MB Toronto
Morning Brew: RCMP at the G20 meeting, animal costume rentals, road tolls to pay for new subways, summer Gardiner and Lakeshore construction, mega doda bust, brazen thefts in hospital
In preparation for the G20 meetings in Toronto in June, the RCMP appear to be either taking security extremely seriously and stepping it up in a big way, or giving a staggering number of officers an opportunity to be tourists for a few days. The police are aiming to reserve 5,500 hotel rooms per night for nine nights, a number that nearly doubles the requirements for the last meeting in Pittsburgh in September of 2009.
It's hard to put a price on community engagement and the happy smiles of children, but councilor Adrian Heaps is standing strong and defending the $439.50 he spent and expensed to rent a few animal mascot costumes for an annual family ice skating event in Scarborough in 2009. Chipper the Chipmunk, Baby Billy the Brown Bear, and Peggy the Penguin also made an appearance at the event this February.
Mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson says she has a solution curb our traffic congestion problems and provide a huge boost in funding for much needed public transit expansion. A temporary $5 toll for use of the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner that would be in effect for 10 years, would generate $500-million per year; enough to build 58km of new subways at a cost of $13-billion. And then she woke up.
Commuters who use the Gardiner and Lakeshore Boulevard are in for some higher than usual patience-testing starting in May. A slew of resurfacing and bridge repair work is going to result in several ongoing lane reductions and road closures. Given the nature of our city's highways, I suspect there will be some spillover effect onto the 401 and other major east/west in-town arteries as well, and air conditioning use (along with road rage potential) is going to go up.
Police seized a whopping 1,282 kilograms (an estimated $2.5million worth) of doda, a highly addictive, illegal "spice" derived from poppy husks, that when consumed results in a euphoric high similar to but milder than morphine or heroin.
Recognize these two men? They're wanted for theft of a most lowlife nature after a woman was robbed of her jewelry as she lay near death in her Toronto East General hospital bed. The patient died before police arrived to investigate the thefts, but surveillance video has a rather clear image of the suspects.
Photo: "Bikelaned" by Trevor Haldenby, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
Discussion
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I know people will say that they won't use the highways and local roads will jam up. That's probably true but there has to be some way to capture money from people outside of the city who use the roads on a daily basis.
As an ex-905er, I would welcome the tolls only because I know I could get downtown and back again in 20 minutes and never have to worry about rush-hour traffic or leaving really early.
And I absolutely hate that we're having the G20 here.
and that's a good thing.
this city's gonna see some crazy riots that weekend.
ummmm? cottage country or video camera ???
Can protestors do so without inciting a riot, please?
Can protestors do so without inciting a riot, please?
You're such a tool Jerrold.
Congestion is bad and it's time we start paying for it - when demand outstrips supply you raise the price. Norway, by the way, has free tuition for all post-secondary (university, college, etc.) education. Culturally it's accepted that driving is expensive and education is cheap. Shame it's the other way around here.
Something else that needs to be considered... if the 404/DVP becomes a toll road, be prepared for all the nearby north-south streets to become clogged with drivers avoiding the tolls. Bayview in particular will grind to a halt, because it's basically the only other continuous route on that side that goes all the way from downtown to above the 401. Same goes for streets like Sheppard and Wilson/York Mills if the 401 gets a toll.
I would also like to note that from my house (A little north of Don Mills & Steeles, Thornhill) to work is 20-45 minutes by car, but if we were to take public transit all the way down, it takes at LEAST 2 hours. I'm not about to waste an extra 2 hours per day on the useless TTC.
Sadly, it's true. The gov't would squander all the cash on the implementation and only years 7-10 would be profitable. And yea, it'd take them easily 6 years to get this fully implemented.
"And, I think we all know that when it comes to the government, there is no such thing as "temporary" tolls, taxes or fees. Once implemented, they will NOT be removed."
Yep, just like GST, PST, and now HST.
What does that lead to when it compounds for businesses? Moving OUTSIDE Toronto.
