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Q and A on a variety of topics
Note: The original quesion/response format may have been changed to suit this web-site.
Q.
“What kind of leadership would you like to see from the next Mayor of Canada's largest city?”
A.
When, in your subsequent questions, you enquire about the Miller government, and I would like to give you a solid response, it's frustrating to have to encounter so much that is misdirected effort that will probably have to be cleaned up in time.
The focus of Toronto's current civic governance is on the accomplishment of projects. The official city plan is about short term accomplishment. It lays out goals based in growth and infrastructure, and the city officials we have work very hard at obtaining and reserving funding to accomplish all these things as well as maintaining the city's services. I've noticed something is missing in the equation.
If the operation of current civic government is viewed through a different lens: i.e. "where are we going with all this?". The answer lies in the elements of the question. "We're building, we're growing, we're maintaining."
I've tried to word my concern in a manner that doesn't make me look like I live in ‘LaLa Land’, but thus far, I haven't been able to do so. So here goes...
Toronto has no future vision, and I believe, when you ask about leadership, it comes down to, amongst other things, future vision. Nobody has thus far attempted to find out what people want this city to be in its far future, nor has anyone done any future planning to find out whether what we are doing here and now is on track towards a planned vision.
And it's not. As a direct result, city budgeting gets crowded and becomes very difficult to manage.
The Yuman civilization in the (now) southern Arizona area were, 2000 years ago, the ancestors of the Hopi, and also the Prima Maricopa first nations. They developed a future planning process called "seventh generation" planning, in which all of their decisions with regard to the tribes were based upon their impact on the as-yet unborn future seventh generation of their peoples. As a result, both their technological advances were remarkable in their serviceability; and the settled area around that part of the country has been reported as being incredibly beautiful. Back in those times, 'seventh generation' might refer to a period of about 150 years. Nowadays, it would probably be more like 200 years. I've been informed that the Prima Maricopa councils still practice the 2000-year-old custom.
If somebody asked me what kind of Toronto would be my bequest to [the group of real people whose future depends greatly upon what we do today, and whom we also might give the appellation ”the seventh generation”], it might look like: “Two hundred years from now, everyone in Toronto will be living in a beautiful, clean, energy-efficient and peaceful, prosperous city characterized by excellent civilian health, convenience, neighbourly courtesy and gladness in each resident as they approach each day of their lives.” (Told you it might sound like ‘LaLa Land’! And perhaps even more than (2006 Mayoralty Candidate) Mitch Gold’s "2015" vision… importantly, much more general in scope.)
What's a future plan?
A future plan is not just a limited list of items that have dates and times of accomplishment. A future plan also begins with a far distant imagination of a rosy future, and then works toward it by keeping it in mind when making present-day decisions to determine whether they support that future.
For example, a future plan would begin with a vision generally agreed-upon by everybody and actually recorded in writing. Then, it would separate each of its characteristics out, (“beautiful”, “clean”, etc.) and define more closely what they mean or might look like to someone viewing them in the distant future. Next, a comparison would be made with conditions that exist here and now, and a great deal of planning would begin to make changes, identify elements, that were designed to reach that picture. The elements of "beautiful" and "clean" might start to change the way we plan our cityscapes, instead of the concepts of "more" and "bigger" currently guiding the city's development.
People who do future planning often work backwards from the envisioned future: “In order to get this, these things must happen. In order to get these things, this and this must happen. In order to get this, we must first accomplish these, that, and those, etc. etc. The process is divided into vision, focus, strategy, and tactics, working towards a vision by working back from the vision to the present and then thinking each step of the progress towards the future through as well as deciding which avenues of motion are possible at the moment when applying that thought is most appropriate.
A future plan guides our decision making, rather than determining where it will eventually end up, and is intensely mutable, fluid, and transitional. Professionals who create such plans for corporations interested in planning a strong future are called ‘future planners’. Each item to be accomplished as the picture moves forward could require hundreds or even thousands of changes over a great variety of time-spans; and has to be approached from two points of view: ‘how’ (timeline, technology), and ‘cost’ (in-time affordability).
That’s a future plan. We don’t have one. The result? Not having a vision of what the future should look like, we can’t tell if what we are doing is on the right track to get there or not. So we struggle along by trying to improve or upgrade what we have now, with no real targets in sight telling us how we’re doing, or whether we're on the right track.
Developers will tell you we’re doing all right when they’re making a profit…and that defines “all right” to them. Public transit authorities will tell you we’re doing all right when they are installing lots of public transit corridors that will eliminate private traffic…and that defines “all right” to them. City council will tell you that they are building more infrastructure projects, and the city is thus developing by building things…and that defines “all right” to them. City planners are making certain that each development item is carefully examined for how it fits into a neighbourhood, and that’s “all right” for them.
Each is doing what is “all right” to itself, and they really have no way of knowing how they are affecting our potential for a bright future here in Toronto because their interests do not extend outside their own immediate purviews.
Our future is based upon a series of random short-term exercises in self-interest, and the result is doomed to produce no cogent future at all. Maybe, if there were to be a future vision, we might have to re-think how we’re doing things now...even change some of our current plans.
What else needs to be considered in the leadership at the helm of the city? The following is taken from an eMail to a friend. As you read the following, you may understandably find yourself objecting to some of the ideas expressed. I persevere in my thoughts by attempting to think through the limits of the proverbial “box” into the realm of potential solutions in the bigger picture that lives outside the box. By relating those solutions to the problems inside, a compromise can be reached that has a base in current reality and a viable plan for betterment.
While the rest of us live in a world of issues, a leader is expected to live in the realm of solutions.
The current batch of so-called leaders in Toronto’s civic governance, however, continue to live in the land of issues and problems; and solutions come slowly and with great difficulty in that realm because no one immersed in the fray can rise above it to the bigger picture in order to find solutions. There is no leadership that can point it out.
The lack of Toronto’s leadership leads to behaviours and programs being instituted that are well meaning, but can be characterized as bizarre because they are not able to be thought-through in an efficient manner. [At this point in the piece I am also referring to the idea of a missing future vision.]
As an example, the city has seen some beautiful transportation systems in other cities in the world that have a Light Rail Transit component. Toronto is now planning an LRT component in recognition that this is a good system of public transportation. However, the city failed to notice that in cities where an LRT is established with excellence, it does not interfere in any way with traffic flow. How do we know the city failed to notice this? The planned LRT for Toronto is supposed to go up the center of Jane Street, Don Mills, Sheppard Avenue, and four other major 4-6 lane traffic arteries in the city, leaving one to two lanes on either side for heavy rush hour automobile traffic. Every one of them will become just like the deplorable mess that has become St. Clair Ave. West, and the overloaded rapid transit highway routes will not be able to accommodate the additional stress. Well meaning, but bizarre.
Our garbage disposal system, paying millons of dollars to transport garbage to Michigan, is well meaning but bizarre.
Our energy provision programs by comparison with those in Australia where private individuals are encouraged to contribute to the grid, are well meaning but bizarre.
Our new developments that mask the waterfront from the city by lining it with high-rises are not well-meaning, just bizarre. Our traffic control methods, judging by traffic movement in the city, are bizarre.
Our care for the aged is well meaning but extremely outdated and bizarre.
Our snow removal systems, where collected snow is dumped to feed the Don and roads are salted resulting in a salinated water supply are well meaning but bizarre.
Our future planning for the city, concerned as it is with specific items the city wants to enact, but completely devoid of vision or a direction, is well meaning but bizarre.
Our current Mayor who is trained in legal thought and is thus more conservative and inhibited in moving in the circle of vision and actual leadership by fears that any good lawyer has about taking chances and investigating the unknown, offers a leadership that is well meaning and hard working, but beset by all kinds of inhibitions and bogged down in issues. The result of paying more mind to the issues than to their solutions is bizarre leadership.
Think of the comic character Superman and his bizarre counterpart Bizarro. The guy kind of looks like Superman, and he’s well-meaning, but he always gets things wrong in so many ways. Bizarro is an analogy of civic governance in our time.
The way it used to be no longer works for a healthy future. We are now a mega city, fourth (or fifth, depending upon whom you’re talking with) largest Metropolis in North America; 50th largest in the world. The system with which this city views its advance must inevitably change with the situation and the times in order to serve any future. As it continues to change in that manner, the people in the here and now must also benefit from changes as they are realized. Our very size makes it imperative that these realizations be made into tangible concepts now.
Q.
Would you ever consider taking on the Mayoralty of Toronto?
A.
[Following is an explanation of a controversial statement I made in an original email response to the questioner. It was pointed out to me by one of my friends --a former owner of a marketing agency-- that, despite the softeners I tried to include throughout, it could very well be misconstrued. The statement is a private reflection of ego in that email, and is not intended to bear on reality in any way except to show my determination, in some way or another, to get the city on track as one responsible aspect of leadership. It's in the email where I wrote about why I might consider running for the leadership of the city. Casually reading the original statement, it could be construed as me stating that my convictions come from experience, having turned around four or five cities already; or that my ego blinds me to the fact that anybody else could do as good a job.
Not what I had intended to communicate. ]
The message I had intended to be taken away when I wrote the following was that
(a) I think I could do a decent job in the position.
(b) There are probably, based upon the previous 2006 Mayoralty slate of 38 candidates, very few others who have to date thought about a genuinely remedial platform, and who have given thought with foresight and understanding to the huge number of variables involved in such a program.
