MB Toronto
Morning Brew: Ford is against OneCity, Captain John's could float on, Pride still deciding on QuAIA, stuck bike at Spadina update, more fierce weather, and Jays lose
Well, no big surprise there. Rob Ford says he doesn't support Karen Stintz and Glenn De Baeremaeker's OneCity transit plan - even though it includes the Sheppard subway he wants - because the TTC chair and vice-chair plan to fund the expansion project with property tax. The mayor is sticking to his hope the private sector will pay out for subways. Get set for more transit showdowns this summer.
If you're wondering where on Earth this transit plan came from, The Star tells how councillors and TTC chair and vice-chair Karen Stintz and Glenn De Baeremaeker carefully nurtured and hatched the plan.
Yesterday we told you Captain John's floating restaurant had closed. Today, though, The Star reports the ship itself could linger on while a marine court decides its fate. The Toronto Port Authority ordered that the ship "refrain from leaving" (no problem - the ship has no engine and has been wedged in the lake mud since 1975) and "Captain John" Letnik, who runs the business and lives on the boat, says he ain't sunk yet.
Pride organizers say they don't know if Queers Against Israeli Apartheid - the controversial group that could have caused the event funding issues - will be marching in the parade on Canada Day. The issues centre around the use of the word "apartheid" in the group's name, which people perceive as discriminatory or and anti-Semitic.
The owner of the bicycle photographed stuck in the revolving turnstile at Spadina station has been found by The Star. Turns out Roney Lewis was told not to bring his bike on the subway at rush hour and ended up getting his bike jammed in the one-way gate. Oh, and it took four hours to remove the bike. Yikes.
Grid's Ed Keenan has been chewing on the Ontario chief coroner's recommendation that bike helmets become mandatory for all cyclists. The writer says we should focus on providing more bike infrastructure instead of legislating safety gear.
"Oven-like" conditions could be heading into southern Ontario later today, tomorrow and over the long weekend and Environment Canada says temperatures could hit the high 30s, feeling like even more with the humidity. Yep, that's right, an oven. Toronto should be slightly cooler, with temperatures topping out around 32 degrees.
GUESS THE INTERSECTION:
This week's round of vintage street spotting brings us to, well, it's a secret. See if your detective skills can pinpoint these two city streets. Answers in the comments' section.
IN OTHER NEWS:
- Red Sox tee off on Ricky Romero in series finale [CBC]
- Whoops! Toronto Water learns it underbilled 50,000 water customers [The Star]
- Toronto police corruption trial: Guilty verdicts on obstructing justice charges [The Star]
You can catch up on all things blogTO on the go. Download our apps for the iPhone and iPad. On Android? We've got one coming for you too.
Photo: "Endangered Species 36" by Dominic Bugatto in the blogTO Flickr Pool.
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[*] unless it's the lefties' plan
Lets say I have a billion dollars. What does that even GET me? Can I name a subway line? is that worth a billion dollars to me? I really want someone to explain Ford's logic to me (even if it's broken logic) because I just flat out don't understand where he thinks this money could materialize from, and why.
Buy cheap land. Get a local government to provide infrastructure (transportation, water, sewage and fire/medical services), and all of a sudden the land that you own has appreciated in value (because more people want to live there now).
The problem is that real estate developers (many of whom funded Ford's campaign) don't want to pay for anything themselves...because it reduces their profit margin.
This is partly why we see the urban sprawl that we see in Ontario today. The large developers buying up former farmer fields at cheap interest rates and local governments putting in the infrastructure through property taxes. It's led to less biodiversity, more pressure on our transportation systems, and more pollution.
Meanwhile, people who bought cheap houses at low interest rates when gas was thirty cents cheaper now find that they're sitting on the 401 for two hours while expensive gas cuts into their household expenses.
That's a bit of a tangent, though. Simply put, what the developers really want is for all three levels of government to fund a subway so that the land they own along the proposed line will appreciate in value.
There you. Hope that helps.
People who LIVE or WORK in this city should have to kick in to pay for this TTC dream.
That means renters and commuters too. Why the fuque is this huge tab only being put on the shoulders of homeowners?
There should be a one time per year charge to every person who lives or earns a paycheque in Toronto. That's fair.
Only homeowners pay? That's bullshit.
Renters will pay too presumably, when landlords pass some of the additional costs on.
As for commuters, highway tolls :)
First of all renters do pay to cover the cost of property taxes, it's in the rent.
Commuters obviously pay for the TTC directly, I spend $115.50 monthly.
At the highest rate the backbreaking amount will be $13.34 or roughly the price of sweet potato fries and a cheap pint. You sir, are a miser.
I think the majority of Toronto residents would gladly pay $13.34 monthly to reduce traffic, smog and commute time. If you own a $400,000 home and can't afford this then maybe a Third Wold country on your pension would suit your needs better. I'll help you pack.
Best solution is to have a regional sales tax to fund metrolinx, which would oversee construction of regional transit and community specific transit. But this isn't going to happen any time soon.
Now people who live outside the city, but use Toronto services, should also be paying. But that's been an issue for big city services since ...ever.. for every big city. Ask Manhattanites what they think of New Jersey.
Not sure if the Canadian legal system would allow it, but an idea to consider.
That this crass decision has the potential to add to homelessness in Toronto is not the on,y reason that the city needs to cease this ridiculous action. There's the iconic status of the restaurant, the decades-long tradition of great cuisine and the interruption of the Captain's efforts to sell the ship which is a wild overstep into the working of the free market.
This also does not address the DRL. The Don Mills line needs to run west of Yonge and become the airport line. We can't have two lines feeding into Yonge. One line passing through Yonge means less people feeding into Yonge. Why is Don Mills an express line? All the dense residential pockets south of Danforth are being ignored. The King streetcar is a joke. So why are we sinking money into a pointless Queens Quay East route, when a properly built DRL could accomplish all this.
At least with the OneCity plan (also: dumb name. What is gained by omitting the space between words?) the proposed sources of funding have been identified. I'm a Toronto resident (renter! non-car owner! bike rider/transit taker!) who works outside of the city and frankly, I'd be happy to pay a monthly fee for the next X years to get a comprehensive plan like this done.
When I'm in US cities for business (as I happen to be right now) and ask my clients about the best way to get from the downtown area to the airport, they nearly always suggest transit. Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, New York. . .
They're often a little surprised when I tell them that we don't have a subway line to our airport in Toronto. This should be a priority. Sure, I can write off my $50 cab ride home from Pearson, but that's just more cars on the highways and more smog in our city. Toronto needs to be able to move people efficiently and in a cleaner way than we do now. For my money, OneCity gets a whole lot closer than subways built a station at a time with along Eglinton and Sheppard with phantom capital.