Canada’s Largest City Running Out of Numbers

According to the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) – the Canadian government department responsible for managing everything communication – Toronto will run out of phone numbers in five years.

The original Toronto area code of 416 is almost completely used up, and the newest area code for the city – 647 – only has about 2.5 million numbers left.
Canadian area codes typically have 7.5 million unique numbers.

So yesterday, the CRTC says that the Canadian Numbering Administrator – yes there is such a thing – is looking into the creation of yet another area code for the country’s largest city.

What gives?

There are about 2.5 million residents in Toronto -- 2,503,281 as of the latest 2010 Statistics Canada numbers to be official. The entire Greater Toronto Area (GTA) which includes the municipalities immediately surrounding the city (including Toronto’s population) is about 4.4 million people.

DO the math – Canadian area codes have 7.5 million numbers – wait a sec . . . the CRTC says we are running out of numbers, yet the population hasn’t met demand?

Guess some people just can’t put down their technological toys – some of us have two or more cell phones. It isn’t all that uncommon to have a cell for work and another for personal use. Some even have a different cell for their car.

Some people even have an old style cell phone and a smart phone. They keep their old phone because – well – I don’t really know – but they do – OKAY?!?!?

Why someone needs more than one personal communications device is beyond me. Unless you’re leading a double life.

That might be fun . . . or not . . .

Though we can’t blame the lone mobile phone or our new dependence on the BlackBerry and other smart phones for our overuse of the telephone system.

Many people have more than one landline-based phone at home – say a voice line and a fax line. Some people even get their teenagers their own landline, so that they never have to hear what my mom always yelled at me when I was a kid: “get off the phone!”

Offices and other businesses account for a huge toll in the telephone numbers game. According to a 2007 study at the time, there were 75,500 businesses in Toronto. Each business can have multiple numbers – so an office with a few hundred employees could have a few hundred voice numbers – or more.

And don’t forget facsimile machines. Although instant messaging and email have quickly become the dominant person-to-person communications systems thank to the Internet, most businesses still have fax capabilities. And for every fax machine, there are . . . JUNK FAXES.

It’s remarkable – and sad – that in this day of environmentalism, thoughts of greening the planet, and saving forests by using less paper, some businesses still think the best way to do business is by blasting their unwanted advertising to the masses by fax.

Some business leaders just aren’t very good leaders.

On average, most Canadians have three phone numbers – work, home and cell. So multiply 2.5 million by three, and you get 7.5 million – exactly the number of unique possible phone numbers in a Canadian area code.

Cool math.

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Greater Toronto Area’s Transit Troubles Continue

Canada’s largest metropolitan area has the worst public transit system in North America – if you go by value for money.

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on average costs more to take, yet the service isn’t nearly as efficient, effective or widespread as other major metropolitan areas when compared to similar-sized North American cities – and certainly nowhere near many European ones.

In London, UK, you can ride the Underground throughout the entire city, north, south, east, west, north-west, south-west, north-east, south-east, south-south-east . . . In Toronto, Canada’s largest city, the subway only runs in the center of the city north and southbound, or east and westbound. And you have to hop on a connecting bus or streetcar to go most places not right in the center of the city.

Over the past two-decades, while many other major urban centers have expanded their transit systems several dozen times, Toronto remained fairly stagnate, with less-than a handful of noteworthy expansions.

There was the expansion of the Yonge/University line northbound by the creation of the Downsview subway station in the 1990’s, and then the opening of the Sheppard line in 2002

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, which is really just a micro-subway line (it only has five stops, took eight-years to build, and cost just under $1 billion).

Incidentally, the Downsview subway station was built in anticipation of the Sheppard line being built – the two were supposed to connect originally, but because of bungled transit budgets, the Sheppard line was only built to Yonge Street in the west, and Don Mills in the east (it was originally going to stretch to Scarborough Town Centre, several more kilometers east).

Still, the biggest barrier to accessible, affordable, environmentally-friendly public transit in the GTA is ironically – the transit operators themselves.

In many parts of North America, one ticket will take you from your job in the downtown core, to your suburban home. Not in the GTA – thanks to the Amalgamated Transit Workers union, Toronto’s public transit system -- Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) -- will only take you in and around the city of Toronto.
Even if you live just five-minutes in any direction outside of Toronto, you STILL have to pay an extra fare – and often have to hop onto another bus.

Back in the early 1990’s, the provincial minister of transportation at t

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he time, Al Paladini, boasted that one day, there would be a single fare which would take you from Pickering to the east of Toronto, all the way to Mississauga to the west of Toronto.

Paladini didn’t take into consideration the enormous mafia-thug-like behavior of the TTC’s union, threatening to walk out at just the mere mention of such a transit-friendly idea. The union has never been comfortable with such a concept, and continues to hold the city, the province, and most of all, the very people that ride their buses, streetcars and subways hostage over this.

