Richard Florida - the anti-Barber

Richard Florida is a welcome addition to the Globe & Mail. His recent column:

Wake up, Toronto – you're bigger than you think

implores Torontonians to think of this city as the hub of a large regional economy - which Florida labels as “Tor-Buff-Chester”.

The concept of a megalopolis is not new - in fact I have a book from my childhood identifying 'Bos-Was' and 'Chi-Pitts'. Now we have the extra-extended Golden Horseshoe.

It is important to realize that we can leverage our place in a regional economy. Improvements to the transportation links are important - but so is mindset.

Of course, for the prototypical downtown Toronto socialist dinosaur, thinking of Toronto as part of a region is going to cause headaches - especially when that region extends into the United States.

A "prime" example of the non-regionally aware dinosaur is Florida's fellow Globe columnist John Barber. Barber writes as though Toronto consisted of the very center of the city - and even more restrictive view than simply the 'old' city of Toronto. Barber doesn't seem to recognize North Toronto as part of the region. (hmm - but the Muskokas probably are.)

Barber is not alone. I still see signs up in my neighbourhood opposing the Megacity.

I do disagree with Florida on his assertion that regions are economic engines. Companies, institutions and people are the engines - not the region itself.

Time to test the water in the Beach

Admitted Arch-Liberal and National Post Columnist Warren Kinsella's recent column had me leafing through the Yellow Pages looking for someone to test the local H20 for hallucinogens. Kinsella reportedly lives nearby - and perhaps the water has corrupted his mind.

Writes Mr. Kinsella in a recent article:

How Dion can get his groove back

'He [Dion]can do that by saying, to all who will listen: "We are the party that will ratify Kyoto, not kill it. We are the party that will bring back our young men and women from Afghanistan within a year of our election, and not at some distant date inthe future. And we are the party that opposes dismantling federalism by stealth, as Stephen Harper promised to do in his Throne Speech. Under a Liberal government, Ottawa will not become the headwaiter to the provinces.

Warren - iIt's more like the following:

The Liberal Party of Canada is the Party that:

- Signed Kyoto and did nothing to implement it. The rise if GHG emmissions during the Chretien/Martin regime is well-documented.
- Sent our armed forces to Afghanistan without a plan. Cretin-man recently admitted that he wanted to keep our troops in a safe area around Kabul - but he apparently forgot to tell his successor.
- The Febfibs started the head-waiter act with Ken Dryden 'national day care' handout. (Can you believe Dryden is a Cornell grad - this is a complete embarrassment.)

So Mr. Kinsella, start filtering and boiling your water.


PS - exactly when did Dion have a groove anyway?

Maria Minna - the epitome of lack of class

Enough of my fellow constituents are mindless Liberal voting automatons when it comes to voting in federal elections that they've continued to re-elect Maria Minna.

This is the Maria Minna who managed to vote illegally in a municipal by-election. After she got caught, she looked around to blame someone:

""I made the mistake of listening to the PMO and not speaking out on my own behalf. I won't make that mistake again." (CBC News - March 1 2002)

Well - now Minna has taken her own advice and has said something. Unfortunately, not only has this served to re-inforce that she is not only particularly bright - but it has demonstrated that God handed her a full helping of shrillness while passing over her plate when the class was being passed around.

Minna called Prime Minister Harper a Neanderthal because the government will no longer be funding feminist lobby groups.

"I didn't get into politics, I didn't spend 30 years in volunteer work because Harper, a Neanderthal, would come and take that away from us," said Liberal MP Maria Minna. (Toronto Star/CP - Sept 20 2007)

Well Maria - there's nothing stopping you from volunteering. You can volunteer to work for these lobby groups. It would please us greatly if you would resign from being our MP to make time for this pursuit. Beaches/East York will be much better off without your shrillness and lack of class which is such an enbarrassment.

Back to transit - the TTC cost spiral

It's been a few months since I wrote much about transit. What is there really to write - nothing much changes at the TTC. However, since we're about to get socked with a mammoth property tax increase in one form or another - you all might be interested in a big reason behind the increase.

