Here is a long thought....it makes sense to me. Hit me ,hurt me, but please about what I offer first before you hit me As PInk Floyd played out : Is there anybody out there? ...for us? I am everyman.I am the fringe as are you. I am running on a platform of governance and because I care about my City. If anything good is to come from this tumultuous, ‘down the rabbit hole’ campaign, it will arise from the implementation of thoughtful, do-able ideas rather than the inevitable harangues between candidates bereft of strategies.” APPROACH This election has to be about Respect, Vision and Action. None of the current high profile candidates or indeed any politicians seem to truly possess respect for Toronto or its citizens. Ours is a failing system of 44 richly remunerated Councilors dedicated to defending their own turf and a Mayor without any vision. What’s needed now is practical, mindful, results-based action with no agenda other than making our city functioning and thriving again.. The citizens of Toronto have to accept that if they want a ‘world class city’ which they certainly do not have now, they have to pay for it. Inflation-rate taxes only offer a slow slide in to ‘Third World’ services and transit - contrary to what Rob Ford, John Tory, Olivia Chow and the rest are telling us. So let’s get to the reality of Toronto today. Governance: This election must not be about who is Mayor, because like everyone else on Council, the Mayor has only one vote. But with Vision, the Mayor can marshal Council and create/execute strategies that benefit all. It is not the job of the Mayor or any Councilor to be addressing household plumbing problems or potholes; that’s what 311 is for. What our elected representatives must start to be doing is to create and move forward with a Vision for Toronto’s future while directing staff to make it so, not the other way around. A vote for a sitting councilor, with few exceptions, is a vote for more of today’s mediocrity. For example, subways don’t just happen to be built for free, and you cannot have a world-class city without a revenue source. Taxes at the rate of inflation don’t hack it, simply because inflation eats everything in its path. And news flash: selling part of Toronto Hydro is not going to buy subways, in fact, since we can only sell 10% and that won’t even buy more than a few hundred feet track! Conceptually such an approach is a non-starter. The importance of this topic cannot be underestimated yet none of the ‘big name’ candidates has a clear and executable mandate on transit.. And the Scarborough subway simply to be taken off the table, because at three billion dollars estimated cost today it becomes not only a gravy train, but also the elephant in the corridor. Gardiner Expressway: The Staff Report made it clear we can’t tear down until alternate transit is in place; otherwise 100,000 cars a day will be diverted and driving through the City at road level –a shortcut to massive traffic congestion and increased pollution. And taking the Gardiner down does nothing to change the fact that the issue of Lake Ontario and its ongoing obfuscation behind a concrete curtain of lakefront condominiums is going to be changed. We have already lost that opportunity. Such ugliness and lack of respect for our public spaces must be halted by Vision for what they should be, not the promises that never come, such as the lakeside between Yonge and Parliament. The promise there was of a beautiful vista; what we are actually getting is another wall of condominiums blocking the lake view with just 75 feet of ‘boardwalk’ for the public to utilize. Council needs the Vision to work with local, provincial and federal governments to create incentives to reward developers who emphasize lakefront accessibility in their proposals for new and infill construction as well as addressing the lack of affordable housing. Subways: Rather than a continuous onslaught of proposals serving hyper-local constituencies, I want to compel Council to remember the ‘A’ in GTA and find solutions for the whole Greater Toronto Area. Let’s allow Metrolinx to be free of political interference and do what the experts do best: analyzing successful designs and use examples from various cities such as Madrid to provide guides and best practices for new transit and existing infrastructure renewal. The politicians should just be working out how to pay for this, not telling those who know best what to do; no more, no less. Mayor Ford promised subways for no cash yet the proposed three-stop Scarborough line is estimated to cost taxpayers $3 billion minimum. On top of this ‘gravy train’ cost, the line will never serve enough people to be ‘full’ and will not built for 10 years by which time the cost and congestion volume will likely both have doubled, thus making the issue a perfect example of Rob Ford’s ‘red herrings’. And it comes at a steep price to the citizens of Toronto - $750 million and counting. There are many options for raising the revenue we need for trnsit ranging from debt funding to bonds and taxation. By spreading the issue through a number of these options all members of the community will be able to afford their share in making Toronto a better place for all. Because Toronto is so important to the rest of the Province there is no reason why all Ontarians should not pay a little for the transit issues in the GTA. After all, the GTA’s citizens help pay for hospitals all over the Province, don’t they? Light Rail Transit (LRTs): Torontonians have been totally misled about LRTs. LRTs are an efficient mode of transit used in many other really ‘world class’ cities (list here). Again, these are cities that have successfully implemented Light Rail solutions and as such can serve as a template for best practices and lessons learned. The idea that there is some mystical Toronto ‘difference’ that necessitates us creating ‘from-scratch’ solutions is a wasteful paradigm in terms of both time-to-implementation, budgetary overruns and backward looking political interference. Traffic Congestion: Effective, inexpensive things we could do right now – paint cross-hatchings at major intersections, take crossing guards, give them ‘date stamp’ cameras and dispatch them at rush hour. Anyone caught on camera in an intersection against a red gets an automatic minimum $500 fine (like the fine for parking in a fire lane, no plea available). We could also: 1. Put in place a network of high speed bus lanes such as the York University has using Hydro rights of way and the wider cross town roads. Such a right of way route could cross the City from the 400 to McCowan. 2. Stop deliveries in rush hour unless trucks can park in city-identified ‘loading zones.’ 3. Stop shredding companies parking wherever they think they need to (see above) – or make their clients use non-working hours to facilitate such work. 4. Same with post trucks. 5. Restrict tractor-trailers to specific non-peak times in the metropolitan core and ban 53 foot long ones from the core altogether. 6. Ban trucks in general from hogging the outer lane in the City forcing drivers to pass on the left a dangerous move at best. 7. Make the police enforce all parking and HTA offences during rush-hour regardless. Housing: None of the “major” candidates appear to want to even acknowledge we have a problem here, even though 90,000 families are now on the waiting list. Equally, why does the City thinks it has to pay $250,000 to build ‘affordable housing units’ when they can be built for $50,000. The proof abounds as we look beyond our own narrow borders. Why do we let developers build huge shopping malls of only floor ‘superstores’ and no housing? Why not stop issuing building permits for a while until we have a Vision of what the City should look like? Why do we allow building to the property line with no green spaces involved? We are building a city that is a desert of wind tunnels and shadows with no place to walk and play and increasingly for many, no place to live. Here too we should look to developments beyond our borders for guides to best practices and models for (re)development. Building an international city without seeking international expertise is a self-regarding methodology that dooms us to second-tier status. The bottom line is that unless we all accept that if we want a ‘world class city’ we must start to pay for it. The citizens must accept that it is up to them to make the change and release the status quo by looking for new invigorated people to be their representatives and to lift Toronto form being a vassal of others to become its own City in its own right. Voting for the incumbent in your Ward or the major candidates will not do this. This could be your last chance to decide whether Toronto will fade into mediocrity or truly become a “world class” City. It won’t be easy, it won’t be cheap, but in the end you will be proud of what you have achieved. The system is broke, so people - go out on October 27th; vote for renewal, vote for vision, make a change, even vote for me either way together we can fix it. No one else can.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 02:36:55 +0000
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