Toronto’s On-Again-Off-Again Plans a Sign of Lying Leaders

Over fifteen years ago, Canada’s largest city had a massive public transit plan to keep gridlock at bay, and move the then 2.5 million residents around the city.

Back then, the province of Ontario made big sweeping announcements, including it's boldest promise -- to have a one-fare system across several regional transit authorities, so that you could ride public transit from Mississauga in the west, all the way to Pickering in the east, and only pay one fare.

That never happened, nor did most of those big sweeping plans.

Over fifteen years later, despite numerous plans since, nothing has been done to move the now over five million people around, and gridlock is a nightmare most of our waking lives.

Today, the province re-instated it’s funding for the latest massive public transit plan – Transit City. In a letter to the city, they promised all four light rail lines would go ahead, however the letter has no mention of how the province will accomplish this, failing to provide a breakdown of funding for the 10-years of the plan.

It is so typically predictable that politicians hand out mega sums of money for massive projects just prior to an election, only to somehow forget their promises once re-elected, that people have become cynical, jaded and frustrated with the constant on-again-off-again promises.

If politicians want to really win re-elections, maybe they should stop making promises they have absolutely no intentions of fulfilling – for one – and actually living up to the promises they do make prior to an election – for two.

That’s it, it isn’t rocket science. You don’t have to spend a million dollars on some third-party consultancy composed of recent MBA graduates to conduct a study about how to win back public support and trust – just do what you said you would.

Sheesh.

Worse part about the constant on-again-off-again planning of our lying politicians – because that IS what they are – is by putting off good sound planning, our cities, towns and villages – the places we eat, sleep, live, work and play – continue to erode.

Regardless of whether you drive a big honkin’ gas guzzling four-by-four SUV, or take public transit, by not funding mass public transit plans, you – and everyone else – suffers.

Without a proper public transit system in place, growing in step with the growth of the city, town or village where you live, that means everyone will drive. And that means when you hop in your car to go to work, so will everyone else. And that means you’ll have to either constantly arrive late for work, or leave early, just to sit in traffic, so that everyone can get to work. Going home later will be the same mess, just a different direction – and you always want to get home faster than you do to work.

By continuing to fail to live up to their public transit plans, our politicians also show us their true environmental face – and it is anything but green.

Obviously, if the politicians use the environment to get elected, they know it matters to most of us. But by quickly using the funding they promised for environmental initiatives – like public transit – for other uses, it shows they themselves really don’t care about the environment.

Guess lying to their constituents – like you – just comes natural for our donut dunking drones in political office?

Who’s willing to bet that the Transit City plan for Toronto will suddenly disappear AFTER the next provincial election?

Put my name on that list -- I like easy money.

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Canada’s Biggest Environmental Challenge – Ourselves

Ironic – a day before Earth Day, our dependence on fossil fuels is evidently echoed across Canada’s largest city.

Today, the world’s largest automaker, General Motors (GM) announced it has repaid the $1.4CDN billion in loans it received from the Canadian federal and Ontario provincial governments – which the company’s president says is a sign the company is recovering from the recession. GM also repaid the $6.7CDN billion in loans it received from the American federal government’s bailout package.

Also happening today in Toronto, Canada, the city says it is expanding bike lanes in the downtown core along some of the major routes, despite a growing divide.

Much like the battle for and against bike lanes in Toronto, the street where they are going this summer -- University Avenue -- is split down the middle by beautiful gardens and statues – it is one of the widest streets in Canada’s largest city.

So why the division?

Some see the addition of bike lanes as an attack against drivers, as one of their lanes in either direction will disappear, causing more traffic headaches.

Others see the new bike lanes as a step forward for the environment and personal health and fitness.

Despite the greater good – for the environment – adding bike lanes in Canada’s largest city won’t amount to a hell of beans, to paraphrase a famous American general.

For some, it will encourage them to use peddle-power instead of gas-power. For those that already do ride their bike wherever they go it will make their life a lot easier.

But the real problem isn’t really being addressed – lifestyle.

