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Monday’s headlines

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• Transit strike averted [ Toronto Star ]
• TTC deal a relief for riders [ Toronto Star ]
• Tentative TTC deal averts commuter chaos [ Globe and Mail ]
• TTC reaches deal to avert strike [ National Post ]
• Hostages of ‘better way’ [ National Post ]
• T.O.’s easy riders [ Toronto Sun ]
• Toronto public transit workers reach deal, strike averted [ CBC.ca ]
• Georgetown GO expansion remains stalled in its tracks [ National Post ]
• Rush job feared on airport rail link [ Toronto Star ]
• Councillors still don’t get the picture [ Toronto Star ]
• Art of graffiti, minus the paint [ Toronto Star ]
• Wal-Mart and the city an uneasy mix [ Toronto Star ]

7 comments

  1. Rush job feared on Airport link is important – despite the interest in the Downtown Relief Line and its need (in my view) the Blue 22 may crowd it out despite the prior claim of this plan on the corridor. This is the clearest example of potential problems with the sped up EA processes.

  2. I keep telling people – SNC Lavalin haven’t gone away you know. The Westoners want more GO and GO can provide the airport link, but the Blue22 folks won’t have their nonstop train set.

    The sight of Hizzoner on the 431km/h nonstop maglev between Shanghai and Shanghai airport (30km, 1.5 billion dollars – which would be a multiple of that in Canadian costs) in this weekend’s Star might have caused a few shudders in the Weston community.

    From Wikipedia: “Maglev ridership has been below expectations, due to limited operating hours, the short line, the high price of the tickets and the inconvenient location of the Longyang Road terminus in Pudong. There is significant local criticism that the project was showy and wasteful, delivering no practical benefit to residents.” Sounds like Blue22 to me, except we’re doing it on the cheap by using refurbished diesel railcars rather than electrically power levitation.

    Boosters of this project need to remember that 905ers and 416ers north of Queen use Pearson too and we also need more trains between 416 and 519. Georgetown GO expansion can help make that happen. Blue22 is a rail version of the cabs that block streetcar flow at King and Bay.

  3. Also –

    “Yesterday, Torontonians got a small sample of a city without transit, as a buoyant Earth Day parade effectively brought the westbound lanes of Queen Street West to a halt.

    Greenpeace activists, anarchists and flower children dressed as jesters beat bongos and pushed a whitewashed car, decrying Stephen Harper’s environmental record and chanting catchy global warming slogans through a horn loudspeaker.

    At the streetcar stop at Queen Street West and University Avenue, riders waited patiently, then walked or cabbed around the parade, resolved to such means of reaching their destinations.”

    Why the hell didn’t they push the car on Bloor or University where surface transit wouldn’t be impeded? YOU BLOCKED A STREETCAR LINE YOU IDIOTS! Was it so important that you were near to the Drake and Gladstone when you were done banging bongos????

  4. Hamish- That is a very wide rail corridor that could accommodate both the DRL and an airport express train.

  5. A rail-link to the airport is a boondoggle: might serve a few hundred thousand people, but only if you count everyone who might ever take a plane and the train to that plane, if they live on a subway below Bloor, and none decide to use a car. That’s only going to be a few hundred travellers, and a few hundred employees every day. Not a great business model.

    A rail-link to the airport, Weston, Malton, Brampton, Georgetown, Acton and Guelph is no boondoggle: the limited commuter train to Weston, Malton, Brampton, and Georgetown is already beyond capacity. My god, piggyback the airport link to something which already works!

  6. Gee Mark. Were you asleep the day the local Tibetan community expressed their sentiments by marching down Queen? Do you think they too sought a route convenient to the Gladstone and Drake?
    I’ll bet that is why the Labour Day parade is on Queen too. To piss you off Mark.
    “Streets are for People” (http://www.streetsareforpeople.org/blog/) doesn’t look alot like most of the organisations you describe. Now maybe your trolley driver commutes from Brampton and living without infrastructure subsidies for their drive chafes their navel but it does not justify their blaming beatniks for non representative taxation and infrastructure abuse by “furriners” from Brampton now, does it?

  7. geoffrey – I stand in awe of your rambling – what has Brampton and “furriners” got to do with anything?

    As for the Tibetans, I’d argue that Queen is not a good route for protests of any kind but at least they weren’t banging an environmental drum while causing the increase in congestion and thus air pollution, simultaneously impeding one of the principal methods of reducing car usage.

    Finally, I don’t take the Queen “trolley”. I take the subway or 504. Thanks for playing though.