(c) People --and there are hundreds of people who could do this equally as well or better than I-- who could Mayor Toronto extremely well in my view, haven't been showing up for the job. The names being proposed from political figures jumping into a vacant limelight, now that David Miller has affirmed that he will not be running, are a very bad joke being perpetrated by the media upon the citizens of this city, who, led by the name-worshiping press, are not examining those names closely enough to discover what kinds of Mayor they might make!
(d) Because of the tremendous task ahead of not only developing and implementing a cogent plan, but also repairing the mess currently being made without one, my thoughts about anybody's potential candidacy for the job could accurately be summed up as 'stepping in where angels fear to tread'.
This is a clarification of what I had originally written, i.e. "Now, here’s your answer… (paraphrased from the same eMail) I have a mixed motivation. My direction is both towards my own thoughts of how best a remedial Mayoralty might be run, and taking the city away from the expression of Mayoralty that we are currently saddled with: The reason I’d consider running for office is because I despair of there being anybody else at all in the entire city (who has done the thinking --or is even capable of the kind of thinking-- that works towards providing solutions in a whole host of areas that the city faces in order to provide itself a viable future) who is willing to step forward to do the daunting job ahead for the fool who takes it on as a remedial challenge. (Capable and bright people we have, but they all may be too wily to volunteer for the task of Mayor.) Well, somebody has to do it, because…consider the alternative: it’s all around you.
So in general, yes I’m really thinking about throwing my glove in as a potential candidate; and when the time comes to declare, if I still can summon the nerve and the huge support I’ll need to accomplish even the first small steps in my platform, you’ll find my name on the ballot. [If citizens are voting for self-respect as compared to a name, I’ll win!
And then, will I be sorry! (No, not really, because although the job will be huge and demanding, it will also hopefully be a day-by-day engrossing prospect.)]"
Q. What do you think will be the top three issues in the next municipal election, which will ultimately be the three deciding factors for who sits in the mayor’s chair?
A. I don’t believe the number three is realistic, fair, or responsible journalism, for either the issues, or the 'top' candidates.
Some believable platform items will be a need for a future vision, the number of candidates running on the ticket, and the city’s future economic well-being.
They all are complex enough to contain myriads of identifiable issues and solutions.
The trick might even be to rise above the issues and show issues as an inferior method of dealing with the city’s choice of leader by dealing with them at the level of solutions. Or it might not. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two approaches.
Those decisions are for an individual candidate's campaign team to hash out, not the media. The media's job is to report on the candidates and their platforms, not to choose them for us.
[EDITORIAL COMMENT HERE: It has been my experience that the media does indeed declare what the “top three” issues are. Toronto’s media also declare who the “top three” candidates are, and proceed to largely ignore the rest. If I were to run for public office, it would not be my intention to either become a tool of the media during an election in which I were to be a candidate, or become an enabler for the media to hijack the election away from all candidates and away from the electorate by declaring the issues and the candidates the city should vote for.
A voting public has the right to be informed thoroughly regarding each candidate’s platform so that it can make its own judgement.
What I have noticed is that in the name of lack of media space for all candidates, the print and broadcast media unethically narrow the field of candidates down to three of their own choosing; and in an activity very close to yellow journalism, which is creating the news, declares the issues. That’s election hijacking.
If I were to run for office, I would insist upon responsible journalistic coverage of all candidates running for office during an election. This could only be done by a very powerful candidate with an excellent media representative.]
Q. “Recently, under Mayor David Miller, the city released its 2009 Operating and Capital Budget, which – among many things – calls for a property tax increase, more funding for transit, social service programs, economic development, a redesign of Nathan Phillips Square, even global climate change. Briefly, what do you think of how Mayor Miller is spending our local tax dollars? What is he doing right? What is he doing wrong? What kinds of actions would you undertake, under the current global economic crisis?”
A.
(a) Recently, under Mayor David Miller, the city released its 2009 Operating and Capital Budget
Without a coherent direction, it’s all more of the same: property tax increase, more funding for transit, so-called social service programs that add services rather than addressing the sources of those problems, so-called economic development, a redesign of Nathan Phillips Square, even a nod to global climate change…money down a hole.
(b) Briefly, what do you think of how Mayor Miller is spending our local tax dollars?
Badly.
(c) What is he doing right?
He’s working very hard, as best as he can within his budget limitations and abilities. No one can fault Miller for doing his best.
(d) What is he doing wrong?
He’s following in the footsteps of established procedure, and as a direct result, accomplishing anything he can through an absolute morass of established impediments.
(e) What should a Mayor do under the current global economic crisis?
Improve the city’s economy. Put people to work. I have published several ideas of how this might be accomplished, including some definite outlines that may be found in this website .
Currently, the city is not involved in economic improvement in any realistic way. Programs proposed by the 2009 budget are all smoke and mirrors and will accomplish nothing positive.
[AMUSING RECENT (YESTERDAY) EXAMPLE: The following is cut and pasted from councilor Janet Davis’ February 17th “e-bulletin” to her constituents, addressing the new 2009 operating budget for the city. Note the last paragraph. [Italics mine.] The budget contains an overall increase of 2.5% from all property taxes (residential and business) for a total of $83 million. Residential taxes will increase 4% or an annual increase of $89 on the average home with an assessed value of $387,000. There is no increase to the Land Transfer Tax or Personal Vehicle Tax. The operating budget will also: protect and improve transit service with no fare increase, increase EMS paramedic response time, maintain the number of community police officers, maintain snow clearing and removal service, enhance Streets to Homes program, increase open hours at Toronto Public Libraries, increase recreation programs at community centres, open 70 km of additional bike lanes, protect and increase the tree canopy, open new and upgraded parks and playgrounds. The budget includes an inflation increase of 3.7% on most user fees. For example, the fee for a 12 week adult aquatic pass is going up $3.50 (from $94.50 to $98). User fees still do not cover the full cost of programs.
And the following news article was copied using OCR from yesterday’s (March 6th, 2009) Toronto Sun, page 5.
Board's plan to close 7 pools won't float -DON PEAT Sun Media
Close seven pools, beg the province for $12 million and encourage Torontonians to dive into the remaining ones more often. That's the plan David Crombie and his Aquatic Working Group (AWG) sent to the Toronto District School Board yesterday that, if implemented, could keep open 32 of the 39 pools once slated for closure.
But Toronto District School Board chairman John Campbell said the group's report doesn't contain new money to keep the pools open, so all 39 are likely to close. "Of the 39 pools in question we're not in a financial position to keep any of them open," Campbell told the Sun. "Nothing has changed."
He's disappointed that the group didn't come up with long-term cash commitments from the city or the province, he said. "The city used to permit 41 of our pools," Campbell said. "It would have been very much appreciated by the communities in question if some of these pools had been made available to the citizens by parks and rec. "Ultimately, it's not the school board's purpose or mission to bring recreational aquatics to people, that's the city's job."
Trustees on the board's planning and priorities committee will have their first chance to debate the report at their meeting today. The seven pools earmarked for closure are Bickford Centre, Bloor Collegiate, Central Commerce, Danforth Collegiate, Oakwood Collegiate, Parkdale Collegiate and the Ursula Franklin Academy.]
Q. As far back as 1993, there has been talk of expanding our subway to York University, and more recently, the Transit City plan claims to not only have a light rail stop at the Keele and Steeles Ave. university campus running by 2015, but also stops in York Region, running up to Highway 7. For comparison, the Sheppard to Don Mills line took eight-years to build, at about a billion dollar price tag. Do you think this plan’s goals are attainable? If not, why not and how will you proceed?
A.
Do you think this plan’s goals are attainable?
I think the plans are terribly wrongly conceived. Of course the rapid transit component of the TTC should be expanded all over the city, including right into York University…not just several blocks away at Keele and Steeles Aves. [Assuming the proposed station is at Keele & Steeles, there will have to be a separate York University stop on central campus, probably around the Scott building. The distance is similar to that from the Bathurst Station to the Bay Station on the Bloor Subway line.]
(b) If so, why? And of course they can be built in the amount of time allotted…depending upon who is doing the building. (Just check out the subway system and rebuilding of that enormous city’s traffic routes built in Beijing for the Olympic Games in six years flat!)
(c) If not, why not and how would you proceed if you were in charge of TTC route expansion?
The ground level transportation LRT planned is an extremely bad idea. I probably would be inhibited from doing anything with established routes for a long time because putting people to work, making the cityscape more environmentally amenable, and elevating the city’s economy would take all the spare resources I could muster.
But although the LRT is partly senior-government funded and thus probably an unstoppable disaster; if I had my druthers, I’d destroy it wherever it was economically feasible to do so and substitute an more modern and user-friendly overhead system in those places so as to have the effect of moving it out of the way of an up-to-date technologically enhanced system of private (cars, bikes, trucks, buses) traffic flow.
If it cost too much to do both simultaneously, I’d privatize the overhead system and destroy the ground LRT system entirely as part of the deal. But as I've mentioned, it would be extremely difficult to effect such changes. [ http://www.feedbacktomark.wordpress.com Scroll to the end for a couple of sketches.]
Bottom line: that isn’t, sadly, going to be possible, so instead I’m writing articles to raise consciousness in this city too sleepy to see what’s being snuck past them in the name of progress. [You’ll find them at “Feedback To Mark Blogsets” on Wordpress (feedbacktomark.wordpress.com). The first one goes to press today or tomorrow.] Perhaps, if we're lucky, [the proposed LRT fiasco] will be reviewed before it’s too late.
