Friday’s headlines

23 comments

1. I read the Globe; in fact I pay for it. For the past while, the Star has appeared on my doorstep for free (sell your Torstar shares!).

   In the Star today, Joe Fiorito does a reasonable look at the impact of diesel trains on the Weston corridor, by actually going and experiencing these “clean” diesel trains close-up.

   In the Globe, back on October 15th, Marcus Gee’s column is titled “Diesel trains the way to go, Ontario” and his research extends to quoting some Metrolinx bumpf and then finishing with the thoughts of Rob Pritchard, who is now a transit technology expert, just as he was a newspaper business expert at the Star, and a university president expert back at U of T.

   I don’t know what the Globe is thinking. Gee’s columns get so many negative comments….why is he doing the Toronto beat?

2. Imagine Rob Fairley’s surprise that they are actually going to use the train tracks for trains! I mean, how dare they!

   It’s worth pointing out that electrification will not stop this debate. As someone who lives near the subway line, I can assure you that electric trains are not silent. And even if GO suddenly decides to electrify, I’m also looking forward to hearing about how the overhead power lines feeding the line are causing leukemia.

3. The NIMBYism of the train line is laughable, as the ‘400 trains per day’ number is a forecast for over 20 years from now, well after the line is to be electrified. The diesels that will run in the meantime will have to follow a very strict environmental rule that no current engine even meets.

   They’re just grumbling over the fact that the land they bought next to train tracks is going to have trains running by it.

4. Gee is doing the Toronto beat because that’s where he does the least harm to the globe’s reputation. He was much worse as the globe’s us correspondant. It can be difficult to fire senior journalists (except for malfeasance).

5. Commentor Mark Dowling said earlier this or last week, re Gee, that he’s there to irritate the Spacing crowd (by which I suspect he means not our readers but urban-minded folk in general) and thus sell papers w the controversy. But I no longer read the Toronto section of the Globe unless there is a link or a tweet to a specific story because I come across this junk. I like writers with contrary views — as great a writer as Barber was(is), I didn’t always agree with him, or in another field, I like reading Andrew Coyne a lot too — but Gee seems contrarian for the sake of contrarian, and poorly researched at that and I’m in no way convinced he even likes this city (like, say, John Tory – he obviously loves Toronto). It brings down the Globe. Edit him, please, Globe editors. Edit him harder. As I tweeted last week, if I filed one of my columns that had as much research/thoughfulness as he does (at my way WAY underpaid rate) I’d never work in this town again. He’s got a good gig, but it’s a weird amoral place to be that the armchair psychologist in me wonders how he lives with that.

   /rant

6. I’m sitting by my computer in the basement apartment on Lansdowne Avenue. I cannot breathe and have frequent bouts of asthma because of the traffic polution outside my window. My air is already polluted by heavy vehicular traffic. Now I can expect dirty diesel belching toxins to transport non residents and tourists to the airport and back. I wrote my concerns to appropriate authorities, who frankly don’t give a damn about low income people. The project is being rammed through despite overwhelming public protest. Guess power to the people is an anachronism.

7. Why dosen’t Spacing cover Toronto Star Joe Fiorito’s other story “Your honour, here’s how we failed Al” from Wednesday where he speaks about the LeSage inquiry and the Al Gosling Toronto Community Housing case…. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/736356–fiorito-your-honour-here-s-how-we-failed-al

   Did you just miss it or are poor people’s concerns not valid on your site?

8. Re: Council Paying for Adrian Heaps legal bill and settlement.

   We should all send our bills to city hall now. Everyone who supported this should be turfed.

9. Some people bought property so many years ago that the kind of train service that’s supposed to come to the corridor was unimaginable. Or perhaps they thought that the government would electrify if service expansion levels justified it. Which isn’t a stupid or ignorant thought; it’s basically the world standard.

   Others are low income people without much choice about the matter where they live. And the reality is that the single person working two jobs with a child to feed doesn’t have much time or energy left over to protest trains.

   If you want to run five trains a day, then diesel is the way to go. If you want frequent all day service and also an airport line, then it’s time to mitigate the problems with the appropriate technology instead of just barbarically forcing it onto established old urban neighbourhoods so people can get to newer suburbs quickly. The people living around this deserve more respect in their fight to protect the quality of life in their part of the city.

