, some drivers will quit and move on to other jobs like driving private limos. Fine, others will always be willing in a big immigration-magnet city to take their place.
10) Use “extras” to provide cabbie income at certain high-cost times without raising base rate. NYC charges an extra $1 fee during rush hour because heavy traffic causes them to get fewer fares, and an extra 50 cent fee during late nights when fares are fewer.
11) It’s hard to pull off, but some cities set up group trip taxi stands where riders can share rides for preset fares. Might or might not work depending on numbers.
12) I don’t think Toronto is large enough for this, and I still don’t fully understand the rationale myself, but some big cities set up two fleets — taxis that can be street hailed, and livery cabs that can only be called by phone. Maybe it’s time to look at this?
Of course, a cynic would say Toronto is doing just fine to promote taxi use by not building bike lanes and raising TTC fares. But we can do better, no?
iSkyscraper, good points. very informative.