In other urban centers, such as New York, Chicago and London, it isn’t uncommon for people to take public transit, walk, or bike wherever they go. Hailing a cab in Manhattan may make you feel like you’re in the middle of a Woody Allen movie, but with gridlock, you’d probably get to where you were going faster if you were on a bike, or even walked.

In most cities around the world, if you arrive anyway other than by your own personal vehicle, there isn’t anything seen as odd or wrong with that – that’s life living in the big city.

But in Canada’s largest city, if you happen to mention you took public transit or rode your bike, people look down on you, as if there is something wrong with you.

“You can’t afford a car?”

Automatically, people in Canada’s largest city assume that if you didn’t drive, there is something wrong with you. You’re not normal, you are an outcast.

Statistics back this up – or at least the part about those who drive versus those who don’t in the city of Toronto. In Canada’s largest city, over 70 percent of the adult population drives.

Politicians buy into these stats too – over past two decades, federal, provincial and municipal politicians have made – and more importantly broken – their promises to expand public transit.

Back in the mid 1990’s, when I was a reporter, I watched as then-Ontario Transportation Minister Al Palladini, sporting a gold-colored hard hat and shovel, broke the ground at was to become the Downsview subway station, along with several other politicos.

Although the Downsview subway station was built, and stands today, I’ll never forget what Palladini said. He proudly declared that this was the start of a massive initiative to get Ontario moving.

His major transit initiatives, aside from the lone Downsview subway station, never materialized. He had plans to expand the subway to York University in the north-west corner of Toronto, and to create a single-fare system across the municipalities outside of Toronto, currently you have to pay two fares.

Thanks to budget cuts, changes in government, and lack of public and political interest, those green transportation plans got shelved.

More recently, just this past month, the province of Ontario took away funding from TransitCity, another massive government plan to expand public transit across Toronto. TransitCity was going to fund the expansion of transit for the next decade – they tossed everything into it but the kitchen sink. From funding for replacing old, outdated, and costly to maintain buses and streetcars with new ones, to increasing bus route services, to building new light rail lines – including one much needed connecting Toronto’s downtown to the airport – were all a part of this big plan.

That plan too sits on a shelf, collecting dust, as the politicians at the provincial level bailed out – transit costs too much, and they’d rather put their funding into what the voters want.

Ah yes, that’s what it always comes down too. It never really comes down to the greater good for the environment, or even to really seriously reduce gridlock – which costs Canadians a billion dollars due to lost productivity. What really matters is buying voters with policies and plans catered to them.

Never mind that part of public life is to do the right thing, if I were a politician, I’d probably do the same – worry about pleasing those who gave me m job, so I could get re-elected.

Or would I?

Actually, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to keep your job, please the voters and do the right thing. All you have to do is lead by example.

If our leaders at all levels of government took public transit, road bicycles, even drove around in environmentally-friendly electric prototype vehicles, then it wouldn’t seem so outrageous a thing to you and me.

Instead, our leaders travel like royalty, in luxury late model vehicles – the American Presidential car is even nicknamed “the Beast.”

That’s why GM is able to pay back it loans – cars versus taking the bus – cars win hands down. When was the last time you saw Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper riding a bike, or standing in a busy subway train during rush hour?

Love them or hate them, we do follow our leaders. That’s human nature, and until our leaders change their ways, it doesn’t matter how many bike lanes they put in Toronto, or any other Canadian city – they won’t get the use they could, had our leaders used them to show us the way.

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Canada’s Largest Transit System Continues to Suffer a PR Nightmare

Why does Canada’s largest public transit system have a constant customer relations problem?

Is it because the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) chair was tossed out of the mayor’s race during a very public love triangle which went wrong?

Is it because of consistent fare hikes, making it one of the most expensive public transit systems in the world?

Is it because a rider caught a TTC ticket taker sleeping on the job?

No – it is none of those – and all of those reasons in a sense.

The problem is the TTC fails to listen to their customers – and like all companies that lose touch with the people paying for its products and services, eventually that’s going to cost it.

The TTC even announced it was paying thousands of dollars to hire third-party consultants to improve customer relations – showing that at least the TTC isn’t completely unaware of the problem.

