QUOTED: David Shiner on tunnels, subways and the TTC

6 thoughts on “QUOTED: David Shiner on tunnels, subways and the TTC”

1. Exactly! If the TTC would just accept the help constantly being offered by Conservative politicians, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

   Once Doug Ford gives them all enemas things will be different.

2. You are so right – like the help they gave when Mike Harris killed the Eglinton Subway and gutted the Sheppard line to the stump it is today. Yep, those Conservatives have been wonderful for Transit in this city.

3. Shiner sold his soul to the Fords. You only have to recall the gutless manner in which he went behind the ward councillor’s back to kill the original Fort York bridge to see that.

4. Why is it that neo-Conservatives are the only government that can’t provide transit expansion in Toronto with the exception of Bill Davis in the 1970s.

5. Well, Vote NDP in the next federal/provincial election, as a conservative I can tell you we don’t really support transit development for a few reasons.

   First and foremost – transit is really only an important issue to city dwellers. Only urban people, who tend to be younger and/or minorities, rely on transit. It’s a useful wedge issue to drive between younger voters (who don’t vote conservative, and vote less overall) and older, more conservative suburban and rural Canadians (Real Canadians) who are more likely to show up on polling day.

   We can tell Real Canadians that “TRANSIT IS SUCKING UP YOUR TAX DOLLARS!” and they actually believe us. Even though it’s the other way around – transit riders have to support their own transportation system with ever-increasing fares, but they also pay property and income tax, which pays for the roads that drivers can enjoy without paying tolls. And when road budgets are stretched thin as more and more drivers use the roads, we can use transit as a whipping boy for all transportation budget problems, just like we’re using St. Clair West as a whipping boy for anti-LRT sentiment.

   Secondly – it’s a way to attack environmentalists. Stephen Harper considers environmentalists to be extremist threats and it’s because they pose a true threat to the way we want to live. We don’t want to give up our cars. We don’t want to give up our cheeseburgers. We don’t want to pay more for power, or water, or anything. Environmentalists think we should change our ways, but by attacking a simple and effective method of reducing emissions, we can keep them off-guard. Force them to defend themselves, rather than waiting for them to attack us.

   Thirdly, you know who else has transit? Europeans. And we don’t like anything European. Except the British Crown, but that’s not on the continent, so it’s not tainted by zee french. Who have a lot of transit. Seriously, voters buy this shit.

   Fourth, cutting transit makes it look like we don’t care about the poor, but we can do it in such a way that it doesn’t DIRECTLY look like we don’t care about the poor – make sense? So our hardcore supporters can get the message that we are doing our duty by scaling back support for the lower classes, but it’s under the guise of austerity or efficiency.

   I could go on. :-)

6. I believe that the same thing would eapphn for rail as it does for roads if you build it (or expand it), they will come. If heavy rail lines were taken proper advantage of by running frequent high-speed electrified service with short trains of MU cars it would dramatically alter the way people travel between urban centres and their employment destinations.Most of the rail lines in the GTA are used nowhere near capacity even for freight service. Furthermore, if you look carefully at the land within most of these rail corridors it quickly becomes apparent that there is often room for more than one additional track. Much of the CPR crosstown line has space for four tracks even though there are only two plus some sidings throughout at present. The Summerhill station at Yonge Street has existing platforms to serve four tracks at once. And the contentious Blue22 corridor has enough room for an entire yard worth of tracks from Union Station almost all the way to Highway 401!Yes it would cost money to make these changes, but it is possible and it very well could provide substantial benefits beyond what GO’s rush-hour focus can offer. I make my travel choices based not on the most direct routes, but on the routes with a service level that I can count on to get me to my destination efficiently and at a time that I need to. For many trips even within the Toronto border that rules out transit and commuter rail and instead forces me to take the car. Often I end up dropping the idea entirely. If I were provided with viable rail options then I would most definately make use of them. GO bus service is a joke.Effective regional rail service does not have to come at the expense of improved local transit. Greater London (England) has a regional railway system that is simply mind-blowing in service level and networking (reliability is improving). I see commuting and employment trends forming in the GTA that will eventually require this scale of service, although a lot of this has already occurred and is choking roads and highways with traffic. There is nothing we can do to avoid servicing this need.I realise this wasn’t intended to be part of the discussion, but the Transit City network cannot and should not be trying to fulfill this need. I’m concerned however that the powers that be are trying to accomplish this task with local transit throughout the region. There will never be an effective alternative to highways and the car unless a middle-ground is formed between long-haul commuter rail and local transit services. However, to get back on topic, this middle-ground’ service will accomplish little without effective local transit networks for it to connect with. Once we get local transit working and working in the way it was intended, only then should we think about inter-connecting these networks with another class of system beyond what we have now.Steve: I agree that if the rail corridors are to be more useful, then they must have far more service than they do today as regional facilities, not as corridors for local services. Prying the CN and CP’s fingers off the land, however, won’t be easy. Meanwhile, there is a need for improved service throughout the city and it needs to be on streets where people live, work and shop, not in a back lane of an industrial area or the middle of a field.

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