• 7,000 expected for Toronto trek [ Toronto Star ]
• Time to get smart about Smart Growth [ Toronto Star ]
• New speed bumps way too high [ Toronto Star ]
• Intoxicated event-goer hurls piece of beef jerky at Mayor Miller at doors open kick off [ National Post ]
• GO transit turns 40, system shows its age, commuters say [ National Post ]
• 1-fee transit pass near [ Toronto Sun ]
• Mayor skips out of new-taxes debate [ Toronto Sun ]
• Street furniture deal expected to win approval [ Globe and Mail ]
Thursday’s Headlines
By Julie Yamin
Read more articles by Julie Yamin
7 comments
The link to the jerky story also points to the Post’s GO article. The link should be: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/toronto/story.html?id=c0a3ada0-b94a-4437-ba83-ee9e38da411c
Regarding “New speed bumps way too high”, the Toronto Star is once again wrong. Their stated 500 millimeter maximum height for speed bumps would be almost 20 inches.
Half a meter high speed bumps. I think the Star must be talking about walls, not speed bumps…
On the other hand I am enjoying Christopher Hume’s articles on Smart Growth and Urban Sprawl. I just hope policy makers are reading what he has to say.
The Globe story on street furniture had a footnote about the debate on Councillor Ford’s and Councillor Holyday’s office budgets. It included this quote from Holyday about Councillor Mammoliti’s $7,500 expense claim for mileage:
“I calculated that, even at 50 cents a kilometre, that’s over 15,000 kilometres,” Mr. Holyday told councillors. “That’s more than I drive my car in a whole year.”
Clearly Holyday is bringing this up to deflect attention from his unaccountable and rule breaking spending practices but it’s still a statement that should pique the interest of his Council colleagues.
15,000 kilometers is essentially the equivelant of driving From Toronto to Los Angeles, back to Toronto and once more to LA. So unless Mammoliti is having meetings with his constituents in his car for a couple hours each day, I’d like to know how he racks up that kind of mileage.
And if the councillor does, in fact, put so many kilometers on his car, that brings up a whole other environment-related issue.
There have been some delays recently in uploading columns, but this link is pretty up-to-date:
http://www.metronews.ca/column.aspx?id=5702
These are office expenses that Holyday is referring to, so perhaps the 15000 km are for multiple vehicles that Mammoliti and his staff drive.
That doesn’t explain why his staff drive that much, but it does make the statistic more plausible.
“And if the councillor does, in fact, put so many kilometers on his car, that brings up a whole other environment-related issue.”
It’s always been a fantasy of mine that the city passes a law which forces the mayor, all city council members and all of their staff to take public transit (or to bike) wherever they travel within city limits.
Imagine what public policy on transit would be like if that were the case!