No More Sheppard Subway??!!

<p>I am not sure this means no LRT since it is now being funded primarly by the province&#39;s MoveOntario project, assuming that the province actually ends up going through with it.</p>

This is insane!&nbsp; It almost seems like an idle threat.

This is bad news for all those expansion projects ... even with the construction taken off their hands, how can the TTC possibly pay for their operation?

<p>You silly kids are falling for that cynical game of political brinksmanship that &quot;those in power&quot; play when they don&#39;t get their way </p><p>A so-called &quot;left-leaning&quot; council chopping programs and shutting down the Sheppard subway line? Come on, that sounds like a poor April fool&#39;s gag to me.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>That said, the 23 councillors who voted against the tax measures are playing a cynical game as well -- hoping to make the city&#39;s budget deficit a hot provincial election issue that the parties will have to pander to (and even promise to throw some money at). </p><p>There may be merit to this argument, but like the service cuts it all remains to be seen<br />.</p>

Instead of respecting the council vote against his increased taxes, Miller appears to be playing a petty and vindictive game. If he can&#39;t have his tax increase, then Toronto will have to suffer unreasonable funding cuts of his choice.&nbsp; Where is vision and leadership? Squabbling kids, just like the photo sillyness earlier this year. It&#39;s just embarassing.

<p>The sheer fact that the city is proposing closing the <strong>entire </strong>Sheppard subway line pretty much tells you all you need to know about the Sheppard subway line. It&#39;s like McDonalds announcing they are taking the Filet-o-Fish off the menu. </p>

Well at least Andrew LaFleur is still getting his real estate commissions from those first time buyers. Whew!

<p>I have a cost-effective solution for retrofitting the signage to reflect the new TTC routes...</p><p>

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=854995121&;size=o

a black sharpie and liquid paper!!

Now... which land routes shall we cut?

http://www.toronto.ca/ttc/pdf/ridership_cost_stats_bus_streetcar_05_06.pdf

Whether it is a political game or a serious budget cut, the point is our city needs money. Money which should be coming from the Province and Feds. If this is what it takes to get them to give us money fine, but it also sends a message to those who didn&#39;t see the severity in our crisis. Deferring the taxes puts us further in the hole if the other two levels don&#39;t step up. Furthermore, taxes are going up anyway, but with less benefit to the city. Property taxes will be increased by 10%, meaning those who can&#39;t afford it will hit, rather than just those who have the money during the sale of a house. And the province gets some of those taxes, whereas the land transfer was pure Toronto capital. Miller is not punishing us, he is working with the mistakes of almagamation and everybody&#39;s favourite tacky furniture salesman, and not getting much help.

This is all posturing for the Provincial elections and fear mongering by bad policy magnet Miller. Just a week ago they were talking about the $100M revitalization of stations. Go ahead and shut down Shepphard subway. No one lives on Shepphard except for at Yonge St. Either the city needs to create incentives and coordinate urban planning to get the density up on Shepphard or shut it down. That line has minimal benefits.

<p>Shit like this --makes me happy I left Toronto</p><p>And they wanna be respected on a world level ....please!</p>

i wonder what will happen to the York university line plans, probably shelved again for the umpteenth time.&nbsp;

<p>Mr. Miller,</p><p>Toronto, has floated this province, the entire country actually, for decades. We have been nationally vilified for equally as long, amazingly enough. However, we <em>are</em> the 800 pound gorilla in the room and with that goes some obligation to exert our power. </p><p>Since Queen&#39;s Park happens to be in the centre of <em>our</em> <em>city </em>maybe it is time we decided that they are no longer welcome here. Perhaps our provincial capital would better serve the needs of its population in Thunder Bay. Further to this, we favour a tax distribution based on population. Maybe Torontians should just cease paying provincial taxes all together. That would be a message, wouldn&#39;t it? </p>

Time to move to Calgary! Seriously, the cost of living in this city just just seems to grow day by day. Toronto is turning into a third-world city, and I&#39;ll be damned if I&#39;m going to raise a kid in this place now.&nbsp;Luckily, I&#39;m still a young man with oats to sow.&nbsp;Virility!