Recent polls on several local news organization’s websites sum up the current problems with the TTC. The transit authority recently said it will invest billions of dollars to put up suicide prevention barriers on its subway platforms. They made this decision based on a report which says there were 18 subway suicide attempts last year. At a cost of $10 million per station for the cash strapped transit operator, we’re talking more fare increases, and possible route and service cuts to pay for a handful of crazy people that will probably find some other way to end their lives.

Not that suicide should be taken lightly – anytime a person is in danger of taking their own life, we as a society are obligated to act to prevent such a travesty. However, putting up barriers isn’t going to do anything but cost more money than we have.

Anyone willing to jump in front of an oncoming subway train will simply find another means to end their life. The answer to suicide prevention isn’t removing all possible ways to end one’s life – otherwise we’d all live in plastic bubbles. The way to prevent suicides is through education, communication, therapy, and if need be, hospitalization.

Most people that attempt suicide don’t really want to end their lives, they use it as a wakeup call to those around them that they need help. The few that actually do intend to go through with it are past the point of no return, and there really is nothing we can do for these individuals – regardless of all the barriers we toss in front of them, they will just find another way to harm themselves.

So it should come as no surprise that the surveys on the local news websites show an overwhelming majority of respondents opposed to the TTC spending billions of dollars on suicide prevention barriers.

And in typical TTC fashion, the TTC continues to muddle along its own path, completely oblivious to their customer’s concerns.

Which is why the TTC has an image problem – they just don’t listen.
Maybe the thousands of dollars the transit authority paid for third-party consultants won’t be all for nothing – if those consultants are worth the big bucks they are being paid, they should simply recommend the TTC listen to their customers and act accordingly.

But if the TTC doesn’t listen to its customers, they probably won’t listen to their consultants either. And so their customer relations problems will continue, ridership will decline, and there could be more violence on the locally called “rocket.”

All because Canada’s largest transit system just doesn’t listen.

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Electricity in Canada’s Biggest City to Skyrocket – Thanks to Road Work

As if the cost to light and power our homes in Toronto, Canada isn’t already set to increase by eight percent thanks to the Ontario government’s introduction of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on July 1, another completely different cost may be tacked onto Torontonian’s hydro bills.

Road repairs – of all things. The City of Toronto is going to introduce a proposed fee at a meeting on March 2, calling for hydro companies to pay for the cost to repair roads and sidewalks which they have to dig up to maintain their power grids.

Cable companies, phone companies, hydro companies and other businesses which run their networks of cables and pipes under city streets have to dig into the roads and sidewalks to maintain their services. Without these constant repairs and upgrades, Canada’s largest city would be without many of the basic technological needs we’ve grown dependent on – like electricity to light our homes, telephone services to communicate vast distances, cable and Internet services to stay informed, and clean running water to sustain life.

The City of Toronto estimates almost 40,000 holes are dug every year by companies whose lifeline of cables and pipes run under city streets.

Out-going Mayor David Miller (he has said publicly he won’t be running for re-election in this year’s municipal election) claims that these cuts prematurely deteriorate our roads, and reduce the life our infrastructure, forcing the city to do costly repairs.

The proposal to be debated next week would recoup these costs, by charging companies digging up city roads about $20 CDN for every meter of road they dig up – recently paved roads would cost these companies slightly more if they were dug up.

Being labeled the “degradation fee” this new fee could bring in an estimated $4 million CDN, which the city claims would be funneled back into road repairs.

Hydro companies, cable companies, Internet Service Providers, telephone companies and others digging up Toronto roadways to maintain their underground networks would all be affected – and in turn pass this added operational cost onto their customers.

This new fee being proposed in Toronto will be directly passed onto consumers, either in the form of increased rates, or network service charges (usually charged to maintain the networks).

So if your phone line goes dead, and the phone company has to dig up the street to restore your service, you could see your monthly phone bill increase because of the costs associated with the repair.

Toronto’s city council for the past several years has squandered and over-spent to the point where property tax increases, public transit fare increases and user fees have become a City of Toronto norm.