(The proposed Land Transfer Tax is a property tax - you just pay it all at once when you are selling/buying.)

A while back I analysed the comparative performance of the Montreal transit system (MTC or STM depending on the language) and the TTC. I've put together some updated figures:

Montreal - MTC/STM

Operating cost per rider
1994 actual: $1.63
2007 budget: $1.88

That's a 15.4% increase overall - but a decline of 2.9% when inflation is taken into account. This means that the Montreal system lowered its unit operating costs - even when the increased cost of fuel and electricty are taken into account.

Toronto - TTC

Operating cost per rider
1994 actual: $1.73
2007 budget: $2.35

This is an overall increase of 35.8%!!!!! OR 20.4 percentage points higher than Montreal.

What does this mean in real $$$. Well, if the TTC had matched the STM's performance, it's 2007 operating cost per rider would be:

1.154 *$ 1.73 = $1.995 / rider

or $2.35 - $1.995 = $0.355 lower than the actual budget.

@ the 2007 projected ridership of 461 million

461 million * $0 .355 = $163.7 million

In other words, the TTC has missed and is missing opportunities to become more efficient while the STM hasn't and isn't.

The Montreal system's performance shows that you can have a succesful transit system without an ever upward spiral in costs.

The worst for the TTC is yet to come.

The 2008 TTC pro forma budget that is referenced here shows that the TTC costs will explode next year. Operating expenses are set to grow by $128 million ($1,083 million ==> $1,211 million) while ridership revenue will grow by only $24 million. (This was before the recent fare increase was voted in.) This would vault operating cost / rider to about $2.59 - a whopping 10% increase.

Well -the $163 million in lost opportunity into 1994 and the $104 million in growth in required subsidy this year would give us back $267 million - which would make the Land Transfer Tax largely unnecessary.

Bussin and Fletcher's mound of dirt

As I've written on before - there's a mound of dirt on the NW corner of Coxwell and Lakeshore. This is where councillor's Paula Fletcher and Sandra Bussin had teh city spend how ever many hundreds or thousands of taxpayer $$$ to buy some rather expensive votes.

Bulldoxers were hard at work before the 2006 municipal election. The mound of earth is there - but no work has been done all summer. Local skateboarders won't likely see anything for at least another year - as it will take at least another year to build anything.

This is the city that needs to raise our taxes by about 20%!

The only thing that got built in this project is this d++d sign. No kidding.

Education funding

The education funding issue may rear its head again in the upcoming provincal election. The Star recently republished its party line on the subject ranting that 'the school funding formula is flawed'.

Yours truly replied to the editorial - (not published)

Your editorial on school funding ("Urgent need to fix funding formula" - August 27th 2007) would receive a failing grade if submitted as school work. You offer no evidence that the school funding formula is broken.

You don't discuss how spending per pupil in Ontario is not widely different that the average for Canada. You mention that some boards have had difficulty balancing their budgets - but don't mention how many have managed.

That trustees on some boards have chosen to confront the province to the point of having their boards placed under supervision could evidence an issue with the formula, However it could equally be evidence of political grandstanding. You offer nothing to indicate that the former is more likely.

No formula for funding anything is perfect. However, an imperfect formula is not necessarily broken. Since the education reforms of the latter '90s, student performance in Ontario - as evidenced by standard testing - has steadily improved. Ontario students are no longer laggards when compared with those from other provinces. It's hard to see how the flaws in the formula merit the urgency you suggest.

Plaque build-up at the Canadian War Museum

There has been a great deal of controversy over a plaque at the Canadian War Museum documenting the German civilian deaths as a result of Allied bombings. Yours truly weighed in on the subject in this past Saturday's National Post:


Passing judgment on Allied bombing

National PostPublished: Saturday, September 01, 2007

Prof. Hansen leads us to draw a distinction between the respective morality of U.S. bombing tactics and those of the RAF and RCAF on the basis of the America's focus on precision targets. However, he omits to say that the U.S. forces were only able to implement this tactic once sufficient P-51s fighter planes were on hand to cover daylight sorties deep into Germany.

