Morning Brew: Transit City Ownership Questions, Hate Crime in the Beaches, Burning Tow Trucks
Photo: untitled by Gabi~, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
There's a power struggle brewing over the design and ownership of the proposed Transit City LRT lines. On one hand, Metrolinx is insisting that they will pretty much run the show and will own the new streetcar lines, which will merely be TTC-branded and staffed. On the other hand, the TTC is saying that they're the experts and that Metrolinx doesn't have the experience required to design and oversee the new lines. I can see this getting messy, and predict that the result will be projects fraught with problems - over-budget, and delayed.
About 35 anti-Semitic and other racist words and symbols were spray-painted along the boardwalk in the Beaches, requiring an estimated $7000 in repair costs and making us wonder who the pea-brains were that would do such a thing.
With essential ambulance services staffed and running at about 75% of the norm due to the city union strike, a related accusation was bound to arise sooner or later. Despite three phone calls to 911, it took over 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive on the scene where a collapsed man ended up dying. The debate now centers on whether or not good information was provided to dispatchers, allowing them to properly prioritize the response, and whether or not the result would have been the same were they running at full capacity.
No one likes coming back to the street or parking lot to find that their car has been towed. If it happens to you, you know how expensive it can be to get your car back and pay the fees and fines (about $150 minimum). For the second time, a rig owned by Downtown Towing was apparently set ablaze, spurring speculation that either an angry towee or a rival company is to blame. Police are investigating.
Expert astronomers are not happy about the takeover of the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill by a group of enthusiasts and amateurs. They're concerned that the telescope will be broken by those not qualified to run it, and have asked that the re-opening halted. It becomes borderline comical when nerds fight over toys and start flashing their PhD parchments.
And Tim Hortons is apparently taking NYC by storm, either selling maple-glazed donuts faster than they can make them, or not yet selling maple-flavoured items at all locations (it's not clear in the article). Should Dunkin' Donuts be shaking in their boots?
Comments (18)
NY banned transfats right? So the donuts at Timmies in NY must be transfat free. Is that true of Timmies everwhere else?
I still think any deepfried fast food implies transfat laden food. Can someome set me straight?
TTC, you guys FAIL at running transportation services throughout Toronto. Let someone else give it a run. I'm sure they can't fail NEARLY as hard as you guys are presently.
Ambulance crap: it needs to stop. People's lives are priceless and they cannot be brought back from the dead. They should be running at 100% 100% of the time.
The tow truck business in Toronto is just a sham. They abuse everyone and trick people into using them only to basically steal their money.
And Tim Hortons, way to go. Take that god-awful Dunkin' Donuts out of business. We all here in Canada have been addicted to your coffees for decades, and please continue. I've heard Dunkin's coffee is like sludge compared to ours. Tim Hortons FTW.
RE: Tim Hortons in NYC-if you read the articles about Timmy's in NYC, you'll note that they aren't yet offering maple glazed or any of the other maple offerings.
It's not clear in the Star piece whether or not maple-flavoured items are sold out or not being sold at all yet. I've edited my comment to that effect. Cheers!
While I'm all for more news regarding non-downtown parts of Toronto (such as the Beaches), this isn't what I had in mind :(
I wonder how successful Tims will actually be in NYC. The franchisees - the Riese Organization - were essentially booted out of Dunkin Donuts for their infamously sub-standard hygiene practices.
It would be a shame if they failed because they ended up with shady partners.
Dunkin's Donuts are much better than Tim's -- Tim's has better coffee. I relocated from T.O. to NYC last year so I have the option to visit both -- though apparently the reason Reise pushed for Tim's was that they could use the on-site kitchens to make the donuts fresh on the premesis (Tim's in Canada are made at a central baker, frozen, shipped and reheated). Remains to be seen how they will do, but Penn Stn sees near a million people passing through daily, so there'll be good traffic.
That's a lot of donut talk -- you can take the boy out of Canada but you can't take the Canada out of the boy, eh?
I look at the photo of those boxes and, in spite of myself, instead of thinking, "strike bad" I think, "Ooh, boxes for moving day!"
I need to get me to a supermarket.
@ToExPat
All Tim Horton's franchise restaurants in Canada do fry/bake their donuts on site in their kitchen. Bagels, bread, nanaimo bars, danishes are baked at a central Locatione and shipped frozen to the franchise stores with kitchen so they can be reheated and served. Cookies and cakes are freshly made on site.
The Tim stores with kitchen, ship fried/baked donuts to Tim Kiosks nearby twice a day.
From,
a former Tim's Donut decorator/Kitchen staff
(yes there is a job title called the Donut decorator, you didn't think the chocholate dips got on by themselves did you? mmm chocolate! :)
@Tazzy
Wait, the sprinkles don't just jump on the doughnut on their own out of pure excitement?! RIPOFF and what a let down! Timmies, you suck. LOL just kidding.
Thanks for clearing that up -- I was told the donuts weren't baked on-site.
Though I still prefer Dunkin' -- you seem to get more dough for your dough -- which also explains the rampant obesity south of the 49th.
Hey Tazzy
Can i get more info on the practice ? I was under the impression that somewhere in the last decade Timmy switched to all frozen donuts.
If your statements are true, that changes the game.
After reading the article about the claims of the Dunlap Defenders, it comes off as a group sulking over it's inability to get it together more than anything else.
I don't think the other group will have any less reverence or respect for a historical site than the former.
If Metrolinx decided to use non-ATU/non-TTC crews on the Transit City lines, while operating them in TTC livery/ticketing, I think the ATU would go crazy.
That said, when Dublin built their light rail system they built it separately from the existing State bus/rail company with a different union and a no-strike contract. Needless to say it's wildly popular...
It would be awesome if there was no TTC employees/union involved in this. More independent pieces prevent total shut downs.
@that guy
Or people just don't seem to care about the shutdown. Take last year's YRT strike. There are two different companies that compete in the York Region Transit system, and neither can afford to strike for too long. Also, the major routes are covered by both companies, so if one isn't there, the other still is so the people are much less impacted.
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