When will politicians learn to balance their budgets, and use the funds available to them without digging deeper into the very people’s pockets that elected them into office?

Maybe when they no longer get elected into office. Probably one of a handful of reasons why the current mayor is not running in the next election – throughout his time in the Mayor’s seat he’s raised property taxes, public transit fares, and probably the most stinging to any potential re-election thoughts, inside and outside city employees walked off the job and went on strike this past summer.

Nicknamed the “garbage strike” by the media, because of the mounds of stinky garbage piling up because garbage collectors were among the many walking the picket lines, the city-wide strike this past summer pretty much ended Mayor Miller’s re-election hopes. No Toronto Mayor has ever bounced back to win re-election after a garbage strike. Though the Mayor publicly says he wants to spend more time with his family as the main reason for not running for office again, one has to seriously wonder if he’d even stand a chance.

Too bad around election time, those who vote get caught up in all the media hype and media-made issues, which rarely if ever fully hold public figures accountable for their past performance.

And it is little sneaky hidden fees – such as the proposed degradation fee – which fall off the radar during election campaigns, only to raise their ugly heads when it is too late, and the fee is law, and people suddenly complain about their hydro, phone and cable bills becoming unmanageable.

But by then, the election has long since passed, and all the politicians that put forward that little sneaky hidden fee are back in their comfy seats on council, contemplating their next little sneaky fee, while browsing through high-end catalogs to refurnish their council offices.

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Who’s Paying for the Stuff that Comes Out of Your Tap?

We drink it to sustain our bodies, bathe in it to stay clean and healthy, it is even part of the very molecular structure of what we breathe to live.

Water.

All life as we know it requires water. Life is so dependent on the liquid compound known as H2O that scientists use its existence on other planets as a determining factor in whether there is a possibility of life on worlds outside our own. That’s why they think their once may have been life on Mars, because of trace elements which indicate water once was on the red planet.

All civilizations throughout history have been built on or near water. Battles have ensued, and great wars have been fought over water.

A battle is heating up in Canada’s largest province over who should pay for the life sustaining substance.

Ontario Liberal Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) David Caplan has proposed a private members bill which would require all residents of that province to pay the full price for safe, clean, water flowing into their homes.

Caplan’s no slouch, he’s a veteran politician. He’s been a health minister and an infrastructure minister – on separate occasions – and now is known among his colleagues as a backbencher because he’s no longer a minister of anything.

And his private members bill isn’t anything to take one flush at and look away either. Not only would Ontarians on average have to fork over about $50 per month for the right to continue to access their safe and clean municipal water supply, the bill would put into law the public ownership of water.

Maybe Caplan is planning ahead to the next election -- today he announced yet another private member's bill to make Toronto's public transit system legally an essential service. This debate has gone on for years, because every time the over-powerful and greedy union calls for a transit strike, the City of Toronto essentially shuts down due to the massive traffic jams.

Who does own the stuff that flows through your taps? If Caplan’s bill passes – it is already at Second Reading – legally you would.

But wait a sec . . . if you own something, why would you need to pay for it – you already own it?

Caplan’s water bill stems from the Walkerton tragedy a decade ago. Back in 2000, seven people died in Walkerton, Ontario, Canada due to a tainted water supply. The money collected by this new tax on water would go towards ensuring municipal water sources and the systems in place to get those water sources to us our safe and well managed.

In some Canadian municipalities, the water supply systems are well over 100-years-old.

Despite the additional cost to Ontario residents, this water bill really boils down to two issues – the ownership of a natural resource, and whether or not the money collected for the right to access that resource will really go towards maintaining it.

Far more than being cynical, we’ve seen governments create new taxes and user fees for specific projects, only to learn that those monies have gone to other things.

When the Liberals were last in power federally in Canada, millions of dollars were collected to keep track of legal gun owners, and to remove unregistered fire arms.
However, all the money collected was spent long before the Gun Registry was completed, leaving a political mine field for the Liberals, and a mishandled and mismanaged partial list of registered gun owners.

