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Tuesday’s Headlines

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TEAM FORD
• Rob Ford unveils his team [The Star]
• Team Ford a blackout for council’s left [The Star]
• No surprises as right-leaners dominate Ford team [Globe & Mail]
• Province tells Ford to back off on Toronto welfare funding request [Globe & Mail]
• Mayor-elect Rob Ford announces committee appointments [National Post]
• Ford’s city hall avoids the core [National Post]
• Chris Selley: Meet Rob Ford’s brain trust [National Post]
• Mayor Ford’s first stop: Hit brakes on Transit City [National Post]
• Team Ford introduced as council kickoff approaches [The Sun]
• All is not lost for council’s left wing [The Sun]

GTA POLITICS
• Fantino wins Vaughan by-election [The Star]
• New breed of councillor emerges in 905 [The Star]

TRANSPORTATION
• Rookie councillor pushes for subways [The Sun]
• Google bike maps go live in Toronto [BlogTO]

HOUSING & NEIGHBOURHOODS
• Fiorito: Put the bedbug plan in play, now [The Star]
• Affordable housing strategy to simplify onerous rent rules [The Star]
• Teen shot dead in Regent Park [The Star]

G20 AFTER-MATH
• Blair blasts SIU over findings of ‘probable’ excessive force [The Star]
• Chief Blair lashes out at findings of ‘probable’ excessive force during G20 [Globe & Mail]
• How a man named Nobody became the battered face of G20 protests [Globe & Mail]
• Blair challenges SIU investigation of police misconduct at G20 summit [National Post]
• Blair should focus on his force’s G20 actions [The Sun]

OTHER NEWS
• Toronto Hydro, auto maker to test electric car [Globe & Mail]
• The Fixer: Clogged storm drain can’t do its job [The Star]
• Toronto of the 1930s [BlogTo]
• Fundraising efforts at the Tranzac successful so far [BlogTO]
• Blog makes sidewalk construction interesting, kind of [Torontoist]

7 comments

  1. Eric,

    I’m reading this at 9:45am in the UK (4:45am Toronto time). What time do you get up to compile these headline lists, earlybird?!

  2. Ha – it’s less a matter of getting up, and more a matter of not going to bed. It’s finals season at school (and Ford season in Headlines). In any case, it seems like it pays off to have the news up early! Enjoy your time in the UK.

  3. Thanks Eric I will enjoy my time in the UK – after the results came out on Oct 25, I found out I’d be staying here another 4 years 😉

  4. Is it just me, or is anyone else finding these headline summaries too depressing to read lately?

  5. I did have a thought the other day re: all these subway headlines.

    If Ford et. al are so hell bent on now pushing through subway expansion, great. But let’s do it in a way that does not conflict with Transit City yet still meets certain Fordisms (i.e. fix the incomplete Sheppard line, improve service to inner burbs).

    It’s dumb to waste money already spent, and LRT certainly has its merits. So why not leave Transit City alone and instead of trying to complete Sheppard out to Scarborough, run the Stubway WEST to the Spadina line instead, as a spur? Here is a map:

    http://bit.ly/fy867O

    The spur part is critical — you would have a one seat ride downtown from Don Mills, via underused capacity on Spadina — and it fixes the fatal flaw in the original line where no spur was provided at Yonge. The central loop gets completed, providing crosstown convenience and redundancy during service interruptions. It also makes sense to alternate northbound Spadina trains between Vaughan and Don Mills; this also reserves capacity for 416 residents rather than see Spadina trains enter the city packed with Vaughan commuters. It is easy to build along this underdeveloped route, with big tax revenue payback potential. And Sheppard LRT remains as a feeder at the eastern end ,just as other LRT lines feed into other fringes of the system. Meanwhile the streetcar order goes through and various low-cost changes to operations (fare payment, number of stops, traffic management) improve their service performance.

    In this way the streetcars get upgraded, TC allocated money gets spent on TC, the next batch of money gets spent on completing the “Y-U-S-S” line, and when tens of billions fall from the sky we can then focus on DRL. It just seems to be the best way to leverage existing assets and stretch transit dollars.

  6. I emailed Karen Stinz today to encourage her to stand up for Transit City as TTC Chair. She’s not an idiot, and hopefully will have the integrity to do more than roll over for Ford and the creepy gang of backroom advisors who are pulling his strings.

    If she wants to be mayor someday she will need to show some backbone, so I think this may be the best leverage we have right now to keep the transit plan moving forward.