City
The case against Rob Ford's cancellation of Transit City
"Rumours of Transit City's death have been greatly exaggerated," Joe Mihevc told a scrum of reporters earlier today at City Hall. The confident proclamation comes after the Toronto city councillor solicited legal advice on whether or not Mayor Rob Ford had the authority to cancel unilaterally the transportation plan put forward by the Miller administration when he first took office over a year ago. In a nutshell, the legal document contained below puts forward the argument that only city council itself has the power to take such action. According to Mihevc, "the mayor was speaking for himself and no one else."
So what was the last plan that city council did approve? Why, Transit City, of course. Contrary to claims that council never approved the plan that Ford cancelled, Mihevc and his lawyer contend that there is a record of votes on Miller's LRT-based project. "Transit City came to Council as part of the Climate Change, Clean Air and Sustainable Energy Action Plan in 2007," reads the report. "After that, City Council considered and voted on the necessary elements of the program as they came before Council. The process was granular, because this is how City Council does its work."
You can peruse the document below for a closer look at the legalese, but perhaps what's most interesting about today's news — if it can really be called that — is the timing. Coming just a week after Karen Stintz and other councillors have started to push for transit plan based on compromise, Mihevc's entrance into the fray might lead Ford to dig his heels in even further on his vision for underground transit.
Or not — it's not as if he sounded amenable to changing course in the first place, after all. And based on the general trend around city council, perhaps this legal backing will embolden Mihevc's fellow councillors to demand that transit planning be put back on council's agenda. Stranger things have happened.
Transit City Legal Advice
Discussion
58 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
To paraphrase Thomas Frank, what's the matter with Kansas?!
http://www3.ttc.ca/PDF/About_the_TTC/Transit_City_Map_Aug_2010.pdf
...then explain to me how two new LRTs extending across Scarborough and an LRT replacement for the SRT is worse than one LRT along the same Eglinton route, a delayed SRT replacement, and a vapourous promise of a Sheppard subway extension funded by developers aaaaany time now...
Yes, at least seven times:
http://fordfortoronto.mattelliott.ca/2012/01/30/council-votes-transit-city/
Or not — it's not as if he sounded amenable to changing course in the first place, after all."
That is an attempt at political analysis. Hedging with "or not" is what makes it political analysis worth mocking.
Seriously, this guy is making Lastman look like a saint.
the people have spoken.
He has to change his first name to Edsel.
As someone who lives and works in Scarberia and uses transit everyday. Please post examples of what we would be getting to make transit any better. You're full of shit if you think the alternative to transit city is better off for us.
Nobody in the city knew what LRT was!!! The only examples that Ford's campaign team used were St.Clair and the SRT. Billboards with a bunch of black and white circles and text didn't help.
The TTC should have postered the city with concrete examples of what LRT would look like in Toronto. Like the Queensway south of High Park. Or look all over North America and there's plenty of comparisons - Calgary, Houston, Minneapolis, as CodeRed's postcards show.
As a techy guy, I like to think that publicity is all fluff... but bad Transit City publicity is a big part of the reason for all this insanity.
Hey Joe, remember when all tw lefties in council voted to give the Mayor more power while Miller was in? Well, over confident short sightedness ... And well, karma is a bitch!
Ah yes. When you can't shoot the message, shoot the messenger. It's the Ford Nation way!
Maybe it's safer over at the sun where they bury their heads for stories like this and prefer to have a circle jerk at how impressive rob ford is for lusing 6 pounds in a week.
Take a few seconds to be informed. The law firm who did this report is a form that pushes a left wing social agenda. Their web site even says as much.
Why is Joe Mihevc not willing to say who paid for the report? Is it a back room handshake that they will be taken care of in some other manner in the future? No lawyers work for free. Again I ask, what is Mihevc hiding?
You say I'm trying to shift people's attention. I say you are blinded by your own ideology and not even willing to question Mihevc.
stick to what you're good at and keep pushing buttons that create nice lights.
This is Toronto, The Big Smoke. We need subways. Stay the course Rob Ford, stay the course.
You do realize that a "subway" (heavy rail transit - HRT) and LRT (light rail transit) are different based on the type of transit and the way they opperate not based on where they are located (above ground, at grade or below ground)?
IMO this entire debate of subways vs LRTs has gone away from what they really are and what will best suit Toronto to where they are located vertically (which really doesn't matter because both can be put at grade or underground...I'm assuming that Toronto will not do a "sky train" sort of thing).
It would be great if Toronto had built a more extensive subway system when it had the chance years ago. But it didn't. "The World" is now opting for more affordable methods of transportation such as LRTs when it decides to expands its transportation network. Transit City was a way for Toronto to catch up to "The World" and expand ours.
But of course Ford and his minions don't want Toronto to catch up. They want to keep us down and backwards. I'm still not sure why, other than some misguided and wrongheaded notion of what conservatism is.
...with what money? The city itself won't pay for it, the province won't pay for it, and Ford's own handpicked private development liasion said no one else will pay for it. We'd all love subways. We'd have loved them 15 years ago when Mike Harris gutted transfers from provincial coffers to Toronto transit. Unless the province or Ottawa has a sudden desire to divert billions of taxpayer dollars from across the province/country into Rob Ford's pet project, they're not going to happen. Since they're not going to happen, and the estimated passenger load on the existing system is not going to drop any time soon, what would any of you propose to deal with the problem?
A solution was planned, funded, and started by the elected representatives of the city's and province's population. Ford tossed the whole thing like one of those dictators he likes to compare his opponents to while claiming a mandate from "the taxpayers", as if they are a homogeneous group (federal parties like to do this with "Canadians want this, Canadians want that", etc.). Where oh where is Ford going to find the funding for his pet project, and how much longer will people unlucky enough to be in areas left unserved by his actions have to wait for improved service?
I find it kind of awesome that this conclusion was reached on my birthday. #1 gift!
"I didn’t overstep my boundaries, I did what the taxpayers want. They want subways. That’s it. They don’t want streetcars. I was out in Scarborough over the weekend, people came up to me and said they want subways. That’s it. It’s the taxpayers. The taxpayers want. I was elected on subways, they want subways, I was out on Saturday, people want subways. That’s it. It’s all subways. It’s all about subways. All about subways. So it’s the taxpayers that elected me to get the subways in and that’s what we’re gonna do. It’s like winning an election. So if they voted me in, that means I don’t win an election? It doesn’t make sense."
http://fordfortoronto.mattelliott.ca/2012/02/03/wasted-money-putting-rob-fords-transit-city-cancellation-costs-into-context/