New TTC Promotion

Last week the Toronto Transit Commission announced a new promotion aimed at rewarding loyal Metropass holders and hopefully attracting hoards of new riders. They have announced that early next year (2009) they will be allowing Metropass holders to pay between 3 and 6 dollars per day to park in the TTC commuter lots.

This is great! Even at the highest 6 bucks a day, this is a bargoon compared to parking in the city. A great bargain, except for one small problem - that parking is currently free to Metropass holders. I wish this was a joke, but unfortunately the Toronto Transit Commissioners (headed by young lefty Adam Giambrone) has decided that they won't "subsidize" the parking at these lots any more. They claim that the net cost to the TTC, after fares and the non-Metropass holders who already pay to park, is approximately $3.6 million.

This "approximate" figure of course comes from the same folks who routinely realize at the last moment that they are in desperate financial straights and need either a bigger subsidy or another fare hike. They are the same financial rocket scientists who keep announcing the same projects as "bold new transit initiatives" and then never seem to get them going. They are the same highly organized bunch who can't write a Request for Tender that can be responded to by ANY vendor (e.g. the latest Tender for new streetcars).

With all of that said, let's say that we grant their estimates as being even reasonably legitimate and they are "subsidizing" these riders to some extent. With the new proposed parking fees, they have now made it almost as cheap and a heck of a lot more convenient for these people to drive their cars all the way to work now. That will add 1 million more car trips per year to Toronto's already congested and crumbling roads - I wonder what will the cost to the city in additional congestion and burden on the infrastructure be?

Perhaps the leaders of the City of Toronto should make up their minds. Do they want to continue to pursue their congestion increasing plans, thereby encouraging people to leave their cars outside the city and take transit or would they prefer to drive people off of transit, which unfortunately also increases congestion. Unfortunately when they increase congestion through this particular method, they piss off the economic engine of the city and encourage commuters and eventually business to move out.

I wonder if David Miller and Adam Giambrone have toured through the downtown cores of cities like Detroit and Buffalo - this is what happens when you enact anti-business policies. If they could get their act together and actually build a transit system that works (and encourages people to use it), I might actually support their anti-car stance. Unfortunately they have shown nothing but total incompetence from top (Mayor Miller) to bottom (the TTC union) and had better be careful of what they wish for - they may just get that car-free (and business-free) downtown the hard way.

Garbage Can Dillema

We finally got our new City of Toronto garbage bin the other day - mine is the second smallest one. These new bins were dreamed up from our wavy-haired mayor (David Miller) and his cadre of leftist councillors. Their supposed goal is to reduce the amount of garbage that is trucked to the landfill, which I suppose is admirable, if it weren't for the fact that it's wasteful and probably doomed to failure.

Miller & Co. have decided that forcing everyone in the City of Toronto to use their new bins (close cousins to those gigantic, hideous recycling bins) is the most efficient means to their waste reduction ends. Damn the tens of millions of taxpayers dollars to purchase the bins and retrofit and train the garbage trucks & drivers - this is for our own good and we should just suck it up.

We should also not complain that if we want anything except for the smallest bin (good for a one person household if they're careful), we have to pay - again. And of course if we're really bad, they've made provisions for us to buy stickers for our excess garbage (yes - more $$$).

This last idea they've borrowed from many other municipalities who have limited the amount of garbage people can throw out and is one that I agree with. It's just too bad that they didn't copy the rest of the program, which cost those municipalities and their taxpayers exactly - NOTHING! They simply imposed a 2 bag limit - anything over that and you buy a tag. Easy and quick to implement - the City of Toronto could have diverted millions of tons of waste if they had implemented such a solid, simple system years ago.
Unfortunately, this is not the socialist way to do things. They need several costly studies, then much pissing and moaning amongst themselves in order to find the most expensive, inefficient, ugly and union friendly solution possible.

Union friendly you ask? Well, think about this for a moment. Now if a non-city union worker disposal company ever got the chance to bid on the city contract again (when people finally wake up and boot the socialists out), they are at a huge disadvantage, because they would need to equip their trucks with costly mechanical arms. Nice job of protecting your union supporters Mr. Miller!

They have also now managed to once lovely neighbourhoods into ghettos of light and dark blue plastic bins. Many houses that used to have nice tidy garbage enclosures are now forced to park their new bins out in the open, because they no longer fit. Added to esthetics’ issue of those ugly bins, is the fact that the streets are now littered with trash because the city has still not seen fit to provide a raccoon-proof garbage can. Please note that I said provide and not create, because they do have a device you can attach to your can that does work - for an extra $9!

This entire debacle is just another example of why David Miller and his leftist cronies should never be elected again (of course I didn't think they should have been elected in the first place). Perhaps the citizens of Toronto will wake up in 2010 and elect a mayor who cares about the city first and themselves (and friends) second.Oh, there is one final problem with this new garbage can scheme...How the hell do I get rid of my old garbage cans!