<blockquote><p>&nbsp;Suddenly the land transfer tax isn&#39;t looking so bad....</p></blockquote><p>&nbsp;I think that the people lobbying against the new taxes probably are the ones who own cars and houses and think that buses and streetcars are just in the way.</p><p>Steve Munro <a href="http://www.stevemunro.ca/?p=457";>suggests</a> cutting transit service in the wards of the TTC commissioners who voted to defer.</p>

<p>I&#39;m not that surprised. Money has to come from somewhere, and I had heard the TTC be used as a threat before (if we don&#39;t get these taxes, then the TTC needs to be cut). Actually I think it was TTC and city parks as well.</p>

Reading these idiotic comments from people like Alan and&nbsp; StephenT&nbsp; and Craig just reinforces to me how completely stupid some of the people who live in this city are. &quot;Vision and leadership&quot; won&#39;t make $570 million dollars appear out of nowhere. More than half of the city&#39;s services are already outsourced. Half of the city&#39;s budget is fixed by provincial law and can&#39;t be changed. The rest is police, fire, and other items that are hard to cut. What&#39;s left to cut to make up a $570 million gap? Transit and other programs. There simply isn&#39;t $570 million in waste in the City&#39;s budget. <br />

<p>Ced &quot;Money which should be coming from the Province and Feds.&quot;</p><p>Is Toronto getting more than its fair share of public funds then? If the problem is that there are too many cars, there are bylaws the city can impose on drivers to fix it, without tapping the rest of the country for money other people generated.&nbsp;</p>

Chris above is right about the Sheppard line. It may have been the wrong idea initially, but 5 years on it has begun to become integerated into the area, and is no longer as &quot;unnecessary&quot; as it was once considered.<div><br /></div><div>The reality is that the often criticized condos may be a huge help in keeping the line alive. There is millions of dollars being invested by developers in condos all along the line, and the shutdown of the Sheppard line would create major hassles for these projects &ndash; many of which have yet to break ground.</div><div><br /></div><div>Miller might not care about the citizens of his city, but with developers and businesses stepping it, it at least might add some needed weight to our side.</div>

Waterfront Casino.&nbsp; What better way to bring money in and start revitalizing the waterfront at the same time.&nbsp; The Casino -WILL- bring people in, it&#39;s a fact of life.&nbsp; Businesses will follow.&nbsp; Of course, chances are the island residents would complain, like they do when construction is planned for anything within a 10 km radius.

<span style="font-family: Lucida Grande; text-align: left" class="Apple-style-span"><p>Craig writes:</p><p>&lt;i&gt;Maybe if the city properly managed their budget in the first place then these issues wouldn&#39;t happen. I find it quite ammusing that the mayor starts complaining that we have to start counting pennies when he goes and spends millions on renovating his office.&lt;/i&gt;</p><p>&nbsp;Yawn. &quot;Maybe if the city properly&nbsp;managed their [budget].&quot; This just goes to show that you have no idea what you&#39;re talking about. This city is run pretty darn efficiently, and there&#39;s no way to get more than $500 million out of the city&#39;s budget in &quot;efficiencies.&quot; It&#39;s just not possible. And when cuts are suggested, people complain. WELL, WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WANT?</p><p>As for the renovations to Miller&#39;s office, they were cancelled.</p><p>&lt;i&gt;You are right that the city deserves more money from the Province. But slamming public transit? The streets are already congested enough, now you want to take away transit services so people have to be forced to use cars?&lt;/i&gt;</p><p>&nbsp;It has nothing to do with slamming transit. The city is more than $500 million in the hole and it needs to make cuts somewhere. Transit is, unfortunately, one of the few places where it has the ability to make cuts in operating budgets.&nbsp;Where else - police? firefighters? Those have been asked to make cuts too. Half the city&#39;s budget is mandated by the province and is not under city control.</p><p>&lt;i&gt;I think a better idea would be to establish tolls on the inner city highways, etc. That would generate quite a significant amount of revenue, and also discourage vehicle use.&lt;/i&gt;</p><p>Do you really think that the councillors who voted against the motor registration fees and the land transfer tax would vote for road tolls? Even if they did, getting a road toll system in place on inner city highways would take some time; it would require an up-front expense and wouldn&#39;t generate money until the toll system is in place. And what if council voted against road tolls? Then where would it get money? The city would still need to make cuts.</p><p>&lt;i&gt;There&#39;s no need to be calling people &quot;stupid&quot; just because your opinion differs from someone else. I can&#39;t believe how ignorant some people like you are in this city.&lt;/i&gt;</p><p>People who think $570 million can be sucessfully cut out of $4 billion in non-mandated spending simply by reducing waste&nbsp;are in fact stupid. It&#39;s people like you who think that the city is not in a huge fiscal crisis and who think that this is just grandstanding who are ignorant.&nbsp;</p></span>

Thickslab,

So where exactly in the GTA do you live and do you enjoy driving your car?