That additional gas tax you pay when you fill up your car is supposed to fund road and highway repairs, public transit systems and other infrastructure costs.

Yet most of these funds have gone into other government programs, leaving our roads and highways full of potholes, and our constantly underfunded public transit systems crushing their very users, by constantly increasing their fares.

Clearly, we just can’t take a politicians word when they tell us specific user fees or taxes collected will go to the specific costs they claim they will.

So should we let the slow meandering wheels of governments declare our water systems publicly owned?

The alternative, unfortunately isn’t all that better – having a privately owned water system, run by the filthy hands of greedy big business.

Although the funds collected by big business would most likely go into maintaining the water supply system, the primary goal of big business is making money. So the costs would constantly increase, as the powers-that-be wanted more and more profits – even if the cost to maintain the system didn’t rise.

We’ve seen this happen with the once provincially owned 407 Express Toll Highway in Ontario, which has seen constant toll increases ever since it was sold off to a private company which now handles all maintenance.

Whatever happens, we’re stuck in the middle of two evils – a mismanaged public system, or an overpriced private system – because water is the one thing none of us can go without.

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Canadian Transit System Doesn’t Listen – Spends Thousands Instead

Canada’s largest transit system – always begging and pleading with governments for funding – is about to drop tens of thousands of dollars for no good reason.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is turning to third-party private consultants to investigate and solve its customer service problems. Last year, the TTC says it received about 31,000 complaints, an increase of 15 percent from the year before that. Fare increases, delays, rude employees and restrictions on token purchases are among the top complaints according to the transit operator.

However the biggest problem with Canada’s largest transit system won’t be resolved by spending the estimated tens of thousands of dollars on these private consultants.

A world-class city, such as Toronto, can afford to spend the big bucks to bring in only the best of the best to listen, consult and then advise the TTC on how to improve their customer service.

And when you pay the big bucks, you usually get what you pay for – exceptional advice.

But that’s just the problem with the TTC – they don’t listen to, or act on the advice from their customers. So spending tens of thousands of dollars they don’t have – they probably will raise fares to cover this expense – is money in, money out, and money gone without any result.

Many companies hire consultants to research, investigate, and resolve their various issues and concerns. But it is up to the company to implement the solutions their consultants suggested. And there are infinite examples of companies spending mega-bucks on high-priced consultants, only to ignore those consultants, try their own fixes, or worse, just continue doing business as they always have been.

Now no one can predict the future, so maybe – just maybe – the TTC will actually take their consultants word as the new way to win back customers.

But stop and think for a second, according to the TTC, they admit to receiving over 31,000 complaints from their customers. Not every complaint comes with a solution, and many of those complaints may be unjustified, or unfair. We all have bad days, and sometimes all it takes is that one last straw to break, and we’ll go off venting our rage, digging into whoever or whatever happens to be around at the time.

Though when you get about 31,000 complaints, some of them are bound to be valid, and many of those valid complaints may even have solutions impeded within them.

And that is the real cause for all the fuss – a serious lack of listening.

Canada’s largest public transit operator just doesn’t listen to its customers. You don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on complete strangers to figure out what is wrong with the system, and how to fix it.

If even just a handful of people call in to complain about a bus route which never follows the posted schedule, do you really need to spend thousands of dollars to figure out what to do? The solutions are simple – ride with the drivers on that route to figure out if the schedule is out of whack with reality, change it, and post the new schedule so that passengers know it.

If a number of people complain that a specific bus driver on a specific bus route is always rude, drives dangerously, and freaks out the passengers with sudden stops, running red lights and other pleasantries, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to solve this problem. Replace the bus driver – simple – done and it didn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars in consultation fees.

Companies which listen to their customers – their complaints, concerns and kudos – succeed. They are the ones that know their customers, and know what they are doing right and wrong, so they can continue to do the right things, while working to improve the things which their customers can’t stand.

If anyone at the TTC is listening – which would be a pleasant surprise – don’t spend money on consultants to tell you what you already know or have access too. Just take the time to listen to your customers, and do what you can to make things right with them.

