OT: today is the day

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On 10/27/2010 11:40 AM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 01:05:44AM -0400, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
>> This was a success, though not in the way he or the NIMBY groups who
>> opposed the bridge thought it would be. Porter Air built up a
>> first-class airline on the island despite what a columnist characterized
>> as "the world's most pointless ferry ride". We now have a viable option
>> for short-hop flights to various destinations that we didn't have
>> before. That's a good thing and we have David Miller to thank for it.
>
> And you don't think Porter would have done well if there was a bridge?
> Your argument makes no sense.

The argument, which really isn't mine but one that I read and thought 
made sense, is that Air Canada/Jazz was pushing hard for the bridge to 
expand operations at the Island Airport, which is now called Billy 
Bishop Airport, apparently. (I wasn't aware of the name change until a 
few weeks ago.) When the bridge was killed, AC effectively abandoned the 
island and that left the door open for Porter to start an airline 
offering exceptional service and flourish with no competition at the 
airport. The very thing the NIMBYs and Miller wanted to do, which was to 
make the airport not viable for commercial operations by depriving it of 
the convenience of having a bridge, was the thing that protected Porter 
and made it such a resounding success that today, that airport is busier 
than it ever has been. That is an exemplar of the law of unintended 
consequences.

>> Having a "light rail" line that bisects streets destroys neighbourhoods.
>> Spadina is now essentially a highway with a rail line through the middle
>> with lots of ugly overhead wiring. Merchants along St. Clair Ave. W.
>> fought hard against the same thing in their neighbourhood but lost.
>> Arguably, you couldn't make Sheppard Ave. much uglier than it already is
>> by doing the same but light rail lines do have their drawbacks, not that
>> busses are a wonderful substitute. Look at the Scarborough LRT. It has
>> to be replaced because politicians of the day made the expedient rather
>> than the right choice. It has never worked reliably and now, they
>> apparently can't get replacement cars. The right choice was and
>> continues to be a subway. That was the original vision and hopefully,
>> that will be implemented. It's amazing that Ford's plan of completing
>> the Sheppard subway and replacement of the Scarborough LRT with a subway
>> line is seen as "radical". That plan has been in existence for more than
>> 20 years but no one has had the political will or vision to implement
>> it. It remains to be seen how successful Ford will be at it. It's insane
>> that we're still arguing over something that should have been completed
>> 20 years ago.
>
> And if the car guys had their way spadina would have been an expressway
> 30 years ago.  Now that would almost certainly have destroyed the
> neighbourhood.

It was stupid to stop that expressway. It was the usual NIMBY nonsense 
that crippled this city. We ended up with a pointless highway to nowhere 
that created more traffic problems than it solved by having these stumps 
of highways ending on east/west roads.

> If they really wanted replacement cars I am sure someone would build
> them, but they might not be cheap because they wouldn't be reusing an
> existing design.  The fact toronto's subway is completely nonstandard
> makes them more expensive than they had to be.
>
>> Read<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Relief_Line>  if you want to
>> have a good laugh over the grandiose plans of 1985 for "Network 2011".
>> None of it ever got implemented. You can bet expensive consultants were
>> paid handsomely for all sorts of reports, models, etc. but it amounted
>> to nothing.
>>
>> We have 248 streetcars, most of which are apparently near the end of
>> their service life as per WikiPedia
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Transit_Commission>. "Unique track
>> gauge" alone sounds like it's just a recipe for overpaying. The best
>> analogy I can think of is PCs vs. proprietary mini-computers and we know
>> how that one turned out.
>
> The only part of Toronto's system that uses a standard track gauge is
> the LRT.  The subway and streetcars use the same gauge and nothing else
> in the world uses it.
>
>> Having said that, I doubt Ford will be able to convince Council to get
>> rid of streetcars so those who like streetcars don't have to worry about
>> this issue, at least not until there is a viable replacement, which
>> isn't going to happen anytime soon.
>
> I sure hope so.
>
>> By the way, reading in the second WikiPedia article about the Queen and
>> Eglinton subway lines that were started but never got completed is sad.
>> Imagine how differently the city would have evolved had there been two
>> more east/west lines.
>
> Well the queen subway was a streetcar based subway.  Could have been
> nice given how awful service is on the queenline through downtown.
>
>> More people vote directly for the Mayor of Toronto than for any other
>> politician in Canada, including our Premier and Prime Minister, both of
>> whom are elected directly only by their respective parties and then by
>> constituents in their respective ridings. Given that, Ford seems to have
>> done rather well for "a right wing retard", which goes to show that
>> success, or lack of thereof, in high school has little correlation to
>> success later in life, assuming that he really did struggle to get
>> through high school.
>>
>> I recall a Princeton grad, no less, who authorized "wise guy" political
>> ads during this mayoral campaign. It just goes to show that formal
>> education and common sense aren't necessarily correlated either. (What
>> in the world was he thinking anyway? What a stain on an otherwise
>> reasonable campaign.)
>>
>> To you and 95,481 other people, apparently. Unfortunately for Pantalone,
>> 289,832 people thought that Smitherman was a better choice, and 383,501
>> people, almost one in two of those who voted, thought that Ford was the
>> best choice. Every one of the 37 other candidates managed to garner some
>> votes, including Gerald Derome, who came in last with 251 votes. Watch
>> that guy - he has nowhere to go but up. :)
>
> Well I hope Ford manages to clean up city hall and get things to be
> more efficient.  Unfortunately streetcars are more efficient than busses
> and subways are stupidly expensive to build, so he doesn't seem to be
> in complete agreement with himself on that.