Jesus, you continue with the name calling. You only serve to make yourself look bad.

You must be the biggest David Miller Supporter i've ever seen! ;) Land Transfer Tax was a joke, i'm sorry. Vehicle Registration Fee I have no problems/gripes with.

There is quite a large number of individuals in this city, councillors included, who view these threats (ie. shutting down sheppard subway line) as bullying/fear tactics aimed at councillors who voted against these taxes.

I don't think this is the way to do it. I am sure there are other ways to aid the budget crisis other then immediately suggesting to shutdown a subway line. Maybe i'm just CRAZZZZYYY and STUPIIDDDD as you suggest, but I guess you'd then be pointing your finger at a rather large mass of intellects in this City who feel the same way.

I like this debate, it's quite amusing. You are definately the staunchest supporter next to Miller himself when it comes to this issue. I am almost inclined to think that you are somehow tied to him, as stupid/silly as it sounds (and probably not true either).

By the way, I voted for the NDP and David Miller. For the most part he has done a relatively good job. Just not impressed with the latest happenings.

If you want to turn this thread into an insult fest, by all means go ahead. I will participate no further if I need read "you are stupid" once more.

I'm sorry to hear about your bus.

To get to work I take a street car, subway, and then a YRT transfer at Finch. Ergo, I am quite a frequent user of the TTC, primarily for environmental reasons.

<p>Craig, I&#39;m not a Miller supporter. I have nothing to do with him and no connection to him whatsoever. I&#39;m just a regular guy. </p><p>&nbsp;I&#39;m just pissed oiff at the stupidity of city councillors who voted against taxes (without proposing any alternatives of their own aside from idiotic &quot;let&#39;s get rid of waste&quot; bullshit, as if reducing &quot;waste&quot; can generate $500 million in cuts) and then complain when the consequences of that vote are made clear, consequences which should have been clear to anyone who&#39;s paid attention to politics in this city since 2000. </p><p>&nbsp;None of this is news, and it was made very clear that with no reserves left, the city has hit a brick wall. There is no more cash lying around. If there are going to be no new taxes and no new provincial/federal funding, then the only thing left to do is cut spending by the $500 million necessary. It&#39;s not grandstanding, it&#39;s simple cause and effect.&nbsp;</p>

You do bring up some good points which is that, for example, reducing "waste" via the approved future methods will most likely not generate the needed funding. I agree completely when you state that province is giving us the old fork in the eye.

Would be fun if Toronto, in protest of the Federal Government's refusal to give 1 cent of the GST, would hold a "don't pay GST day" for Torontonians. This would send a clear message that we are all fed up with the bullshit with lack of federal funding.

I'm not sure how the federal government would react, or how they would punish, but it's fun to day-dream about what would happen if toronto businesses were encouraged not to charge GST for a day haha. Sadly I am sure they would be the ones punished..

A possible way to save money I think would be to cut plans for the subway line extension to York University. I used to go to York University, and frankly public transit there is adequate. I really don't feel that a subway line headed to York U is necessary, but perhaps a LRT (light rail transit) would suffice, cost less money and save the city some cash.

Just ideas.

<p>Can we impeach the entire council?&nbsp; Can we have a coup?&nbsp; they obviously are PISS POOR at their jobs, and won&#39;t even take a pay cut to help out.&nbsp; Screw their constituents, they can&#39;t possibly take a pay cut.</p><p>We can rise up and overthrow them, just like the Rose revolution, but this one would be a trillium revolution!&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Oh, wait, this is apathetic Toronto...&nbsp;</p>

<p>Just reading these comments and wanted to thank thickslab for saying everything I wanted to say (including the insults - sorry Craig - I don&#39;t think you are stupid , just your thoughts on the issue). </p><p>I&#39;ve created a handy guide for anyone who wants to guage their own thoughts on the issues at City Hall:</p><p>If &lt;x&#39;s idea/opinion&gt; equals &lt;Rob Ford&#39;s idea/opinon&gt;, then &lt;x&#39;s idea/opinion&gt; is likely really stupid. &lt;x&gt; does not equal &lt;x&#39;s idea/opinion&gt; but &lt;Rob Ford&gt; is a complete idiot.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>No one lives on Sheppard except for the Sheppard/Yonge area? Tell that to the people who live in the condos on Bayview!</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Seriously, Council never should have approved their salary increase. Maybe they should UNapprove it.</p>