We’re All Environmentalists – When It Costs Money

Sure you use your office’s blue boxes for recycling paper at work, and you probably separate your trash, recyclables and in some municipalities, even your compost materials at home.

These are things we do because we have too – most offices and municipalities have strict policies on what can and can’t be put out for garbage, often with consequences.

Municipal governments can fine and in some cases jail you for failing to recycle. Some offices have environmental cops, which leave nasty Post-It Notes on your desk if you’re caught trashing that stash of old papers, instead of recycling them.
One office I worked at, if you got three or more notices from the environmental cops, you had to wear a giant green witch’s hat for an entire day, as punishment for your green sin. The idea is that you’re so embarrassed by being singled with the giant green hat out as the one who doesn’t recycle, you’ll start too.

But nothing can make us more green for the planet, than money. When it simply costs more to do the non-environmentally-friendly thing, suddenly we’ll go green.

Take one of the most common New Year’s Resolutions in North America – to lose weight –and combine it with this winter’s brutal El Nino cold spell circulating the globe. Many parts of the world are experiencing unusually brisk temperatures, affecting regional growing crops.

In Mexico City, kids played in the snow for the first time ever, while Florida farmers have been watering their fruit crops non-stop to prevent them from freezing over due to below freezing temperatures.

This means one of the world’s staple food crops – sugar – is suffering. Mother Nature just didn’t design the sugar cane for a cold climate.

So all those people that made a promise to themselves to drop some excess weight this year are in luck – foods with sugar are starting to cost more at the store, thanks to a global shortage of sugar, brought about by an environmental mess.

Though fresh fruit – especially world famous Florida oranges – are also costing us more at the grocery store. And fresh fruit is good for you – an apple a day keeps the doctor away, or so the saying goes.

But too much of a good thing can harm you. If you drink too much fruit juice, or even if you eat too many fresh fruits in a day, you can increase your triglycerides by consuming all that natural fruit sugar, which can lead to diabetes, or even stroke and heart disease.

Still, the most influential factor in making us see green is in many cases green.
Major metropolitan areas such as New York City, U.S.A or Toronto, Canada report a direct correlation between increased ridership on their public transit systems when gas prices climb, and a similar reduction in ridership when gas prices decrease. So when it costs more to fill up your gas tank, you are more likely to take public transit.

Public transit, although not the best environmental solution, is better for the environment, as most of us drive all alone to work and back in our personal vehicles. But when you hop on a streetcar, bus or subway train, suddenly you are doing a very environmentally-friendly thing, as you’re taking your single occupant vehicle off the road, and replacing it with one multi-occupant vehicle. So instead of having thousands of single occupant vehicles on the road, you end up with one big vehicle with many occupants.

But the greatest cause for the fluctuations in public transit passenger load are money-based.

Kind of sad when you think about it. Although we all know being environmental citizens is good for all of us that call this planet home, it still takes money to make most of us be those good environmental citizens.

Be it a fine from your local town or city, or the cost at the pumps to fuel your car, money makes anyone an instant environmentalist.

Watch, as sugar prices rise, causing a jump in sugary food costs, more of us will be on diets . And those diets won’t necessarily be due to a New Year’s Resolution.

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The Politics of Pettiness

Canada’s largest transit system continues to bungle a boondoggle of a mess, stranding riders all to save a buck.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) announced earlier this month they were going to raise fares by a quarter. These fare increases are nothing new, Canada’s largest public transit system continually is ignored by all three levels of government.

The fare increase of a mere quarter may not seem like much to those of us sitting in our luxury SUVs,

Image by TransferPoint via Flickr

but means a great deal to the lower class, working poor, which comprises the majority of the TTC’s over 460 million passengers annually (last year the service set an annual record, with just over 466 million riders.)

For most of those regular riders, the TTC is their only method of travel, so they depend on the service to do life’s basic necessities – such as going to the grocery store to buy food, going the drugstore to get much needed medicines, and going to work to earn an income to pay for it all.

But, in a boneheaded move which still has many of Toronto’s transit riders – and even some of us who don’t take the service – shaking our heads in bewilderment, the TTC has made it almost impossible for many riders to take the service, all in attempt to prevent lost fare revenues.