Q. Part of being a city leader is working with current political party-driven provincial and federal leaders, politicians and their staff. How do you think a Mayor should work with those with different political stripes from his/her own? How should non-partisan city leaders work with someone giving them a hard time, simply because they didn’t agree with city policies?
A.
Every Mayor has had his own style. In dealing with senior government, Lastman was extremely popular because he yelled his head off about how senior government was treating Toronto so badly until he shamed it into handing over the extra income he wanted.
Miller likes the 'old boy' approach, but he looks beaten every time he goes back for more handouts, and his publicity shows him complaining a lot about things over which he expresses wishes but has no actual control.
Over time, by aligning himself more efficiently to the Liberal party and the aims of the provincial liberals, he has become more able to proclaim some success with programs originating at the provincial level, such as the Toronto portion of Metrolinks...a program that is less than optimal to begin with.
But on the city side, his accomplishments remain less than useful, consisting as they do of imagined gains largely based upon scanty information about what's going on in the rest of the world. For example, he has declared Toronto a world leader in green roofs by putting the green roof idea into practice with a small amount of greenery on the city hall roof and a couple of other buildings; and a 'how-to' conference purportedly for the purpose of graduating green roof experts into the city expertise pool. This is taking place a clean 40 years after many of the other great cities in the world began their well-advanced and outstanding green roof programs. He has also recently declared Toronto's streets to be in great shape compared to the rest of Canada. It's more difficult to fault this assessment, because I'm certain that the same quality of street condition that prevails in Toronto may be found elsewhere in Canada, and even worse. My own take on this matter, however, is that the condition of our roads by comparison to the streets in other major Canadian cities is nothing to crow about because comparing ourselves to others still leaves them in bad shape; which they are.
A better leadership style might be working at removing the city’s economic dependency on added senior government handouts (i.e., on other financial dependencies than its federal/provincial tax base transfer and taxation entitlement, of course) altogether.
Until that could be accomplished, I think Lastmanning might be more enjoyable than Millering.
In municipal politics, the Mayor carries a very big stick. He or she both appoints and heads up the striking committee. [The striking committee is the group that picks heads of departments and elected officials to oversee them.] This allows Mayors to work with closer supervision over the city bureaucracy, and in time, allows more opportunity for city advances and budgetary controls; and eventually fewer handout requirements.
Another good strategy would also include having as large a mutual candidate ticket as possible in an election; something that Miller started to do in a limited way in the last election. This is not a matter of fighting fire with fire. It is an economic measure (jacks the election campaign spending pot up from $1.1mil to a possible $3.5mil and avoids duplication of effort); and if the candidate roster itself is vociferous enough (partly the job of the campaign’s publicists), it all adds to the number of –hopefully— like-minded elected officials. Once elected, a cohesive city council can do many things. It can set up economic recovery programs. It can re-arrange council’s way of doing business to be more efficient by involving a motivated citizenry. It can undo some of the harm of the previous government.
It can create a power base by supporting MP and MPP candidates sympathetic to the city’s needs.
Q. Where do you see the city’s current management tactics as needing improvement? Do you think any of Millers current initiatives are worth continuing, or are there other initiatives that you think might be more important for Toronto?
A. I’d like to address the second question first, with brevity.
Do you think any of Millers current initiatives are worth continuing, or are there other initiatives that you think might be more important for Toronto?
In my opinion, all of Mayor David Miller’s current initiatives require a careful review to see whether any of them is indeed worthwhile; or whether instead, they are “doing-ness” projects with no coherent vision of how they will fit into Toronto’s future… mainly because Toronto possesses neither a coherent vision of its future nor a plan of approach to one.
Doing-ness projects increase infrastructure for the sake of city growth, and seek to maintain the status-quo with a woefully inadequate budget that barely supports city services. Many, if not most, of these so-called initiatives are a misplaced expenditure of funds needed badly in other areas that --with a perspective of looking toward the future-- should be receiving financial support instead.
As a civic leader elected to provide service to the citizens of Toronto, it’s incumbent upon the Mayor’s office to evaluate all matters passing before city council in the light of their usefulness to the city not only in the here and now, but also in the long view. That's clearly not in the Miller government's agenda.
By the long view, I am not referring to a mere 14 or 15 or even 50 years ahead. I’m referring to the Toronto greeted by real people (often referred to as the seventh generation) 200 years or more from now when they step outside their front door. We can't, in this era of enormously swift technological advance, predict what future life would be like; but we can plan for a quality of life for our future generations in each decision we make today, so long as that decision is based upon a vision.
What future generations see and expect from the city they live in begins today; or at least it would begin today if there was any thought given to it in the so-called initiatives we currently pursue. There is none, and the result is a series of actions undertaken by separate departments of government that evaluate as self-serving and lacking in cohesive purpose.
The following exerpts from the Official City Plan show how Toronto's future ambitions remain addressed as 'more of the same' present-based hallmarks of progress. Unfortunately, similar 'more of the same' hallmarks have recently been more deeply entrenched by Mayor Miller's special committee on the city's economic progress, the members of whom would eventually benefit by encouraging more of the infrastructure and development they are now benefitting through.
[ From the City of Toronto’s Official Plan Website:
Highlights The development trends since Council's adoption of the Official Plan indicate that Toronto is well on its way to providing sufficient new housing for the anticipated population growth. Development activity is largely taking place in the priority locations articulated in the growth management policies of the Official Plan. Read more about the trends in How Does The City Grow bulletin.
Highlights of the Official Plan:
identifies where significant new jobs and housing will be encouraged promotes growth that is less reliant on the private automobile calls for a transit-based growth strategy by directing development to areas with good transit while improving transit in major growth areas protects the physical character of Toronto's low-rise neighbourhoods emphasizes environmentally sustainable development contains design policies to guide the physical form of development and public realm improvements seeks to ensure the social and environmental infrastructure is in place to serve Toronto's present and future residents protects the city's important employment districts, and protects heritage buildings and resources and preserves our natural areas and ravines ]
Now, back to your initial question
1. Where do you see the city’s current management tactics as needing improvement?
Due to a lack of time and space, some of these answers --which have been provided with a structural support in our past recorded thoughts on them-- will remain unsupported by listing their authoritative references here. Nonetheless, I’ll do my best to respond satisfactorily enough to show you my colours.
I am a person of solutions, not issues, and I believe the city's leader’s responsibility also should be to understand the process of issue resolution...not to dwell in the realm of issues, beset by established impediments to their resolutions; but rather to lead the issue-considerers to rise above the plane of issue to the expanse of solution.
I believe this is a relevant part of a cogent response, because you requested an opinion I have understood as referring to tactics, which infers how the solutions are applied to the issues.
First and foremost, as alluded to above, the city needs to develop a future plan based upon every citizen’s aspirations for our future generations. Working back from that future to the present, an approach may be made to evaluate our spending priorities and methods of building infrastructure in the light of whether that future is supported by our plans and subsequent actions.
In the meantime, the citizenry need continued support to keep their city livable.
• People need to find gainful employment so they can afford housing. Other systems need to be put into place to give persons living outside the limits of normal attention and income more personal dignity. The city needs to take a direct hand in raising up the needful population. This compares with our current approach of charitable donations and welfare, which assists those folks in maintaining their status quo.
• The city never has enough money to do what it sets out its priorities to do based upon its inadequate budget of property tax dollars, licences and permits, other income, and federal/provincial tax transfer entitlements. As a result, it is constantly complaining to senior government, or presenting needful proposals to them for more funding. The city needs to become financially self-sufficient.
• Our public transit and traffic planning departments are a couple of those governmental divisions that I have in the past mentioned as producing reports and projects that are self-serving. Examples of the terribly obvious result of their misguided efforts may be seen in how badly traffic flows are managed, how poorly commuters are served by the existing transit routes, how a deliberate and utter destruction of traffic flow has resulted from the streetcar restricted lanes on St. Clair Avenue west, and now how more of the same deliberate method of destruction is being planned for seven other major rush hour traffic routes.
The impetus behind these proposals comes from the mistaken idea that public transit is better than private transit (cars and bicycles, etc.); and the origin of that mistake arising from the media’s report of the presence of automobiles needing to be removed from the city centers… popular in the 1970s but no longer relevant due to the changing nature of transportation. Judging by the increased use of automobiles and bicycles in traffic since the 1970’s despite smog alerts affecting public health, it may never have been a relevant solution to plan private transport’s demise.
Certainly in present terms, where toxic exhaust fumes are a planned thing of the past, a holus-bolus attempt to destroy in-town rush hour traffic patterns through the installation of a ground level LRT system in the city will only exacerbate the traffic mess to an unbelievable extent, not alleviate it. According to the city’s Official Plan, that’s exactly the purpose and intention for it. Short-sighted departments convinced that each knows what’s best for the city are not shy about publishing their plans.
Increased violent crime can be stemmed and perhaps completely eliminated if it is addressed on two fronts:
• removal of the felons from the streets; and
• education of children in all school districts to emphasize self-motivation skills and rewards for projects undertaken from inner direction.
The former may be addressed by an increased visible and invisible police presence and available crime-fighting technology; and by encouraging the media to stop aggrandizing the perpetrators with names they love, like “gangsters”, “gang wars”, “shooters”, etc. etc., replacing this language with epithets like slime, pukes, murderers, damnfools, etc. When the rewards are lessened in the media, the acting out to receive those rewards will probably diminish.