   When the technology exists, use it.

10. Am appalled by the Heaps payment. If Council is going to choose to indemnify a Council member against a lawsuit it should do so up front with control over whether the issue is to be settled, not merely bankroll the result by a means the City Solicitor specifically advises against.

11. Oh – and re: Ashley Madison – it seems to me that the local papers have handed them free advertising by way of “news” coverage anyway so I doubt they care if TTC refuse? Sounds to me like a shrewd marketing guy said “look how much press the atheist bus issue got – we can get in on that action”

12. Gee seems contrarian for the sake of contrarian, and poorly researched at that and I’m in no way convinced he even likes this city

    I agree with most of what you say, but I don’t see how Gee is contrarian at all. Rather than use his position to speak truth to power, he uses it to speak power to truth. He basically sees his job as telling the powerless to STFU.

13. Andrew> what a lame comment. They are adding 2 new lines and expanding service on a third. So it is a massive rail expansion using technology that is obsolete and polluting. Rail use had been declining for the last 50 years so nobody could see into the future anyway–what do you think Railpath is built on? A railbed that was ripped out 20 years ago because “it had no value”. Everybody knows they are next to a rail line and that trains run there so stop being insulting to people. A lot of people moved near the tracks like me in hope of expanded sensible clean expansion.

    Nobody is against increased rail service, they are against needless increased pollution and noise, wasted tax money because electric trains already exist, and a lack of real public transit for Toronto especially Weston (instead of suburban sprawl in Georgetown).And people will also be really pissed when they discover that the airport link is a for profit 407 style operation that should have just been part of GO (One less rail line to be built).

    The major solution to this issue for all involved exists, it called electric trains. Not some 1990 olympics 1996 bid plan that got dusted off and is being rammed through for the Pan Am games.

    I would also expect people here to be smart enough to know that diesel pollution eventually falls from the air and lands in the ground staying there long after diesel is gone from the rails.

14. Toronto sf author Dr Peter Watts was beaten and arrested by US border guards:
    http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html
    http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=932

15. Actual power to the people would be getting the train to the airport running, so that the people as a whole not suffer the negative economic effects of living in one of the only major cities in the world without an airport rail link.

    That’s the true definition of people – the greater public. Not the interests of a few living next to the tracks.

16. “Not the interests of a few living next to the tracks” iSkyscraper

    Thanks for confirming that I and my many neighbours have no value.
    Power to the people, but only ‘certain people’ right?

17. I think there are times when it is appropriate to pay a Councillor’s legal bills. But what I find hard to stomach regarding Council’s decision to pay Adrian Heaps’ legal bill is that the bill was incurred as a result of his actions when he was not yet a Councillor. And these actions seemed to have skewed the election (which he won by only 89 votes it seems) in his favour.

    Re: iSkyscraper’s comment on “Power to the people”… If you see a $20+, one-way train ride to the airport as “power to the people”, I don’t know what to say. Yeah, Toronto should have a rail to airport link…something that is common in many cities. But in those other cities, the pricing for this service is not so excessive that only well-heeled passengers can take it.

    I think those concerned about the deisel trains have some very legitimate concerns. I do find it funny, however, knowing that not too long ago some of the people in the city core who are now part of this lobby were calling the group in Weston raising concerns about this rail line “NIMBYs”. But of course that was before the downtowners realized the impact the rail line would have on them.

    Re: Mark’s comment on Ashley Madison’s chaep “marketing” campaign. Given the huge success they’ve had with this stunt (they must now be top-of-mind in the cheaters’ website category), we can probably look forward to TTC ad “applications” from a whole slew of other less than savoury products and services. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more.

18. The headline of that National Post article:

    “TTC flirts with online adulterers”

    should be changed to:

    “National Post provides free advertising to online adulterers”

    The article even includes a CBS Outdoor doctored photo of the non-existent streetcar.

19. scottd> Congratulations, I guess. You and your lobby have vilified diesel. This horrifying pollutant (at least according to you) is also the fuel that powers the TTC bus I take to work every morning. So why aren’t you also out protesting TTC bus routes through Weston?