Just prior to fare increases, the metal tokens passengers use to pay for the service normally sold in abundant supplies are limited. This is done to prevent hoarding of tokens, so that those taking the service don’t stock up at the old price.

But this year, the TTC announced they weren’t selling tokens at all, until the new higher fare took effect in the New Year. Instead, they’d be issuing temporary tickets which would become invalid immediately in January.

Problem though, some TTC riders were left stranded where they

Image by TransferPoint via Flickr

were, simply because they didn’t have any tokens left, and these temporary tickets were nowhere to be found. The TTC claims they printed enough of these temporary tickets to meet demand, but admits they supplied their subway collectors first, and that many retailers had called in complaining they were out of stock.

So, if you happened to be within walking distance of a subway station, no problem, you could make the hike to get these new tickets – which incidentally were introduced in a period of less than 24-hours, even the media didn’t know about this new scheme until the night before. But if you weren’t within walking distance of one of the 69 subway stations, you were out of luck.

The TTC’s excuse? It estimates it could lose about $13 million in fare revenues by people buying tokens in bulk prior to the fare increase, so they cut off the token supply. But in so doing, they also cut off access to the system for their riders – which in effect would cost them fare revenues because people couldn’t get onto the system.

Usually tickets are sold without any limits, because newer tickets are printed when the new higher fare takes effect, so collectors and drivers can tell when someone is attempting to use an older, outdated ticket. The tokens on the other hand, are continually re-used.

But in past years, to beat the fare increases, or even to ride for free, some creative-types were able to duplicate the paper tickets, essentially creating their own exact copies.

Image by Canon Fodder XT via Flickr

So, earlier this year, the TTC stopped selling tickets altogether, only issuing either tokens or passes. This only compounds the problems once the TTC stopped selling tokens – which was a really bad idea period.

Who’s brain-dead idea was it to suddenly, and without any warning, stop selling the primary payment method most of the over 460 million annual riders use to take the transit service? That’s like your bank suddenly telling you they no longer accept cash.

As per usual with Canada’s largest transit system, time will pass and eventually cooler heads will prevail, as people forget the current fiasco. Though if the suits and ties that drive to their offices in their own personal vehicles, instead of taking the actual service they manage, actually cared about the service they provide – or in this case failed to provide – heads would roll.

In any other company, a marketing, public relations and customer service blunder as big as this would cost those responsible for the mess their jobs.

Not Canada’s largest transit system – it just plows on through as if nothing went wrong. And that perhaps is even worse than the mistake in the first place. We all make mistakes, but the TTC’s top brass is too arrogant to own up to their mistakes.

Not that they didn’t learn anything from this whole mess – but learning from one’s mistakes is only part of the resolution. One also has to be willing to take ownership and acceptance of the initial mistake to make a real difference in the lives of those affected.

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The Fall of Great Cities

Urban Planning Gone Wrong
Last week, over 300,000 commuters in Canada’s largest city were suddenly displaced, when the city’s subway system was suddenly out of service.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) shut down a portion of one of the city’s three subway routes, due to a construction mishap during the afternoon rush hour.

Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of people had no way to get home. The TTC did add extra buses on surface routes, but a bus holding about 35-45 people is no substitute for a subway train which can carry several times that many.

Image via Wikipedia

Quickly the shuttle buses filled up – actually overfilled would be more like it – to the point where bus drivers were only stopping to allow people lucky enough to hitch a ride off.

This meant an estimated 300,000 people had no way of getting home during one of the busiest times for the ailing transit system.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, just a few months ago during the summer, the whole line had to be shut down during the afternoon rush hour, again leaving hundreds of thousands of transit riders without a method to get home.

Drivers weren’t any better off, in both instances, major north-south roads were closed to all but shuttle buses by police, causing traffic chaos for those of us in our own personal vehicles. Thousands of cars lined the downtown core, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of angry pedestrians, being forced to walk – all because of Toronto’s failing public transit system. If this were a scene from a big block buster Hollywood movie, it might be a cool – but this horror was no movie.

