News Flash
Rob Ford elected mayor of Toronto
Rob Ford has been elected the mayor of Toronto. Almost immediately after the first results were revealed after 8 p.m., CP24 was the first to announce Ford as the winner. Following soon after, Global News, the CBC, and The Toronto Star also declared Ford the winner.
With 1709 of 1870 polls reporting, Ford has 48.381% of the vote, Smitherman follows at 34.633% and Joe Pantalone comes in at 11.362%.
Without dwelling on the obvious, if those numbers hold, it'll mean that even if all Pantalone supporters had voted for Smitherman, that still wouldn't be enough to bridge the gap to Ford.
In other good news for the Ford family, Doug Ford also won his councillor's seat in Ward 2.
Stay tuned for more live updates in our Toronto Election 2010 Results post.
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But I'm still proud to be a Torontonian, I still think Miller did a damn god job, I will not leave this city, and, if necessary, I will fight for this city.
In any case, so much for progress. Hooray for 4 years of oncoming stagnation.
"Oh hello Mayors Newsom, Adams, Villaraigosa... the seminar on Streetcars, Bicycle Lanes and Urban Development is down the hall to your right. Yes Mayor Bloomberg, you will be speaking at the Reforming City Schools panel discussion afterwards. Mayor Robertson, your keynote address on Property Tax Incentives for Sustainability is at 4:30 pm. No, Mayor Emmanuel, the Green Roof Heat Island Reduction presentation is not until this evening after the black tie dinner.
Oh, Mayor Ford, hi. The children's playroom is on the left, and we have left you a pile of red crayons and budget reports that you can draw angry faces on. Would you like some juice?"
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Look, I'm an ex-pat so this is all entertainment to me. But what have you people done to yourselves? Enjoy your Tea Party, Toronto.
WE WANT TO PURGE THE WASTEFUL SPENDING of the Damned Burocrats with our Credit Cards now!
WE WANT SUBWAYS...NO STREETCARS Blocking our Streets!
DOWN with the Miller's Damned new TAXES!!!
STOP the Bloody Union's TERROR and Exploitation, we can't afford it and we TAXPAYERS can't have THE ENDLESS PERKS and CREDIT CARDS!!!
The rest of you can go live in the Yukon.
But that aside, it's true that the Twin Cities looked to Toronto for inspiration when building their light rail line (and now the second one). And you know what? The Minneapolis LRT is much nicer than any Toronto subway, let alone streetcar. Odd that Toronto doesn't want one.
The reason Torontonians don't want what US cities have been busy building over the last decade is that people don't travel all that much and they mistakenly think American cities died long ago. They can't tear their eyes away from the Leaf game long enough to realize that cities that used to be very anti-bike like NYC are now super bike-awesome, and cities that used to be very pro-car, like Phoenix and Atlanta, are now building LRT and Streetcar. It will be a long uphill fight under Ford to keep the city from sliding backward into the uneducated deep...
Are you listening Dalton?I suppose now the Ontario Dalton Liberals will block Ford at every corner and try to tax fund buy our votes before next Provincial election in 2011.
http://puffincast.blogspot.com/2010/10/episode-15-rob-ford-wins.html
AHHHHHH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I'm not laughing at you because I'd like to see this happen, but AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
"I do hope he cuts the land transfer tax to help new and upcoming buyers and to at least attract more people in buying into the city instead of outside."
Why would I buy a house (condo, really) in Toronto for 500K and work like a dog for someone else when I can get a house twice its size in Guelph for less than 200K and use the rest of my mortgage to set up my own business? For the parks, arts, big city perks, and festivals that are going to be slashed and eliminated? For the awesome public transit? Puh-lease. People would be better served leaving this city.
Another person who can't accept reality.
I love when someone calls out everyone against them as being uneducated and then displays their own lack of knowledge.
LRT is very, very expensive and the cities you list don't have the same winter conditions as Toronto which necessitate more frequent (and expensive) remediation which also leads to congestion in road traffic that increases the cost even more.
LRT is less efficient than a bus, doesn't get stuck because it can't maneuver around an obstacle on the line, blocks traffic in 2 lanes when not in a dedicated line, is slower than buses and there are more reasons why LRT is a dumb move for a city.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8655
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/why-is-public-transit-more-expensive-than-it-used-to-be/
And hello, I was talking about --streetcars-- in DC, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Detroit, Cinncinnati and Tempe. Not LRT. (Ok, so Detroit is calling themselves an LRT but it runs down Woodward and is pretty close to a streetcar.) These are as pure a streetcar as the tracks on Spadina or Queen and very much copies of the Portland Streetcar (which is different than Portland's TriMet LRT).
I did mention actual LRT in Charlotte, Phoenix, Houston and Minneapolis since those systems are closer to what Transit City had in mind. (And do note that Minneapolis has far harsher winters than Toronto, as do many northern European cities. Heck, Boston and Pittsburgh and Buffalo and Brooklyn get more snow. Weather is a total red herring here.)
I see you are a fan of the Cato Institute, which unfortunately now means we can ignore everything you say, since anyone who swallows their swill is beyond help. (Are you even Canadian?) But my entire point was that while you can get lost in the numbers on LRT/streetcar vs bus in terms of operations (most of which can be handled via better ROW, fares and other tools not currently used much in Toronto), the evidence is in the construction shovels seen all over North America that obviously there is some merit out there to vehicles with steel wheels. Whether you are talking tourism, spurring development, reliability or whatever it is that gets people to clamber into those big metal boxes to work each day, there is something nonlinear and difficult to capture that only comes out in the results.
Great cities use rail. Crappy cities do not. Crappy cities become great cities therefore by building more rail. Are you really going to refuse that big-picture logic? Cause you're running out of case studies to support you. I mean, once Phoenix builds and LRT and Atlanta builds a streetcar who are looking to as your role model? Oklahoma City? Oops, they're planning to build a streetcar now too... (http://bit.ly/ajQcLO)
Ford is way, way, way out of line to argue for ripping out streetcars and canceling Transit City. Improve, revise, reform - but do not remove.
I'd be curious to know if Regina is right. Or if it just sounds like it might be right.
Anyone can find a collective to support any kind of sense/nonsense. What your really saying is, I agree with these particular cities and not with mine. And that's fine but don't dress it up as collective intelligence.
It's not like I'm cherrypicking "particular cities" to identify with -- I'm trying to identify a trend in places that are either successful or want to be successful. Streetcar-haters have to realize that whatever they think of the plodding metal can in front of them, there is something going on in terms of how to do streetcars and how to make cities better. No one is ripping out streetcars for buses (Philly did it last in 1992, and just reinstalled streetcars in 2005). All the cool kids are adding rail lines instead. Ergo anyone who runs for mayor and says "I'll rip out those damn streetcars and cancel any new ones" is a fool.
TTC streetcars are far from optimal but they need reform, not removal.
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