The latter is designed to create a future generation of latchkey kids, who upon returning home will get involved not in gangs but rather in community groups, hobbies, caring for younger children, preparing dinners for the family, and other worthwhile pursuits that children who can appreciate their own interests and abilities and sense of self-worth are more likely to do.
The city needs to protect itself by a system of grants to schools that set up curricula designed to inculcate self-motivation and inner direction.
Many of the city’s various infrastructure departments require re-organization to better serve their city. In fact, they probably all do. Garbage disposal, snow removal, care for the elderly, parks management, conservation initiatives, road building, support for green energy incentives [low flush toilets and Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL’s), public transit, traffic planning, sewage disposal, etc.] The city supports the purchase of CFL’s and low-flush toilets (the latter as an unthinking copycat result of a program initiated in Massachusetts a few years back by a politician who had no knowledge of plumbing). Both programs are knee-jerk 'conservation' bandwagons unsupported by engineering and environmental experts (except, apparently, David Suzuki, who ought to be reprimanded for his bad behaviour in support of the former when CCFL's are available along with LED lighting advancements that are non-polluting by comparison with the CFL debacle).
If the general population were to 'get wind' of the toilet fiasco (sorry for the bad pun) being perpetrated on them, they might be extremely unhappy.
If you want to purchase relatively green light bulbs capable of giving off good heat and light, but very easy on the electrical bill, get yourself some CCFLs, which are actually neon light tubes wrapped in a similar shape to CFLS. And which contain next to zero mercury as well.
• Within the next decade, the number of CFLs purchased and discarded will make civic landfills mercury toxic because people are inclined to toss the used ones in the garbage. (If they instead included the cast-offs as part of their toxic waste pickup loads, it would cost the city 50 cents for each discarded bulb to treat it at a special toxic waste facility set up for them.)
I think mercury pollution in our landfill sites is not a great gift for future generations, don't you agree?
• Once flushed waste leaves the trap in your toilet, it travels down to a horizontal pipe that takes it to the sewage system. 1.6 litres per flush will not move the waste along that 4 inch pipe. Houses built before the 1980's are almost all 4 inch sewage pipe systems. New homes are built with 3 inch pipes, and have a better chance of cleaning out properly on lower flush water amounts.
• If Toronto's older homes (most houses in the city) own 1.6-litre flush toilets (which, mercifully, have to be flushed several times just to empty the bowl efficiently), the buildup of waste eventually solidifies due to age along those horizontal pipe-runs, and leads to pipe erosion, blockage, and breakage. It's a great deal for the Roto RooterTM type companies, and their business is growing exponentially. They will fix your pipes, but often with the same size pipes (4 inch) because to alter the pipe size requires the approval of a plumbing inspector. Changing the waste pipe sizes means you'd also have to change the entire horizontal pipe by digging up and replacing a line along your basement floor (and, come to think of it, probably up to the toilets...but that depends on the judgement call of the plumbing inspector).
The city has typically offered a $60.00 rebate for tens of thousands of persons changing their toilets over to 1.6 litre flushes to ‘conserve water’. But if there is not enough sewage run through the sewage mains piping to flow sewage to the treatment plant efficiently, more water must be added to the mains; so the freshwater savings is moot.
The city has also gone overseas to see wonderful LRT systems in operation;
• but they failed to notice those systems were installed in such a way as to not interfere with traffic.
One might ask oneself how the city's various departments see a good idea to copy, but continually seem to get it wrong when they bring it back. Are they just a bunch of band-waggoners looking for approval from knee-jerk uninformed but well-meaning constituents? The idea has appeal.
Q.
What do you believe should be done (if anything) to promote cycling, public transit and other forms of sustainable transportation in Toronto?
A.
Regarding cycling traffic and public transit, I highly approve of both as alternatives to standard traffic flow. I also approve of standard traffic flow.
My observation about those persons who care to push an agenda regarding any one of the three is that they do not like one of the others, or that they want services for which the city should either curtail one of the others, or has to spend dollars it doesn’t have to support [theirs]. And this is unfortunate, because it doens't lead to an easy solution providing peaceful coexistence.
Having all three beautifully coexist is perfectly possible, and respects the only practical evolution and future of each of those forms of travel. [An example is to be shortly published in the “Solutions” section of my upcoming “Feedback To Mark Blogsets” on Wordpress (feedbacktomark.wordpress.com) tomorrow or Sunday. It contains a couple of sketches showing alternative configurations for the LRT systems that respect cyclist and motorist needs.]
The dual reason for any of the three not liking one of the others are that
Bicycle lanes are being squashed into traffic lane areas. Where transit lanes have been reserved against the encroachment of traffic flow, cycle traffic [has become] difficult or impossible to also reserve-for and is unsafe. And this government’s planned actions for the future are going to guarantee that each remains an anathema to the others because each is a child of lack of planning foresight due to a lack of overview at the leadership level.
Because of this failing in transportation planning, my response to your question will involve an overview that may combine the various modes of transportation as well as tackling components of each.
My first published blog on Wordpress.com concerns the planned LRT corridors at ground level. Laughingly, the TTC planners show an eight lane roadway that has been beautifully converted to ground level LRT transit, automobile traffic flow, bicycle lanes, and pedestrian walks as their depiction of the proposed LRT system, with nine lanes at major intersections to provide a left-turn lane. The facts are that there are no local eight-lane corridors existing in the city that could support this rosy picture.
Not only will the proposed LRT system destroy a potential for remedial automobile traffic pattern technology implementation by preventing traffic flow altogether, but it will also prevent the establishment of bike lanes in the same corridors (as it has already in the city, twice) where the LRT is planned to run in reserved lanes up the center of the street.
The answer to your question is simply that the city needs a future plan within which each form of transportation is considered. A genuine future plan covers the long-range aspects of the solution.
Having implemented the future plan approach, the TTC would have given consideration to other more modern and efficient methods of public transit whose characteristics include non-interference with fellow forms of transportation in the city, and perhaps may have come up with a more viable plan...not perpetuating a streetcar system in existence for the past 115 years that has a proven record of traffic interference by ensuring its continued existence for another 40 years with even greater interference.
For the mid-range situation, raising an LRT system above the streets might perhaps allow both smooth transit and a well-governed automobile traffic flow, redistributed and technologically managed to ease traffic at ground level in such a way that even rush hour routes seem empty while their users rush home unstopped by unexpected inhibitions. Columns for an overhead LRT might also support a pair of exclusive-use cycling lanes on either side. [Depicted in the above-mentioned sketches.] LRTs to be considered might include one-way monorail or mag-lev systems, or the emerging Personal Rapid Transport variety of people-movers.
It’s all conjecture at this point, because although the city in visiting overseas to examine LRT systems saw how wonderfully LRTs carry their ridership (with special cars for bicyclists and baby carriages, etc), they failed to notice that those systems are designed to not interfere with traffic. My blog urges a citizens’ outcry to reconsider [the manner in which] the new LRT lines [are run] up the center of the proposed routes.
In the immediate sense, while what we have now works for rapid transit and automobiles, although badly; it doesn’t work very well for cyclists who move across all parts of the city; and all are trying to cope with the frustratingly unplanned situation that exists.
To create safe bike lanes in the existing circumstances, one of at least three solutions would have to be employed, and I’d be interested to hear of others and also of creative ways to finance them:
Ø The traffic flows on (at a minimum) the existing major four-lane routes would be changed to one-way, and thus open up one lane for the institution of a permanent, barriered-off pair of single cycling lanes, and one for parking during off-rush-hour peaks, leaving plenty of 3-lane one-way rush hour routes throughout the city, and relieving traffic on the Don Valley Parkway, Allen Expressway, and other major rush-hour parking lots. Properly timed and/or controlled lighting systems would allow packets of vehicles to move in any of the four directions through the city from one end to the other without stopping .
Ø Separate cycling lanes would have to be created along side streets (or alleyways, although those would be potentially hazardous due to cars backing out of their garages).
Ø Reserved-time lanes would have to be created against rush-hour flow for cyclists (i.e. when the rush hour is headed out of an identified business district, the reserved cycling lanes would be on the side headed in to it); or on the same side as rush-hour flow in the parking lanes [note “official plan” below] (however, those lanes are currently on reserve for moving automobile traffic during rush hours and to employ them for bike traffic at those times would impede the very traffic flow they were designed to reduce).
Typically, our current situation and the planned destruction of a coherent traffic management system for automobiles and bicycles through the institution of the planned LRT is the direct result of the current civic government’s lack of any long-range thought about what the city will evolve into; and instead is strictly limited to patch-up solutions for current issues by a deliberate stratagem of (as stated in the city’s “Official plan” --a short range document that pays no attention to a possible rosy future vision--) rigging streets to accommodate public transit while discouraging private transit, exemplified by the following excerpt which appears in each bailiwick of the proposed LRT.
The Eglinton Avenue section is mentioned in the example quote. “CITY PLANNING POLICIES City of Toronto’s Official Plan The City’s Official Plan supports continued growth in Toronto, but places greater emphasis on using available road space more efficiently to move people, rather than vehicles. Transit, walking and bicycle lanes in conjunction with providing a better variety and density of transit-oriented development are major cornerstones of the Official Plan. The [LRT] project is consistent with the policies and the objectives of the City of Toronto: The Official Plan’s Map 4 - Higher Order (sic) Transit Corridors, and Map 5 – Surface Transit Priority Network, identifies Eglinton Avenue as part of the future transit network. …The City’s transportation network will be developed to support increased transit priority over vehicles on selected corridors, including those identified on Map 5. Transit priority measures may include: reserved or dedicated lanes for transit; and, limiting or removing on-street parking during part or all of the day (Policy – 2.2 3h).