That said, security for the driver has been increased on most TTC vehicles.
Security cameras and bullet-proof booths surround the driver as if they were hauling prisoners to and from a maximum security prison.

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Though most newer TTC buses do have a fire suppression system, just in case one of the passengers spontaneously ignites. When was the last time you saw that happen?

I suppose the anti-theft system on many of the newer buses on Toronto’s TTC routes are in place in case someone can’t find a nice sports car to steal too?

It isn’t all bad from Canada’s largest transit system – the TTC recently increased the number of buses on most of their routes, cutting down wait times for passengers. Though the bus which runs up and down my street is almost always empty – maybe next time the TTC attempts to improve service, it should take a look at the routes which have the most use first?

Still, the two biggest problems facing the GTA’s public transit commuters are the very same problems which have plagued the system for the past 20-years – cost and efficiency.

GTA transit riders pay more than anywhere else in North America, and don’t enjoy the efficiency of the lower priced systems elsewhere.

For example, to go from a downtown Toronto home to work in Markham (a suburb just north-east of Toronto) one-way takes on average about an hour-and-a -half, and costs $6.00 ($2.75 TTC fare, and $3.25 York Region Zone One Fare).

A similar distanced ride in New York City takes just over an hour, and costs only $2.25 (one fare, using transfers freely provided with initial ride purchase).

Here in Canada’s largest city, it takes more time and money to go r

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oughly the same distance when compared to America’s largest city.

And soon, it will cost even more – this week the TTC began floating the idea of a fare hike of about a quarter, to raise an additional $45 million. Someone has to pay for those fire suppression systems.

I tell ya, I’m really glad they are investing in something practical. I’d hate to be next to someone that suddenly catches fire, and not have that fire suppression system in place.

Does your car have a fire alarm and sprinkler system? Probably not – vehicle fires account for less than one percent of traffic related fatalities. The most common causes of traffic-related fatalities are excessive speeding, alcohol and/or drug use, even falling asleep at the wheel – but fire is the lowest.

Politicians always talk about funding and promoting public transit, to reduce traffic commute times, and cut greenhouse gases. They often present over-sized cheques in front of hoards of reporters to transit authorities, claiming the funds will be used to better the system, take more cars off the roads, and green the planet.

The politicians are full of hot air.

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When Public Employees Do Wrong

Environmentalists and urban planners (many of whom are environmentalists) urge us constantly to find alternatives to gas hogging automobiles, in our daily commuting lives. For millions of people around the world, that alternative is public transit - local run buses, streetcars, subways, trains, and in some places mule and cart.

When we take public transit, we’re putting out lives into the hands of the persons responsible for making the system work - the ticket takers, drivers, even the janitors.

So when news broke about a Canadian bus driver being arrested for drinking and driving while on the job, it quickly spread throughout the city, the province, and the country.

Yesterday, Brian Lyons, 54, was charged with impaired driving, after a passenger on the Mississauga Transit Bus he was driving complained that something was medically wrong with the driv

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er to police. Turns out, Lyons wasn’t ill, he was toasted - having three-times the legal limit of alcohol in his system.

Lyons isn’t new, he’s been a bus driver for over 25-years - though even if he were a recent hire, he should have known that drinking and driving isn’t just plain dumb and dangerous, but it is also quite illegal.

No one was hurt, this time - though if one driver is working drunk, who knows how many more are - and one day, one of those public employee

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s could kill themselves, a passenger, or a helpless victim that just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This isn’t the first-time a public transit worker in the Greater Toronto Area - Mississauga is a city to the west of Toronto - has been caught drinking on the job. A couple of years ago a Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) bus driver was charged and later convicted of having more than the legal limit of alcohol in his blood, while he was driving the bus.

There have also been incidents in other North American cities and towns, where public transit workers have been charged and convicted of driving their public transit vehicles while under the influence of a controlled substance.

What is the world coming to when those public employees whom we lay our precious lives out for respect and keep safe during our travels, go on a bender not just before work, but during?

How many more public transit workers must be charged and convicted of putting their passenger’s lives in harm’s way, before something is done? How many passengers must die before public transit operators take steps to ensure those who depend on these methods of travel are treated with no less respect, dignity and above all else, safety, as any other person in our society?

Steps have been taken in recent years to protect the operators of our transit systems. Closed Circuit Cameras have been installed on all the buses and streetcars in the TTC, and most other transit vehicles in the Greater Toronto Area - and on other systems around the world. They have even begun installing secure doors on TTC buses, so that the driver is behind a Plexiglas shield, protecting him or her from passengers.

Although the safety of the driver is never at question - he or she shoul

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d be able to work in a safe and comfortable professional environment, just as anyone else - what is being done to protect passengers from civic employees that are operating under the influence of a controlled substance - such as alcohol?

Without such protections, getting onto a public transit vehicle of any kind maybe better for the environment, but not necessarily for you.

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