Rob Ford opposes road tolls and sales taxes, but his executive isn’t so sure
Josh Matlow hasn’t been shy about wanting to use tolls or taxes to expand Toronto’s lagging transit network, and it looks like some Rob Ford allies may be open to his way of thinking. Yesterday, the councillor brought a motion to the mayor’s executive committee to organize a working group on funding strategies to raise the billions needed for future transit projects, and the mayor’s executive actually endorsed the idea. Moreover, the committee squashed a follow-up motion from Denzil Minnan-Wong, who figured that “new revenue tools” translated to “taxes and tolls” and moved to exclude a sales tax and non-regional road tolls from consideration. In fact, Ford, a known car lover and tax hater, was the sole member of the executive to agree with Minnan-Wong—perhaps the pair can work together to come up with a funding strategy of their own that avoids tolls and taxes (but involve unicorns). [National Post]
The private sector will pay for subways, subways, subways. Ford was just waiting for someone to put a shovel in the ground before announcing that Deco Labels was going to pay for the entire Sheppard line extension.
I just came back from Madrid.
Their beautiful, beautiful transit system made me cry.
To add extra salt to the would, the Madrid subway cars were even made by Bombardier.
We have everything we need to put together a functioning subway system save for cohesive and organized government on all three levels.
The key to Spain’s subway system is that it received the full support of their federal government to build all those subway lines. Not just left for the municipal government to manage.