The thought that removing automobiles from the traffic equation is a good idea originates historically when some politicians were told in the 1970’s that removing automobile traffic from the downtown core
Now, 40 years later, when there are more automobiles in the downtown core than ever, which would seem to support the ideas that people want to use them and that there is thus a need for unclogging city traffic in the streets
With all these drawbacks, we have to ask ourselves, “Is efficient –or any-- automobile traffic flow important?” And, when the evaluation is made as to its drawbacks and benefits right now, today, and also with an eye on the future, the answer is a curious mixture of a discouraged and hopeful, “Yes.”
This is not an answer that persons still living in the issues surrounding the initial impetus to rid the city of automobile traffic can respect, because espousing only one side of the issue makes one unable to rise above the issues to scout out a positive future encompassing all forms of traffic. Their agenda is to eliminate automobile traffic. But that is not a realistic agenda, and its irresolve-ability is destined to keep them unhappy because it judges its values against another group with an equally strong agenda, who are going to be outraged when the LRT clogs their roadways: the ‘motorists’.
[Was it Artie Shaw who originated the glad inquiry, “Is EV-ry body HAPPY??”]
To rise above siding with the anti-automobile agenda, one must examine the reason for automobiles’ existence in society by asking, “Why has efficient automobile traffic flow become important to the city?”
There are several reasons.
The evolution of the automobile as envisioned by 1950’s science fiction paperback covers sees us all eventually flying around in our own vehicles, supported by anti-gravity, and controlled by satellite traffic systems. We’ll be able to get to a destination at hundreds of kilometers per hour while enjoying a game of scrabble over lunch in a little mobile lounge called the family car just by programming in our destinations. This is fantasy, but the point being made is not. The car is not going away.
That means people will continue to use theirs even if their roadways are made impassable, either by sitting angrily in traffic jams (witness the destruction of St. Clair Avenue West by the reserved streetcar lanes built down the center of that six-lane roadway), and/or finding other routes to drive to their destinations.
By comparison to today’s traffic flows, the downtown core might be made to look almost empty by efficient, smooth, and pleasant traffic management. By raising the LRT above the roadways, public transit machinery and privately owned vehicles (including commercial support vehicles and taxis) might not interfere with one-another. By including raised bicycle lanes supported by overhead LRT columns, cyclists might be able to ride in safety and comfort for the full length of those transit corridors.
The point is not that any of these is an answer to today’s issues; but more importantly, that a genuine future plan would address all of those things in consideration of a well-thought-out, distant future; and would assist us in knowing how well we were doing in support of that future rather than the current strategy of accomplishing things for the present. This latter strategy seems to address present concerns with no regard for how they might impinge on the city’s future generations because each apparently forward movement tries to address current issues within the purviews of an isolated governmental department, each working at whatever it thinks is a good idea for its own area of responsibility.
Lacking an overall picture makes even the best of these ideas only a guess at its relevance. And after all that, here’s the bottom line answer to your question. Any form of sustainable transportation styles in the city will make better sense when we know what we want to have the city become in its future, what we hope somebody two hundred years from now will be looking at when they step outside the door, and the orchestrated steps we need to make that possible.
Notes: My use of the words “sustainable transportation”. Sustainable transportation is about meeting or helping meet the mobility needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The term is also used to describe all forms of transport which minimize fuel consumption and emissions of carbon dioxide and pollutants. It can refer to public transport, car sharing, walking and cycling as well as technology such as electric and hybrid cars and biodiesel and Personal Rapid Transit and other green transport. --Wikipedia.
Q.
“What kind of leadership would you like to see from the next Mayor of Canada's largest city?”
A.
When, in your subsequent questions, you enquire about the Miller government, and I would like to give you a solid response, it's frustrating to have to encounter so much that is misdirected effort that will probably have to be cleaned up in time.
The focus of Toronto's current civic governance is on the accomplishment of projects. The official city plan is about short term accomplishment. It lays out goals based in growth and infrastructure, and the city officials we have work very hard at obtaining and reserving funding to accomplish all these things as well as maintaining the city's services. I've noticed something is missing in the equation.
If the operation of current civic government is viewed through a different lens: i.e. "where are we going with all this?". The answer lies in the elements of the question. "We're building, we're growing, we're maintaining."
I've tried to word my concern in a manner that doesn't make me look like I live in ‘LaLa Land’, but thus far, I haven't been able to do so. So here goes...
Toronto has no future vision, and I believe, when you ask about leadership, it comes down to, amongst other things, future vision. Nobody has thus far attempted to find out what people want this city to be in its far future, nor has anyone done any future planning to find out whether what we are doing here and now is on track towards a planned vision.
And it's not. As a direct result, city budgeting gets crowded and becomes very difficult to manage.
The Yuman civilization in the (now) southern Arizona area were, 2000 years ago, the ancestors of the Hopi, and also the Prima Maricopa first nations. They developed a future planning process called "seventh generation" planning, in which all of their decisions with regard to the tribes were based upon their impact on the as-yet unborn future seventh generation of their peoples. As a result, both their technological advances were remarkable in their serviceability; and the settled area around that part of the country has been reported as being incredibly beautiful. Back in those times, 'seventh generation' might refer to a period of about 150 years. Nowadays, it would probably be more like 200 years. I've been informed that the Prima Maricopa councils still practice the 2000-year-old custom.
If somebody asked me what kind of Toronto would be my bequest to [the group of real people whose future depends greatly upon what we do today, and whom we also might give the appellation ”the seventh generation”], it might look like: “Two hundred years from now, everyone in Toronto will be living in a beautiful, clean, energy-efficient and peaceful, prosperous city characterized by excellent civilian health, convenience, neighbourly courtesy and gladness in each resident as they approach each day of their lives.” (Told you it might sound like ‘LaLa Land’! And perhaps even more than (2006 Mayoralty Candidate) Mitch Gold’s "2015" vision… importantly, much more general in scope.)
What's a future plan?
A future plan is not just a limited list of items that have dates and times of accomplishment. A future plan also begins with a far distant imagination of a rosy future, and then works toward it by keeping it in mind when making present-day decisions to determine whether they support that future.
For example, a future plan would begin with a vision generally agreed-upon by everybody and actually recorded in writing. Then, it would separate each of its characteristics out, (“beautiful”, “clean”, etc.) and define more closely what they mean or might look like to someone viewing them in the distant future. Next, a comparison would be made with conditions that exist here and now, and a great deal of planning would begin to make changes, identify elements, that were designed to reach that picture. The elements of "beautiful" and "clean" might start to change the way we plan our cityscapes, instead of the concepts of "more" and "bigger" currently guiding the city's development.
People who do future planning often work backwards from the envisioned future: “In order to get this, these things must happen. In order to get these things, this and this must happen. In order to get this, we must first accomplish these, that, and those, etc. etc. The process is divided into vision, focus, strategy, and tactics, working towards a vision by working back from the vision to the present and then thinking each step of the progress towards the future through as well as deciding which avenues of motion are possible at the moment when applying that thought is most appropriate.
A future plan guides our decision making, rather than determining where it will eventually end up, and is intensely mutable, fluid, and transitional. Professionals who create such plans for corporations interested in planning a strong future are called ‘future planners’. Each item to be accomplished as the picture moves forward could require hundreds or even thousands of changes over a great variety of time-spans; and has to be approached from two points of view: ‘how’ (timeline, technology), and ‘cost’ (in-time affordability).
That’s a future plan. We don’t have one. The result? Not having a vision of what the future should look like, we can’t tell if what we are doing is on the right track to get there or not. So we struggle along by trying to improve or upgrade what we have now, with no real targets in sight telling us how we’re doing, or whether we're on the right track.
Developers will tell you we’re doing all right when they’re making a profit…and that defines “all right” to them. Public transit authorities will tell you we’re doing all right when they are installing lots of public transit corridors that will eliminate private traffic…and that defines “all right” to them. City council will tell you that they are building more infrastructure projects, and the city is thus developing by building things…and that defines “all right” to them. City planners are making certain that each development item is carefully examined for how it fits into a neighbourhood, and that’s “all right” for them.
Each is doing what is “all right” to itself, and they really have no way of knowing how they are affecting our potential for a bright future here in Toronto because their interests do not extend outside their own immediate purviews.
Our future is based upon a series of random short-term exercises in self-interest, and the result is doomed to produce no cogent future at all. Maybe, if there were to be a future vision, we might have to re-think how we’re doing things now...even change some of our current plans.
What else needs to be considered in the leadership at the helm of the city? The following is taken from an eMail to a friend. As you read the following, you may understandably find yourself objecting to some of the ideas expressed. I persevere in my thoughts by attempting to think through the limits of the proverbial “box” into the realm of potential solutions in the bigger picture that lives outside the box. By relating those solutions to the problems inside, a compromise can be reached that has a base in current reality and a viable plan for betterment.
While the rest of us live in a world of issues, a leader is expected to live in the realm of solutions.
The current batch of so-called leaders in Toronto’s civic governance, however, continue to live in the land of issues and problems; and solutions come slowly and with great difficulty in that realm because no one immersed in the fray can rise above it to the bigger picture in order to find solutions. There is no leadership that can point it out.
The lack of Toronto’s leadership leads to behaviours and programs being instituted that are well meaning, but can be characterized as bizarre because they are not able to be thought-through in an efficient manner. [At this point in the piece I am also referring to the idea of a missing future vision.]