Until fighters could supply the daytime air cover, the only weapon the Allies had to slow German munitions production was nighttime area bombing. This strategy did not stop production, however, Germany would have produced and deployed significantly more planes and tanks had the skies been left quiet. Prof. Hansen offers no alternative -- and hence implies that Germany should have been left to produce munitions without Allied resistance.

This was in response to Professor Hansen's column (THE WAR MUSEUM'S GREAT MISTAKE - Aug 31 2007) that decried the museum's changing a plaque as a result of pressure from WW II veterans.

Mel's lament

The Toronto Sun features a column (Joe Warmington - Sun, August 19, 2007) covering commentary by former mayor Mel Lastman on the city's current budget mess. Now Mel has too much personality for many Torontonians - or is this just an excuse on the part of the downtown elite to dislike someone who is not one of there own. However, there's no doubt as to his leadership capabilities.

Lastman is quoted:

His advice to the socialist-majority council is to start listening to those who are not like-minded. "That's what I did," he said. "I made them part of the decision-making. That's how you get ideas."

Sage advice. The only problem is that the hard-left in council don't believe in finding solutions. They deem the concept of finding slolutions - be they via efficiencies, new ideas, and/or making trade-offs - as capitalist and bourgeois. It's no so much a that they lack understanding, but rather a hard-wired scrambling of their brains.

All things upside down

OK - nothing like a good vacation to rejuvenate oneself. Aha - but things don't change much in Hogtown - not over a few weeks (months, years, decades..) We should have junked the streetcars decades ago - instead we still have people trying to prove they were right for forcing us to keep them.

In the latest news, a number of panhandlers have been involved in a murder (ok al-edge-ed-ly - lol) of a visitor to our fair city. The incident was witnessed by many from a stopped Queen streetcar (no news in the streetcar being stopped). One women has been charged and a number of American panhandlers are now under investigations.

Now why would American hobo's head up to Hogtown. The simple answer is that the left-wing wing-nuts who run this city WANT them here to keep up the pressure for oodles of money to be spent on socialist housing. The hobos actually aren't in line for public housing - they are just being used for PR purposes. Now an astounding 10% of domiciles in Toronto are public housing units. However, one needs to realise that the goal of people like Paula Fletcher and David Miller is to have 100% public housing. (Top party officials would still be allowed to 'own' there own dachas. )

Given this, it's not surprising that the City does nothing about panhandlers - other that to invite more. I'm surprised they are advertising.

Of course, if you are a home or business owner in Queen W - you're out of luck. This is the city where a councilor (Adam Vaughan) has actually proposed taxing people who are lawfully lining up to get into a club or restaurant - while inviting hobos from around the world to invade the city and suck up out tax $$$.

Same old, same old

The grandstanding and fearmongering by Miller minion and now TTC chair Adam Giambrone was all too predictable: we'll have to cut key services - perhaps including the Shephard subway line - because council did not pass a whopping property tax increase.

And yes, the proposed Land Transfer Tax (LTT) is a property tax - it's paid on the value of your property. The only different is that it's paid in one shot - the buyer and seller end up splitting the cost. The seller pays in the form of a lower home price - while the buyer pays he tax at face value. Assuming you are in one home for a decade, the LTT proposal adds about 20% to your property taxes.

There are a few people who never move - or don't think they will - such as Globe & Mail columnists Rick Salutin and John Barber. They argue that it's unfair for people who own properties with growing values should not pay increasing property taxes. This is quite selfish - as it means people in less attractive housing must pay more.

Did Miller really go to Harvard?

I just heard that council has deferred the whopping tax increase in the form of doubling the land transfer tax payable on sale of real estate. This is a big defeat for Mayor Miller - although perhaps only a temporary reprieve for Toronto's citizens. Miller and his minions are intent on spending and taxing this metropolis into oblivion.