I don't think anyone argues that subways are cheap to build, not even 
Ford, but the argument is that light rail lines have to be replaced 
every 25 to 30 years and have problems with inclement weather, of which 
we have no shortage, but subways last three to four times longer and 
aren't affected by inclement weather. "Cheaper" isn't always "best value 
for the money" and you're the first to argue that in the context of 
computers.

>> Toronto has the highest level of business taxes in the GTA. That causes
>> many businesses to move to Mississauga, Vaughan, or Markham, which all
>> have substantially lower business taxes but higher residential property
>> taxes. That contributes to urban sprawl, smog, reduced viability of
>> public transit (you need higher densities for mass transit), and
>> gridlock, all things that no matter whom you voted for, you would
>> probably agree are undesirable things. Cutting business taxes would be a
>> good start to making Toronto more competitive in the region. I don't
>> want Toronto to be a bedroom community for the outlying regions. I want
>> people to be able to live close to where they work and vice versa. Only
>> then can we put a dent into the serious problems that we have with the
>> unsustainable sprawl, traffic, and concomitant environmental impact.
>
> I am not sure there is room in Toronto for a lot of new businesses.

There is lots of room in Toronto for new businesses. We just squander it 
and for reasons I outlined above, investors would rather build 
residential units rather than commercial units.

> I also didn't know my property taxes in Markham were high, but I don't
> know what people pay in Toronto.

The City of Toronto has the lowest level of residential taxes in the 
GTA. Commercial properties are taxed at the highest level in the GTA. 
Rectifying that is of course politically suicidal so it's unlikely to 
change.

> As for Toronto being a bedroom community, don't worry.  It is much too
> expensive to live in for that to happen.

It has already happened. There is no such thing as "rush hour" or "going 
against traffic" any more. Traffic northbound from Toronto to Markham is 
often as heavy as traffic going south.

> Adding more business to Toronto
> will do the reverse in fact and make traffic worse as all those people
> out in mississauga and markham and such are commuting to jobs in Toronto.

We're building lots of condos all over the city. Where are all those 
people going to work? As Herb Richter asked, what is the point of adding 
greater density if all we're going to do is force people to commute to 
some other jurisdiction? Good planning should require a mix of 
residential and commercial space.

>> In 2006, the city allegedly overpaid by $100 million for new subway cars
>> due to single-source contracts. That isn't exactly pocket change and
>> that is just one of many things that Council spent money on. Who knows
>> how they spent the other few billion? We already know that some
>> councillors spent their office budgets stupidly while some councillors
>> were promoting stupidities like $3.5 million flag poles. If the
>> allegations of overpaying $100 million on the subway cars are true, and
>> we'll never know because it already happened, that was $100 million that
>> couldn't have been spent on something else, or $100 million too much
>> that they took from taxpayers, who in turn couldn't have spent it on
>> something else themselves. There is always an opportunity cost for such
>> decisions, no matter how noble the motives may be. I've read irrelevant
>> arguments of how buying from Bombardier, we were supporting a major
>> employer in Thunder Bay. It isn't the job of the TTC or Toronto City
>> Council to engage in economic development efforts beyond its borders.
>
> Oh having the city councel cleaned up would be great.  I recall the
> computer contract scandel and there have been others.  Clearly the city
> hasn't been run well in many cases.
>
> Now can anyone prove that they did in fact overpay?  How much did other
> places want to charge for subway cars for toronto's custom tracks?
> A lot of places don't even want to touch toronto's system because it
> doesn't really fit in their factories.  Bombardier knows the toronto
> system and has made trains for it before.  They know when they are
> getting into.  Often you end up going with a low bid and then end up
> with cost overruns or things that don't work because they didn't really
> know what they were getting into.

Siemens claimed they could save the city at least $100 million if they 
were allowed to bid in 2006. We'll never know if their bid would have 
been viable or if by their mere presence Bombardier would have sharpened 
its pencil.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis
1419-3266 Yonge St.
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

<http://dinamis.com>
+1 416-410-3326
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