As an example, the city has seen some beautiful transportation systems in other cities in the world that have a Light Rail Transit component. Toronto is now planning an LRT component in recognition that this is a good system of public transportation. However, the city failed to notice that in cities where an LRT is established with excellence, it does not interfere in any way with traffic flow. How do we know the city failed to notice this? The planned LRT for Toronto is supposed to go up the center of Jane Street, Don Mills, Sheppard Avenue, and four other major 4-6 lane traffic arteries in the city, leaving one to two lanes on either side for heavy rush hour automobile traffic. Every one of them will become just like the deplorable mess that has become St. Clair Ave. West, and the overloaded rapid transit highway routes will not be able to accommodate the additional stress. Well meaning, but bizarre.
Our garbage disposal system, paying millons of dollars to transport garbage to Michigan, is well meaning but bizarre.
Our energy provision programs by comparison with those in Australia where private individuals are encouraged to contribute to the grid, are well meaning but bizarre.
Our new developments that mask the waterfront from the city by lining it with high-rises are not well-meaning, just bizarre. Our traffic control methods, judging by traffic movement in the city, are bizarre.
Our care for the aged is well meaning but extremely outdated and bizarre.
Our snow removal systems, where collected snow is dumped to feed the Don and roads are salted resulting in a salinated water supply are well meaning but bizarre.
Our future planning for the city, concerned as it is with specific items the city wants to enact, but completely devoid of vision or a direction, is well meaning but bizarre.
Our current Mayor who is trained in legal thought and is thus more conservative and inhibited in moving in the circle of vision and actual leadership by fears that any good lawyer has about taking chances and investigating the unknown, offers a leadership that is well meaning and hard working, but beset by all kinds of inhibitions and bogged down in issues. The result of paying more mind to the issues than to their solutions is bizarre leadership.
Think of the comic character Superman and his bizarre counterpart Bizarro. The guy kind of looks like Superman, and he’s well-meaning, but he always gets things wrong in so many ways. Bizarro is an analogy of civic governance in our time.
The way it used to be no longer works for a healthy future. We are now a mega city, fourth (or fifth, depending upon whom you’re talking with) largest Metropolis in North America; 50th largest in the world. The system with which this city views its advance must inevitably change with the situation and the times in order to serve any future. As it continues to change in that manner, the people in the here and now must also benefit from changes as they are realized. Our very size makes it imperative that these realizations be made into tangible concepts now.
Q.
Would you ever consider taking on the Mayoralty of Toronto?
A.
[Following is an explanation of a controversial statement I made in an original email response to the questioner. It was pointed out to me by one of my friends --a former owner of a marketing agency-- that, despite the softeners I tried to include throughout, it could very well be misconstrued. The statement is a private reflection of ego in that email, and is not intended to bear on reality in any way except to show my determination, in some way or another, to get the city on track as one responsible aspect of leadership. It's in the email where I wrote about why I might consider running for the leadership of the city. Casually reading the original statement, it could be construed as me stating that my convictions come from experience, having turned around four or five cities already; or that my ego blinds me to the fact that anybody else could do as good a job.
Not what I had intended to communicate. ]
The message I had intended to be taken away when I wrote the following was that
(a) I think I could do a decent job in the position.
(b) There are probably, based upon the previous 2006 Mayoralty slate of 38 candidates, very few others who have to date thought about a genuinely remedial platform, and who have given thought with foresight and understanding to the huge number of variables involved in such a program.
(c) People --and there are hundreds of people who could do this equally as well or better than I-- who could Mayor Toronto extremely well in my view, haven't been showing up for the job. The names being proposed from political figures jumping into a vacant limelight, now that David Miller has affirmed that he will not be running, are a very bad joke being perpetrated by the media upon the citizens of this city, who, led by the name-worshiping press, are not examining those names closely enough to discover what kinds of Mayor they might make!
(d) Because of the tremendous task ahead of not only developing and implementing a cogent plan, but also repairing the mess currently being made without one, my thoughts about anybody's potential candidacy for the job could accurately be summed up as 'stepping in where angels fear to tread'.
This is a clarification of what I had originally written, i.e. "Now, here’s your answer… (paraphrased from the same eMail) I have a mixed motivation. My direction is both towards my own thoughts of how best a remedial Mayoralty might be run, and taking the city away from the expression of Mayoralty that we are currently saddled with: The reason I’d consider running for office is because I despair of there being anybody else at all in the entire city (who has done the thinking --or is even capable of the kind of thinking-- that works towards providing solutions in a whole host of areas that the city faces in order to provide itself a viable future) who is willing to step forward to do the daunting job ahead for the fool who takes it on as a remedial challenge. (Capable and bright people we have, but they all may be too wily to volunteer for the task of Mayor.) Well, somebody has to do it, because…consider the alternative: it’s all around you.
So in general, yes I’m really thinking about throwing my glove in as a potential candidate; and when the time comes to declare, if I still can summon the nerve and the huge support I’ll need to accomplish even the first small steps in my platform, you’ll find my name on the ballot. [If citizens are voting for self-respect as compared to a name, I’ll win!
And then, will I be sorry! (No, not really, because although the job will be huge and demanding, it will also hopefully be a day-by-day engrossing prospect.)]"
Q. What do you think will be the top three issues in the next municipal election, which will ultimately be the three deciding factors for who sits in the mayor’s chair?
A. I don’t believe the number three is realistic, fair, or responsible journalism, for either the issues, or the 'top' candidates.
Some believable platform items will be a need for a future vision, the number of candidates running on the ticket, and the city’s future economic well-being.
They all are complex enough to contain myriads of identifiable issues and solutions.
The trick might even be to rise above the issues and show issues as an inferior method of dealing with the city’s choice of leader by dealing with them at the level of solutions. Or it might not. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two approaches.
Those decisions are for an individual candidate's campaign team to hash out, not the media. The media's job is to report on the candidates and their platforms, not to choose them for us.
[EDITORIAL COMMENT HERE: It has been my experience that the media does indeed declare what the “top three” issues are. Toronto’s media also declare who the “top three” candidates are, and proceed to largely ignore the rest. If I were to run for public office, it would not be my intention to either become a tool of the media during an election in which I were to be a candidate, or become an enabler for the media to hijack the election away from all candidates and away from the electorate by declaring the issues and the candidates the city should vote for.
A voting public has the right to be informed thoroughly regarding each candidate’s platform so that it can make its own judgement.
What I have noticed is that in the name of lack of media space for all candidates, the print and broadcast media unethically narrow the field of candidates down to three of their own choosing; and in an activity very close to yellow journalism, which is creating the news, declares the issues. That’s election hijacking.
If I were to run for office, I would insist upon responsible journalistic coverage of all candidates running for office during an election. This could only be done by a very powerful candidate with an excellent media representative.]
Q. “Recently, under Mayor David Miller, the city released its 2009 Operating and Capital Budget, which – among many things – calls for a property tax increase, more funding for transit, social service programs, economic development, a redesign of Nathan Phillips Square, even global climate change. Briefly, what do you think of how Mayor Miller is spending our local tax dollars? What is he doing right? What is he doing wrong? What kinds of actions would you undertake, under the current global economic crisis?”
A.
(a) Recently, under Mayor David Miller, the city released its 2009 Operating and Capital Budget
Without a coherent direction, it’s all more of the same: property tax increase, more funding for transit, so-called social service programs that add services rather than addressing the sources of those problems, so-called economic development, a redesign of Nathan Phillips Square, even a nod to global climate change…money down a hole.
(b) Briefly, what do you think of how Mayor Miller is spending our local tax dollars?
Badly.
(c) What is he doing right?
He’s working very hard, as best as he can within his budget limitations and abilities. No one can fault Miller for doing his best.
(d) What is he doing wrong?
He’s following in the footsteps of established procedure, and as a direct result, accomplishing anything he can through an absolute morass of established impediments.
(e) What should a Mayor do under the current global economic crisis?
Improve the city’s economy. Put people to work. I have published several ideas of how this might be accomplished, including some definite outlines that may be found in this website .
Currently, the city is not involved in economic improvement in any realistic way. Programs proposed by the 2009 budget are all smoke and mirrors and will accomplish nothing positive.
[AMUSING RECENT (YESTERDAY) EXAMPLE: The following is cut and pasted from councilor Janet Davis’ February 17th “e-bulletin” to her constituents, addressing the new 2009 operating budget for the city. Note the last paragraph. [Italics mine.] The budget contains an overall increase of 2.5% from all property taxes (residential and business) for a total of $83 million. Residential taxes will increase 4% or an annual increase of $89 on the average home with an assessed value of $387,000. There is no increase to the Land Transfer Tax or Personal Vehicle Tax. The operating budget will also: protect and improve transit service with no fare increase, increase EMS paramedic response time, maintain the number of community police officers, maintain snow clearing and removal service, enhance Streets to Homes program, increase open hours at Toronto Public Libraries, increase recreation programs at community centres, open 70 km of additional bike lanes, protect and increase the tree canopy, open new and upgraded parks and playgrounds. The budget includes an inflation increase of 3.7% on most user fees. For example, the fee for a 12 week adult aquatic pass is going up $3.50 (from $94.50 to $98). User fees still do not cover the full cost of programs.
And the following news article was copied using OCR from yesterday’s (March 6th, 2009) Toronto Sun, page 5.