I was wondering what the picture of a bike "sharrow" had to do with these blurbs...If anybody's curious about what a bike "sharrow" is, or what the perceived benefits (and possible risks!) are of relying on these paint markings to improve cycling safety, feel free to read and comment on a blog posting I'm writing on the subject of "Bikelane Boondoggles" at:
http://thumbshift.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/bikelane-boondoggles/
Thanks
Jo
Daniel ......... Toronto
http://my.opera.com/dandmb50toronto/blog/
This comes from local, US, and international cost benefit studies looking at introducing tolls as a means to reduce traffic on highways. As a means to reduce traffic, tolls are ineffective, and any effects are usually wiped out withing 2 years.
While public transit is not an alternative for many people, something has to be done rather urgently considering that commute times in the GTA have doubled in the past year! As the population also increases, an efficient alternative to roads and driving has to be considered that can benefit as many people as possible.
Driving should be a privilege and not a right. Driving in this province is utterly pathetic. I'd completely be up for re-testing on a province-wide scale if it were for standards that are WAY above the current ones. Unfortunately that also means that a very significant portion of our population would no longer be allowed to drive, and so this'll never happen.
Driving will always be a pathetic activity in this province because it's not a priority.
Tolls will not fly in this city (sigh - here I go again, beating a dead horse with the brain-dead rabble on this site) because TORONTO DOES NOT HAVE A NETWORK OF 6 LANE ARTERIAL ROADS. The 401/Gardiner/DVP are our arterial roads.
You wanna talk demolishing Bloor/Danforth, Kingston Rd., Queen St. and a few other streets to make way for 6 lane arterial roads (something that HAS been done in all those precious city's the granola set loves to compare us to), then MAYBE you'd have a case for tolls on our grossly inadequate road infrastructure.
Otherwise, SFTU with these 'pie in the sky' schemes to remove money from the people who actually work in the GTA.
Run some of the GO Trains, subways, streetcars, and buses more often and traffic will be better for everyone. Improve transit service downtown and some of us will be able to switch from taxis to TTC.
People in Toronto wouldn't pay anything for this, it'd be the people that live outside Toronto and work inside Toronto that'd be paying. And that's exactly who they want to TAX with this artificial bullshit.
@rob There's no such road as the Allen Expressway anymore. Once the Lawrence-Allen Revitalization Project gets finished with Allen Road, you'd be better off charging parking fees rather than tolls. Of the three "preferred" options of the Allen Road Technical Feasibility Study, the minimum reduction of autocapacity per peak hour at Lawrence offramps will be 300 to 500 southbound and 200 to 300 hundred northbound (all 3 remove the channelized right turn lanes and the ramps on the southside of Lawrence).
http://www.toronto.ca/planning/pdf/lawrenceallen_allen_road_tech_feasibility.pdf
They are also not the only option, you can take non-toll routes, though the system is set up to discourage it, there are options.
Why not toll the incoming commuters from outside the GTA (i.e East and West of the City) Isn't living in Markham and Richmond Hill Punishment enough to users of the DVP?
Move closer to your job: you pay Toronto more taxes for your place.
Move out of Toronto: deal with traffic coming into Toronto, and potentially idiotically-imposed toll fees.
Kenny, please don't paint protesters with the riot brush. That's exactly that mentality that the police and the ones protected by the barbed wire fence want you to believe: that protesters are violent and cause undue disruption to society. Sometimes they even go so far as to hire riot inducers, who dress up like anarchists and cover their faces, to start riots and give protesters/anarchists a bad name. That gives the police an excuse to lock up those pesky protesters that are getting in the way of the few important rich dudes deciding the fate of the world.
I personally am looking forward to the G20. Let's show the world that Toronto also has an opinion, and we're not afraid to say it.
Sarah Thomson obviously either hasn't thought this pipe dream all the way through, or she lacks the practical insight to do so. Which tells you a lot about what kind of a mayor she would make.