If you read Miller's bio on Wikipidea:

you'll se that he has an interesting background. He was born in North America, grew up in England. He attended - according to the article - Harvard University. One can do worse in life than be a Canadian Ivy Leaque man with a good set of hair:-) The trouble is, he's putting us into disrepute.

How it is possible for someone who lived in Britain at the time the nation was the 'sick man of Europe' - with high taxes and all-controlling unions rapidly sucking the life out of the place - to be bent on implementing the 'sick man of Europe' policies here in out city?

I'd like to see Miller's Harvard sheepskin. Is it for real?

Beach transit woes

An enterprising resident has created an on-line petition asking that the TTC stop mismanaging streetcar service to The Beach.

I'm not sure if I'm going to sign. First, the TTC don't listen and don't care. Second, most of the problems are inherent in having streetcars. If we really want a working transit service into the Beach, we need buses. People are paying double fare ("extra" fare is almost double) to use the Beach Express. Regular service could easily be handled by buses - and service would be better (more frequent, more reliable.)

Most people in the Beach don't care - as they don't take transit.

Transit stuff - "new" GM for the TTC

I've been read the riot act - specifically that I should spend more time on my own writing and less posting on other people's web sites.

In recent transit news, the TTC have hired 'interim' Chief General Manager Gary Webster as 'permanent' CGM. What's it been - a year since Ric DuCharme had enough of being Howard Moscoe's lapdog. My alma mater was able to find a new president in roughly half that time.

My guess is that no-one with any talent from outside applied for the job. We can thank Moscoe for this state of affairs - i.e. overpoliticization scaring away top professionals. This is a Toronto problem in general. The TDSB had to promote the handiest warm body from within to replace Dave Reid as education director.

I'm not sure of Mr. Webster's qualifications. He's been at the TTC for a long time. I'd hate to think that he's agreed to the job as a nice quiet place (well paid of course) to wait until retirement. We don't need a another lap dog at the TTC.

Mind you Adam Giambrone is a noticeable improvement over Moscoe - then again Attila the Hun would have been an improvement.

Taxaronto

The collective 'we' (i.e. the citizens of Toronto) are getting what we asked for - a government intent on taxing the city to death instead of making a modicum of effort to control expenses. We're being bled to death to fund endless varieties of sham schemes.

Actually, it's worse than most anyone can imagine. A municipal land transfer tax will take 1 - 2% of the value of homes and businesses. That's just for starters. Since city spending is growing 8% a year - what are these taxes going to be in a couple of years? Hold onto your horses (houses) - we could be in for a long term bear market in Toronto real-estate. One can be bullish on real estate in Peel and York.

On the transit front

The Ontario liberals made a big splash with the election promise for $12 billion or so of transit capital spending over the next 12 years. This is smart packaging politically. The Conservative platform that calls for all gas tax $$$ to be used for transportation (instead of other pet causes) would deliver as much - but Mr. Tory didn't list the projects in as much detail.

It's also smart because although the legislature won't sit before the election, this accouncement is not within the official campaign limits. The election laws should be changed to prevent a party from using the front of being 'in power' and using as election PR.

Council flip flop

I'm having to adjust to borrowing a computer for a few days. I haven't posted here much as recent - but I will once the techies fix my machine. (As I've learned - you need to be careful when borrowing a computer!!)

The news from yesterday was Council's unanimous vote for keeping the yellow ribbons on our city vehicles. Kudos to Council.

hmm - but the vote wasn't truly unanimous - some councillors were not present. The Sun has a great picture of ultra-left Councillor Pam McConnell trying trying to sneak out without being noticed - so she didn't have to vote. It's scary that this woman was once the head of the police oversight board!!! Who is the furthest left person on council - Paula Fletcher or McConnell? Either way, with such people in positions of power, no wonder the city is going down the tubes.

TTC - Downtime in downtown

Well - the vaunted Spadina LRT is out of service again.

TTC Notice re: 509 510 service

This is barely a news event anymore. Riders will be taking buses from Union Station and then transferring for trips north. 'Transit City'? - no - 'Transfer City' more likely.