    Your partisans have been heard arguing that there is no environmental benefit, ever, from expanded transit service. So don’t give me this nonsense about “we want trains, just clean ones”. This isn’t about electrification — what you really want is to kill the project, and electrification happens to be a convenient delaying tactic.

20. Andrew: you have certainly not been paying attention to the Clean Train Coalition. Every piece of literature from the group states they want electricification, not termination of the project. Its quite possible that areas along the line will benefit from a potential stop (Weston, Dundas/Bloor, and Parkdale). It will bring greater value to properties and possibly better transit. the CTC is one of th best groups in the city that is fighting for the right thing and is not just trotting out the regular NIMBY excuses. They’ve done the research and have lobbied effectively.

    get some of the facts straight before declaring residents small minded goofs. They’ve proven just the opposite.

21. Matthew: I’m paying close attention to what’s going on. I love the assumption that any opponent of the CTC must be ignorant.

    Is the CTC a fan of new transit? In their FAQ, they say this:

    “Claims that GO service eliminates pollution from cars are incorrect … highways always fill with new demand, especially in regions like the GTA which have growing populations.”

    Note they are talking about “GO service”, not diesel train service. So they are actually against new GO service on environmental grounds. Putting aside the absurdity of this statement (not to mention the [[citation needed]]), the only other organizations — IN THE WORLD — that make this same argument are right-wing American think tanks (e.g., the Cato institute), which oppose public spending on principle. Great bedfellows there, CTC!

    But there are profound implications for future transit development. By vilifying diesel, the CTC is providing the template for opposition to any future expansion of bus service in Toronto (which is mostly diesel, and which is far less efficient and clean per seat than a train). How soon until we see local residents opposed to a new bus route on the grounds that the buses are dirty?

22. I’m supportive of electrification in the long run, but let’s be pragmatic for a second:

    1. people taking trains, regardless of whether they’re diesel or electric, aren’t driving cars which contribute much more greatly to pollution in the region.

    2. electrification is not necessarily “clean”. Electricity has to be generated somewhere. If it isn’t from burning fossil fuels it’s from a dam (floods forests and kills millions of trees and disrupts biogeochemical cycles), nuclear (has its own, obvious environmental issues and risks). Wind and solar generate a fraction of Ontario’s energy needs, are relatively unreliable at generating their peak capacity and have environmental costs of their own (do you know how much energy it takes to refine silicon to the grade demanded of a solar cell?)

    3. To build the electrical train infrastructure generates pollution of its own, from smelting copper wires to building enormous substations to buying, building and shipping a whole fleet of new rolling stock.

    Finally,

    4. We have finite economic resources to pay for transit improvements. Let’s say we have $2B to play around with. We could either expand diesel train coverage to reach more people in the region or we could have a much smaller but electrified transit line.

    If you weigh the social benefits and the environmental degradation of forcing people who would have a train station to drive to get to an electrified line, you may just find out that the electrified train line is not so “green” after all.

    Again, I am supportive of electrification, but we should get the biggest bank for a transit buck right now.

    I find it ironic that a lot of Spacing editors who support Transit City over subway improvements on the rationale of maximizing service for dollars spent fail to see how expanding diesel rail service throughout the region basically addresses the same argument vis a vis electrification.

23. Andrew- The Clean Train Coalition has, as its stated goal, the electrification of the Georgetown line. Period. Their FAQ says the environmental advantages of transit do not mean we should not make that transit as clean as possible, and perhaps the author of the FAQ worded the case in a slightly unfortunate way. That does not change the actual goal of the Clean Train Coalition, or make it less important or necessary.

    I support the work of the Clean Tarin Coalition because I want to see all the Toronto railway lines electrified, which brings me to leonard’s comment: I agree with his first point; his second point ignores the main advantages of electrification, namely regenerative braking and weight savings; his third and fourth points will probably apply to any future electrification project; in fact, it makes sense to electrify now, before climate change initiatives and/or peak oil push up the prices for this kind of project even more. My main argument for electrification now rather than later goes like this: the height allowances for future electrification constitute a major, and controversial, commitment of public space. We can’t push off using it into the indefinite future without running a serious risk that some future cash-strapped government may look at the additional cost of a flyover atop the rail lines and push for a lower clearance, thus creating another major hurdle for any electrification. We have the space now; we have or can raise the money now; I see no advantage in waiting.