Board's plan to close 7 pools won't float -DON PEAT Sun Media
Close seven pools, beg the province for $12 million and encourage Torontonians to dive into the remaining ones more often. That's the plan David Crombie and his Aquatic Working Group (AWG) sent to the Toronto District School Board yesterday that, if implemented, could keep open 32 of the 39 pools once slated for closure.
But Toronto District School Board chairman John Campbell said the group's report doesn't contain new money to keep the pools open, so all 39 are likely to close. "Of the 39 pools in question we're not in a financial position to keep any of them open," Campbell told the Sun. "Nothing has changed."
He's disappointed that the group didn't come up with long-term cash commitments from the city or the province, he said. "The city used to permit 41 of our pools," Campbell said. "It would have been very much appreciated by the communities in question if some of these pools had been made available to the citizens by parks and rec. "Ultimately, it's not the school board's purpose or mission to bring recreational aquatics to people, that's the city's job."
Trustees on the board's planning and priorities committee will have their first chance to debate the report at their meeting today. The seven pools earmarked for closure are Bickford Centre, Bloor Collegiate, Central Commerce, Danforth Collegiate, Oakwood Collegiate, Parkdale Collegiate and the Ursula Franklin Academy.]
Q. As far back as 1993, there has been talk of expanding our subway to York University, and more recently, the Transit City plan claims to not only have a light rail stop at the Keele and Steeles Ave. university campus running by 2015, but also stops in York Region, running up to Highway 7. For comparison, the Sheppard to Don Mills line took eight-years to build, at about a billion dollar price tag. Do you think this plan’s goals are attainable? If not, why not and how will you proceed?
A.
Do you think this plan’s goals are attainable?
I think the plans are terribly wrongly conceived. Of course the rapid transit component of the TTC should be expanded all over the city, including right into York University…not just several blocks away at Keele and Steeles Aves. [Assuming the proposed station is at Keele & Steeles, there will have to be a separate York University stop on central campus, probably around the Scott building. The distance is similar to that from the Bathurst Station to the Bay Station on the Bloor Subway line.]
(b) If so, why? And of course they can be built in the amount of time allotted…depending upon who is doing the building. (Just check out the subway system and rebuilding of that enormous city’s traffic routes built in Beijing for the Olympic Games in six years flat!)
(c) If not, why not and how would you proceed if you were in charge of TTC route expansion?
The ground level transportation LRT planned is an extremely bad idea. I probably would be inhibited from doing anything with established routes for a long time because putting people to work, making the cityscape more environmentally amenable, and elevating the city’s economy would take all the spare resources I could muster.
But although the LRT is partly senior-government funded and thus probably an unstoppable disaster; if I had my druthers, I’d destroy it wherever it was economically feasible to do so and substitute an more modern and user-friendly overhead system in those places so as to have the effect of moving it out of the way of an up-to-date technologically enhanced system of private (cars, bikes, trucks, buses) traffic flow.
If it cost too much to do both simultaneously, I’d privatize the overhead system and destroy the ground LRT system entirely as part of the deal. But as I've mentioned, it would be extremely difficult to effect such changes. [ http://www.feedbacktomark.wordpress.com Scroll to the end for a couple of sketches.]
Bottom line: that isn’t, sadly, going to be possible, so instead I’m writing articles to raise consciousness in this city too sleepy to see what’s being snuck past them in the name of progress. [You’ll find them at “Feedback To Mark Blogsets” on Wordpress (feedbacktomark.wordpress.com). The first one goes to press today or tomorrow.] Perhaps, if we're lucky, [the proposed LRT fiasco] will be reviewed before it’s too late.
Q. Part of being a city leader is working with current political party-driven provincial and federal leaders, politicians and their staff. How do you think a Mayor should work with those with different political stripes from his/her own? How should non-partisan city leaders work with someone giving them a hard time, simply because they didn’t agree with city policies?
A.
Every Mayor has had his own style. In dealing with senior government, Lastman was extremely popular because he yelled his head off about how senior government was treating Toronto so badly until he shamed it into handing over the extra income he wanted.
Miller likes the 'old boy' approach, but he looks beaten every time he goes back for more handouts, and his publicity shows him complaining a lot about things over which he expresses wishes but has no actual control.
Over time, by aligning himself more efficiently to the Liberal party and the aims of the provincial liberals, he has become more able to proclaim some success with programs originating at the provincial level, such as the Toronto portion of Metrolinks...a program that is less than optimal to begin with.
But on the city side, his accomplishments remain less than useful, consisting as they do of imagined gains largely based upon scanty information about what's going on in the rest of the world. For example, he has declared Toronto a world leader in green roofs by putting the green roof idea into practice with a small amount of greenery on the city hall roof and a couple of other buildings; and a 'how-to' conference purportedly for the purpose of graduating green roof experts into the city expertise pool. This is taking place a clean 40 years after many of the other great cities in the world began their well-advanced and outstanding green roof programs. He has also recently declared Toronto's streets to be in great shape compared to the rest of Canada. It's more difficult to fault this assessment, because I'm certain that the same quality of street condition that prevails in Toronto may be found elsewhere in Canada, and even worse. My own take on this matter, however, is that the condition of our roads by comparison to the streets in other major Canadian cities is nothing to crow about because comparing ourselves to others still leaves them in bad shape; which they are.
A better leadership style might be working at removing the city’s economic dependency on added senior government handouts (i.e., on other financial dependencies than its federal/provincial tax base transfer and taxation entitlement, of course) altogether.
Until that could be accomplished, I think Lastmanning might be more enjoyable than Millering.
In municipal politics, the Mayor carries a very big stick. He or she both appoints and heads up the striking committee. [The striking committee is the group that picks heads of departments and elected officials to oversee them.] This allows Mayors to work with closer supervision over the city bureaucracy, and in time, allows more opportunity for city advances and budgetary controls; and eventually fewer handout requirements.
Another good strategy would also include having as large a mutual candidate ticket as possible in an election; something that Miller started to do in a limited way in the last election. This is not a matter of fighting fire with fire. It is an economic measure (jacks the election campaign spending pot up from $1.1mil to a possible $3.5mil and avoids duplication of effort); and if the candidate roster itself is vociferous enough (partly the job of the campaign’s publicists), it all adds to the number of –hopefully— like-minded elected officials. Once elected, a cohesive city council can do many things. It can set up economic recovery programs. It can re-arrange council’s way of doing business to be more efficient by involving a motivated citizenry. It can undo some of the harm of the previous government.
It can create a power base by supporting MP and MPP candidates sympathetic to the city’s needs.
Q. Where do you see the city’s current management tactics as needing improvement? Do you think any of Millers current initiatives are worth continuing, or are there other initiatives that you think might be more important for Toronto?
A. I’d like to address the second question first, with brevity.
Do you think any of Millers current initiatives are worth continuing, or are there other initiatives that you think might be more important for Toronto?
In my opinion, all of Mayor David Miller’s current initiatives require a careful review to see whether any of them is indeed worthwhile; or whether instead, they are “doing-ness” projects with no coherent vision of how they will fit into Toronto’s future… mainly because Toronto possesses neither a coherent vision of its future nor a plan of approach to one.
Doing-ness projects increase infrastructure for the sake of city growth, and seek to maintain the status-quo with a woefully inadequate budget that barely supports city services. Many, if not most, of these so-called initiatives are a misplaced expenditure of funds needed badly in other areas that --with a perspective of looking toward the future-- should be receiving financial support instead.
As a civic leader elected to provide service to the citizens of Toronto, it’s incumbent upon the Mayor’s office to evaluate all matters passing before city council in the light of their usefulness to the city not only in the here and now, but also in the long view. That's clearly not in the Miller government's agenda.
By the long view, I am not referring to a mere 14 or 15 or even 50 years ahead. I’m referring to the Toronto greeted by real people (often referred to as the seventh generation) 200 years or more from now when they step outside their front door. We can't, in this era of enormously swift technological advance, predict what future life would be like; but we can plan for a quality of life for our future generations in each decision we make today, so long as that decision is based upon a vision.
What future generations see and expect from the city they live in begins today; or at least it would begin today if there was any thought given to it in the so-called initiatives we currently pursue. There is none, and the result is a series of actions undertaken by separate departments of government that evaluate as self-serving and lacking in cohesive purpose.
The following exerpts from the Official City Plan show how Toronto's future ambitions remain addressed as 'more of the same' present-based hallmarks of progress. Unfortunately, similar 'more of the same' hallmarks have recently been more deeply entrenched by Mayor Miller's special committee on the city's economic progress, the members of whom would eventually benefit by encouraging more of the infrastructure and development they are now benefitting through.
[ From the City of Toronto’s Official Plan Website:
Highlights The development trends since Council's adoption of the Official Plan indicate that Toronto is well on its way to providing sufficient new housing for the anticipated population growth. Development activity is largely taking place in the priority locations articulated in the growth management policies of the Official Plan. Read more about the trends in How Does The City Grow bulletin.
Highlights of the Official Plan:
identifies where significant new jobs and housing will be encouraged promotes growth that is less reliant on the private automobile calls for a transit-based growth strategy by directing development to areas with good transit while improving transit in major growth areas protects the physical character of Toronto's low-rise neighbourhoods emphasizes environmentally sustainable development contains design policies to guide the physical form of development and public realm improvements seeks to ensure the social and environmental infrastructure is in place to serve Toronto's present and future residents protects the city's important employment districts, and protects heritage buildings and resources and preserves our natural areas and ravines ]
Now, back to your initial question
1. Where do you see the city’s current management tactics as needing improvement?
Due to a lack of time and space, some of these answers --which have been provided with a structural support in our past recorded thoughts on them-- will remain unsupported by listing their authoritative references here. Nonetheless, I’ll do my best to respond satisfactorily enough to show you my colours.