Extra police – some in riot gear – were on scene, to ensure frustrated motorists, pedestrians and just anyone else in the center of Canada’s largest city, didn’t misbehave during this example of urban planning gone horribly wrong. T

Image via Wikipedia

hese made one of the wealthiest first nation countries on the planet resemble a war zone.

Traffic in most cities around the world is constantly getting worse, as more people move to areas outside of the cities to live, but continue to work within those cities. This has forced interdependence upon personal vehicles – you need a car to go from your home in the suburbs to work in the city and back again.

With this urban sprawl, you’d figure the largest cities in the world would listen to the warnings and heed the advice of urban planners like legendary planning guru Jane Jacobs. Jacobs (best known for her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities), a native of the States, in her later years moved to Toronto, Canada where she was very vocal about the decay of North American cities. She predicted how Canada’s cities would follow the same dreadful path to self-destruction, if infrastructure improvements didn’t keep pace with population increases, and if our cities didn’t become centers to live AND work in, instead of what they have become – just places to work in.

That’s how poor ghettos are formed, surrounded by wealthy suburbs.

Jacobs passed away in her 80’s a few years ago, but many urban planners, academics and other braniacs that study these things have continued to sound the alarm on the dire state our most heavily populated places poor planning.

Basic infrastructures have continued to be maintained – sewage and solid waste systems, electrical power grids, even natural gas lines in some areas have all expanded north of our cities, fostering new neighborhoods. But no new major highways have been built to accommodate all those extra cars and trucks going back and forth from the city to the suburbs.

Mass public transit systems (like subways, light rail systems, or even bus lanes) have also not been put into the equation. Meaning the few highways in and out of our major urban centers become disaster zones during the morning, afternoon and weekend rush hours.

Our cities become corrupt, dirty, dangerous and desperate areas, as those living in them are the working poor that can’t afford the luxury of a personal vehicle, so they are stuck in areas serviced by public transit.

As the poor get poorer, and the rich get richer – something which has been occurring now for the past two-decades by many accounts – our cities continue to become urban slums – ghettos for the poor.

As politicians cater to the rich and powerful that support their election campaigns, funding continues to be diverted to services for many who don’t even live in the city – the rich and the powerful living in the posh suburbs.

Cover via Amazon

This ignorance of the very people within the city limits harms us all – roads don’t get built, transit systems continue to be underfunded, both of which collide into a fatal head-on collision during peak travel times.

Ironic as it is, that’s the sad fate of our urban centers, thanks to greedy inept politicians and poor urban planning which doesn’t meet the needs of the majority of the city’s population.

Once safe, friendly and prosperous cities become more crime-ridden, places of danger and despair, as poor planning causes economic disparity. A disproportionate spread of educated, middle class continue to leave the city, to call the suburbs home – though all the jobs remain in the city.

This is because it is easier for companies to find cheap, unskilled labor off major public transit lines, so the poorer city residents continue to live and work in our cities. While the higher-paid skilled workers also work in the city, but they live anywhere but the city.

Politicians, thinking they are scratching the backs of those who will help them win their jobs back in the next election, pump money into expansion of city-run sewers, electrical systems, and other support systems from the city to the suburbs.

This encourages new neighborhoods for the suburbs, but they don’t create any new major highways or transit system expansions from these neighborhoods to the city.

The politicians know no one wants a major highway running through their backyard, so instead of doing the right thing, the do what is politically correct – and least likely to alienate the very people who can elect that person back into office.

So the new urban sprawl continues, traffic congestion gets worse as the middle class and up shifts from the city to the ‘burbs’ leaving the poorer lower classes in our cities, and in the end, our once wonderful cities become victims of their own demise.

Just ask the over 300,000 people who were stuck without a way to get home during last week’s subway shut-down – that’s almost a half-million people. And that doesn’t include the thousands of people in their cars and trucks, trying to get out of the city, to their suburban home.

Poor Jane Jacobs, she must be rolling over in her grave, shaking her fist, as she says: “I told you so.”

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