What is that pile of earth?

Last year, bulldozers and other heavy equipment were busy pushing mounds of earth around a site on the NW corner of Lakeshore and Coxwell. The exact nature of the exercise was a mystery to most until the municipal election approached. At that point a sign appeared explaining that the City was building a skateboard park.

Well - half the sign was about the skateboard park - but the main purpose seems to have been to provide free campaign publicity for the local Trotskyite councillor Paula Fletcher, and the Beaches' own Sandra Bussin. (No one is sure what Ms. Bussin thinks - other than her writing ultra-sycophantic columns praising Mayor David Miller.)

Well, now that the election is over - and Fletcher and Bussin aren't in election mode - guess what! Construction has stopped. The piles of earth are still there. The status is even a mystery to the local group that had been fundraising to build the park - The Southeast Toronto Skateboard Association.

On one page of the STSA's website we read:

STSA fundraising for the permanent skatepark at Ashbridge's Bay has been put on hold.
Funding for the first phase of construction has been secured from the City, and as a result they have taken over the management of the construction of the park.

On another, the bad news:

Ashbridges Bay Skatepark

While we wait and wait and wait, the Stan Wadlow skatepark park has been completed and the Ellesmere park has been started. What's up with that?

The City has given us no indication of the construction schedule. Send Councillor Sandra Bussin an email and ask her what is going on - sbussin@toronto.ca

Poor naive STSA, you've been used as an election prop.

Death of a Student

The Globe's Margaret Wente has beaten me to the punch on this.

A number of teachers with recent experience at C.W. Jeffreys Collegiate have now attested to servere discipline problems at the school. This was also covered in the Toronto Star on Wednesday.

The statements and letters to the newpapers have document not only that 'teachers were threatened and assaulted regularly by students' and that 'intruders had easy access the the school and were clogging halls during class time. Worse yet, TDSB trustee Stephnie Payne not only claims to have been unaware of the problems - she actually sided with a lawsuit against a vice-principal for daring to report some students to police.

The hidden agenda - of course there's a hidden agenda - was to downplay the need and utility of the Safe Schools Act. Now that the act has been emasculated in terms of the tools available to teachers and principles to bring order to the schools, we see the folly of backing away from it.

While people like Stephnie Payne may not have killed the student - liberal dogma seem to leaps out as a root cause.

Top Ten - Toronto Traffic Nighmares

OK - I might not get to 10 - but I've had to drive way more than I like in the last year due to where work has taken me.

1. Keele & St. Clair

This intersection is always backed up for about 10 minutes as there is a severe bottleneck in the railway underpass just to the East. I've had to come this way from the far end of Mississauga when visiting my sister on the way home. There's quite a bit of commercial traffic + many contractors toing and froing between Home Depot and work sites in the St. Clair W neighbourhoods.

G+d only knows how much worse this will be when the streetcar right-of-way is complete.

2. Victoria Park and the 401

I come down here on the way home from one of my York Region clients if the DVP is reported in bad shape. Although this wasn't so bad earlier this week, I've seen the whole area gridlocked in the evening. This is probably true of number of intersections with the 401.

Teh highway is too big for the exit/entrance infrastructure. It would have been better to have two expressways instead of the monster that's grown up. This would have allowed for more manageable traffic flow.

3. Gardiner/427/QEW

Over the last year I made many trips out to Hamilton for work. The ride home always hit a big slow down (i.e. E-bound) just where the 427 merges in. Despite the extra ramp that was built a few years ago from the 427 collectors, this gets backed up by about 5:00 pm. This is one ramp that could benefit from metering.

4. Gardiner East curves

There are two curves on the E-bound gardiner where the maniacial speeding hot heads in the left lane always end up rear-ending slower moving traffic. Once is just around the Humber - and the other is at Dufferin. At least once a week some jackass would have got himself in a fender bender (or worse) and ruined the journey home for thousands of commuters.


OK - I've got up to four. If you think I'm going to write about my top ten shortcuts - keep dreamin'.