{"id":26553,"date":"2012-02-26T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2012-02-26T14:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=26553"},"modified":"2012-02-23T21:17:35","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T02:17:35","slug":"mayor-bert-xanadu-lets-build-transportainment-city-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2012\/02\/26\/mayor-bert-xanadu-lets-build-transportainment-city-instead\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Bert Xanadu: Let’s build Transportainment City instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

EDITOR<\/strong>: It’s circa 1973. Fictitious Bert Xanadu is the Mayor of Toronto and owner of the Imperial Six cinemas on Yonge Street. Mayor Xanadu has been governing from his twitter account<\/a> over the last two years and now a regular series of posts straight out of 1973 and into Toronto comedic political fray.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The people of Toronto have told me that they wish to leave their houses and move about the city \u2013 who am I to say no?!!
\nThe dim bulbs, shiftless jerks and unshaven con men who purport to have plans for improving transit in this city have failed to ask the most fundamental question of all: why does Toronto need transit at all?<\/p>\n

Be assured, I have asked \u2013 and can now answer \u2013 that question.<\/p>\n

Torontonians have told me they need transit \u2013 effective, fragrant, cheap and sexy \u2013 mainly for the following reasons:<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cI want to get out of the house\u201d: 37%
\n\u2022 \u201cthe vibrations of the subway car lull me into a womb-like trance\u201d: 14%
\n\u2022 \u201cI want to see what other people look like\u201d: 22%
\n\u2022 \u201cI left something somewhere else and need to go get it and bring it back\u201d: 33%
\n\u2022 \u201cI might miss out on something\u201d: 16%<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what\u2019s the real problem?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that we have more than enough transit \u2013 but to solve only one need:\u00a0 to get people to and from their hellish places of employment.\u00a0 Hundreds of thousands of other non-productive citizens are greedily crowding the fume-filled buses and crabby streetcars, the eccentric trolleys and slippery subway platforms, the windswept bus stops and stalled escalators, making the short brutish lives of Toronto\u2019s salary slaves even worse than they already are.<\/p>\n

What we really need are new forms of transit that serve the under-served and transport the easily distracted.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We can do this not by building new subway lines, but by calling on the ingenuity of our nation\u2019s finest engineers, psychiatrists and P.R. men to design and build a veritable network \u2014 or indeed, an actual network! \u2014 of comfortable propulsion devices, each made to suit but a fraction of the populace\u2019s moving urges.<\/p>\n

Whilst the greasy lobbyists, humourless bureaucrats and political toadies spend months haggling, seducing and annoying each other to develop such plans, I am boldly stepping forward today to table my 1974 plan.\u00a0 I like to call it \u2018Transportainment City\u2019.\u00a0 You can call it what you want \u2014 and you can call me what you want \u2014 but don\u2019t forget who dreamed it up while you are coasting comfortably on the Wychwood Park Golf Cart Circle Line with local egghead Marshall McLuhan as your driver!<\/p>\n

Piggy-back rides? Conga lines? Complimentary rides in police sidecars?\u00a0 Yes, but so much more!<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the high school truants.\u00a0 Reeking of cheap cigarellos and stale ale, their dungarees and floor-mop hairdos offensive to the eyes and to all that is civilized, these teenaged bums should be isolated as they traverse the Queen City, hooting and hollering merely to impress each other for some cheap psychological gain.\u00a0 So my TeenQuest Line \u2013 a fleet of open-backed pick-up trucks (each painted with currently popular symbols of ersatz masculine posturing, such as \u2018Wolfman Jack\u2019, or Woody Woodpecker chomping on a cigar) — will cruise up and down Yonge St. from Front to Steeles, 24 hours a day, carrying these louts, and louts only, on their aimless drives to social oblivion (transfers accepted).<\/p>\n

Then there is the sub-constituency of those simply wish to be somewhere other than where they currently are, if only for a few hours, without arousing suspicion.\u00a0 Lake-worthy ferries of the new Alibi Cruise Line will depart each morn at 8:30 am from docks at the base of the Scarborough Bluffs, and drift aimlessly all day, pointed generally towards the middle of Lake Ontario, arriving promptly back by 5pm. Each passenger will be presented with a bogus TTC paper transfer of their choice.<\/p>\n

Next up: there are those who are in no particular hurry to complete their measly tasks \u2013 why would we enlist powerful and expensive bus and train engines to transport these uncomplicated and unburdened little grey people? A 20-mile gently humming system of moving sidewalks, the Horizontoronto Line, moving at a contemplative 1 mile per hour, will criss-cross the city, offering a gentle breeze of forward movement to its users, while keeping them out of the way of the purposeful. No need to stand on the right \u2013 no one\u2019s walking past you anyway!<\/p>\n

Cities need a vibrant downtown and an adjacent bland region of dormitory suburbs \u2013 the sizzling bacon and cold eggs of urban planning.\u00a0 Since hundreds of thousands of Etobicockettes, Willowdaleans, Scarboroughriders and other Metro Toronto outliers escape their flat monocultures during daylight hours to snake their way to soulless jobs in business district office towers, an opportunity presents itself.\u00a0 The new Exurbia Triple-Decker Bus Line will carry deeply-bored downtowners through the unnecessarily curvy suburban streets, allowing them gaze down on, and sneer at, the vast garages, strange sidewalk-less thoroughfares and antiseptic lawns that they themselves will never personally trod upon.<\/p>\n

Toronto, still statistically the beigest of the British Empire\u2019s great cities, has been enlivened in recent years by new burly immigrants from more exotic and rustic shores, e.g.\u00a0 Nova Scotia, Wales, New Zealand and the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast \u2014 all leading bastions of equestrian culture.\u00a0 So when these uncouth but mighty workers arrive, why force them into the unfamiliar and trying inferno known as the Toronto subway system?\u00a0 Instead, my new Horseflesh For Hire Conveyance Service will offer up the idle but cheerful horses of the Toronto Police Dept. \u2014 hay and saddle included for an extra TTC token! \u2014 to those who wish to gallop about, the intoxicating stink of freedom propelling them forward, according to their own schedule!<\/p>\n

And what about, you might ask, the steaming waste products generated by these noble steeds each day on the streets of Toronto? It\u2019s genius \u2013 we\u2019ll use the municipal manure to help fill in the vacant subway tunnels to nowhere!!<\/p>\n

If I asked for a show of hands right now, the horizon would be clouded with arms thrusting upward in response to this question: who is sick of the snot-nosed and peculiar brats who inveigle their spineless parents to ride the TTC simply to enrage the rest of us?\u00a0\u00a0 I thought so.<\/p>\n

So, with the generous 25-year sponsorship of local retail giants Sayvettes and Aikenhead\u2019s Hardware, we will be unleashing the floats of the Santa Claus Parade every day of the year!\u00a0 Undisciplined tykes can clamber on board the giant Bakelite facsimile of Canadian icon Raymond Burr, or the H.R. Pufnstuf-Mobile, made out of actual puff ‘n stuff, and ride up and down University Avenue until they wet their pants.<\/p>\n

Speaking of bodily fluids and transit, that brings me to vomit, or rather, to the topic of vomit.\u00a0 We spend $457,000 each year on Javex to wash away the thousands of gallons of the bile freely-shared by after-hours drunks riding the infamous Yonge St. Vomit Comet.\u00a0 Enough, I say.<\/p>\n

Starting immediately, that service is cancelled in favour of a candlelight walking excursion, offered nightly after the subway closes, through the quiet tunnels of the Yonge TTC line.\u00a0 The drunk, the hammered, the footless and the woozy will find safe haven, a direct route northward to their angry spouses, and the gentle admonishments of a Salvation Army guide.\u00a0 Trust me \u2013 if you\u2019ve vomited once on the third rail, you won\u2019t do it again!<\/p>\n

photo from Toronto Archives: Series 648, file 10, ID 01<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDITOR: It’s circa 1973. Fictitious Bert Xanadu is the Mayor of Toronto and owner of the Imperial Six cinemas on Yonge Street. Mayor Xanadu has been governing from his twitter account over the last two years and now a regular series of posts straight out of 1973 and into Toronto comedic political fray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5478,19408,19409,17975,19411,427,22100,19407,19415,19416,1182,19413,19404,426,2614,2812,316,19405,4783,19412,19,19403,1560,391,19414,2199,19410,19406],"class_list":["post-26553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-actual-network","tag-aikenheads-hardware","tag-bakelite","tag-bert-xanadu","tag-comfortable-propulsion-devices","tag-driver","tag-editor","tag-fictitious-bert-xanadu","tag-h-r-pufnstuf","tag-horseflesh-for-hire-conveyance-service","tag-lake-ontario","tag-local-retail-giants","tag-marshall-mcluhan","tag-mayor","tag-new-zealand","tag-nova-scotia","tag-queen","tag-raymond-burr","tag-salvation-army","tag-subway-car-lull","tag-toronto","tag-transportainment-city","tag-university-avenue","tag-usd","tag-veritable-network","tag-wales","tag-waste-products","tag-woody-woodpecker"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMayor Bert Xanadu: Let's build Transportainment City instead - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2012\/02\/26\/mayor-bert-xanadu-lets-build-transportainment-city-instead\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mayor Bert Xanadu: Let's build Transportainment City instead - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"EDITOR: It’s circa 1973. 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