I am a person of solutions, not issues, and I believe the city's leader’s responsibility also should be to understand the process of issue resolution...not to dwell in the realm of issues, beset by established impediments to their resolutions; but rather to lead the issue-considerers to rise above the plane of issue to the expanse of solution.
I believe this is a relevant part of a cogent response, because you requested an opinion I have understood as referring to tactics, which infers how the solutions are applied to the issues.
First and foremost, as alluded to above, the city needs to develop a future plan based upon every citizen’s aspirations for our future generations. Working back from that future to the present, an approach may be made to evaluate our spending priorities and methods of building infrastructure in the light of whether that future is supported by our plans and subsequent actions.
In the meantime, the citizenry need continued support to keep their city livable.
• People need to find gainful employment so they can afford housing. Other systems need to be put into place to give persons living outside the limits of normal attention and income more personal dignity. The city needs to take a direct hand in raising up the needful population. This compares with our current approach of charitable donations and welfare, which assists those folks in maintaining their status quo.
• The city never has enough money to do what it sets out its priorities to do based upon its inadequate budget of property tax dollars, licences and permits, other income, and federal/provincial tax transfer entitlements. As a result, it is constantly complaining to senior government, or presenting needful proposals to them for more funding. The city needs to become financially self-sufficient.
• Our public transit and traffic planning departments are a couple of those governmental divisions that I have in the past mentioned as producing reports and projects that are self-serving. Examples of the terribly obvious result of their misguided efforts may be seen in how badly traffic flows are managed, how poorly commuters are served by the existing transit routes, how a deliberate and utter destruction of traffic flow has resulted from the streetcar restricted lanes on St. Clair Avenue west, and now how more of the same deliberate method of destruction is being planned for seven other major rush hour traffic routes.
The impetus behind these proposals comes from the mistaken idea that public transit is better than private transit (cars and bicycles, etc.); and the origin of that mistake arising from the media’s report of the presence of automobiles needing to be removed from the city centers… popular in the 1970s but no longer relevant due to the changing nature of transportation. Judging by the increased use of automobiles and bicycles in traffic since the 1970’s despite smog alerts affecting public health, it may never have been a relevant solution to plan private transport’s demise.
Certainly in present terms, where toxic exhaust fumes are a planned thing of the past, a holus-bolus attempt to destroy in-town rush hour traffic patterns through the installation of a ground level LRT system in the city will only exacerbate the traffic mess to an unbelievable extent, not alleviate it. According to the city’s Official Plan, that’s exactly the purpose and intention for it. Short-sighted departments convinced that each knows what’s best for the city are not shy about publishing their plans.
Increased violent crime can be stemmed and perhaps completely eliminated if it is addressed on two fronts:
• removal of the felons from the streets; and
• education of children in all school districts to emphasize self-motivation skills and rewards for projects undertaken from inner direction.
The former may be addressed by an increased visible and invisible police presence and available crime-fighting technology; and by encouraging the media to stop aggrandizing the perpetrators with names they love, like “gangsters”, “gang wars”, “shooters”, etc. etc., replacing this language with epithets like slime, pukes, murderers, damnfools, etc. When the rewards are lessened in the media, the acting out to receive those rewards will probably diminish.
The latter is designed to create a future generation of latchkey kids, who upon returning home will get involved not in gangs but rather in community groups, hobbies, caring for younger children, preparing dinners for the family, and other worthwhile pursuits that children who can appreciate their own interests and abilities and sense of self-worth are more likely to do.
The city needs to protect itself by a system of grants to schools that set up curricula designed to inculcate self-motivation and inner direction.
Many of the city’s various infrastructure departments require re-organization to better serve their city. In fact, they probably all do. Garbage disposal, snow removal, care for the elderly, parks management, conservation initiatives, road building, support for green energy incentives [low flush toilets and Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL’s), public transit, traffic planning, sewage disposal, etc.] The city supports the purchase of CFL’s and low-flush toilets (the latter as an unthinking copycat result of a program initiated in Massachusetts a few years back by a politician who had no knowledge of plumbing). Both programs are knee-jerk 'conservation' bandwagons unsupported by engineering and environmental experts (except, apparently, David Suzuki, who ought to be reprimanded for his bad behaviour in support of the former when CCFL's are available along with LED lighting advancements that are non-polluting by comparison with the CFL debacle).
If the general population were to 'get wind' of the toilet fiasco (sorry for the bad pun) being perpetrated on them, they might be extremely unhappy.
If you want to purchase relatively green light bulbs capable of giving off good heat and light, but very easy on the electrical bill, get yourself some CCFLs, which are actually neon light tubes wrapped in a similar shape to CFLS. And which contain next to zero mercury as well.
• Within the next decade, the number of CFLs purchased and discarded will make civic landfills mercury toxic because people are inclined to toss the used ones in the garbage. (If they instead included the cast-offs as part of their toxic waste pickup loads, it would cost the city 50 cents for each discarded bulb to treat it at a special toxic waste facility set up for them.)
I think mercury pollution in our landfill sites is not a great gift for future generations, don't you agree?
• Once flushed waste leaves the trap in your toilet, it travels down to a horizontal pipe that takes it to the sewage system. 1.6 litres per flush will not move the waste along that 4 inch pipe. Houses built before the 1980's are almost all 4 inch sewage pipe systems. New homes are built with 3 inch pipes, and have a better chance of cleaning out properly on lower flush water amounts.
• If Toronto's older homes (most houses in the city) own 1.6-litre flush toilets (which, mercifully, have to be flushed several times just to empty the bowl efficiently), the buildup of waste eventually solidifies due to age along those horizontal pipe-runs, and leads to pipe erosion, blockage, and breakage. It's a great deal for the Roto RooterTM type companies, and their business is growing exponentially. They will fix your pipes, but often with the same size pipes (4 inch) because to alter the pipe size requires the approval of a plumbing inspector. Changing the waste pipe sizes means you'd also have to change the entire horizontal pipe by digging up and replacing a line along your basement floor (and, come to think of it, probably up to the toilets...but that depends on the judgement call of the plumbing inspector).
The city has typically offered a $60.00 rebate for tens of thousands of persons changing their toilets over to 1.6 litre flushes to ‘conserve water’. But if there is not enough sewage run through the sewage mains piping to flow sewage to the treatment plant efficiently, more water must be added to the mains; so the freshwater savings is moot.
The city has also gone overseas to see wonderful LRT systems in operation;
• but they failed to notice those systems were installed in such a way as to not interfere with traffic.
One might ask oneself how the city's various departments see a good idea to copy, but continually seem to get it wrong when they bring it back. Are they just a bunch of band-waggoners looking for approval from knee-jerk uninformed but well-meaning constituents? The idea has appeal.
Q.
What do you believe should be done (if anything) to promote cycling, public transit and other forms of sustainable transportation in Toronto?
A.
Regarding cycling traffic and public transit, I highly approve of both as alternatives to standard traffic flow. I also approve of standard traffic flow.
My observation about those persons who care to push an agenda regarding any one of the three is that they do not like one of the others, or that they want services for which the city should either curtail one of the others, or has to spend dollars it doesn’t have to support [theirs]. And this is unfortunate, because it doens't lead to an easy solution providing peaceful coexistence.
Having all three beautifully coexist is perfectly possible, and respects the only practical evolution and future of each of those forms of travel. [An example is to be shortly published in the “Solutions” section of my upcoming “Feedback To Mark Blogsets” on Wordpress (feedbacktomark.wordpress.com) tomorrow or Sunday. It contains a couple of sketches showing alternative configurations for the LRT systems that respect cyclist and motorist needs.]
The dual reason for any of the three not liking one of the others are that
- each has a history with negative aspects with regard to the others, and
- the city’s actions to date have made each even more unlikable to the other two.
Bicycle lanes are being squashed into traffic lane areas. Where transit lanes have been reserved against the encroachment of traffic flow, cycle traffic [has become] difficult or impossible to also reserve-for and is unsafe. And this government’s planned actions for the future are going to guarantee that each remains an anathema to the others because each is a child of lack of planning foresight due to a lack of overview at the leadership level.
Because of this failing in transportation planning, my response to your question will involve an overview that may combine the various modes of transportation as well as tackling components of each.
My first published blog on Wordpress.com concerns the planned LRT corridors at ground level. Laughingly, the TTC planners show an eight lane roadway that has been beautifully converted to ground level LRT transit, automobile traffic flow, bicycle lanes, and pedestrian walks as their depiction of the proposed LRT system, with nine lanes at major intersections to provide a left-turn lane. The facts are that there are no local eight-lane corridors existing in the city that could support this rosy picture.
Not only will the proposed LRT system destroy a potential for remedial automobile traffic pattern technology implementation by preventing traffic flow altogether, but it will also prevent the establishment of bike lanes in the same corridors (as it has already in the city, twice) where the LRT is planned to run in reserved lanes up the center of the street.
The answer to your question is simply that the city needs a future plan within which each form of transportation is considered. A genuine future plan covers the long-range aspects of the solution.
Having implemented the future plan approach, the TTC would have given consideration to other more modern and efficient methods of public transit whose characteristics include non-interference with fellow forms of transportation in the city, and perhaps may have come up with a more viable plan...not perpetuating a streetcar system in existence for the past 115 years that has a proven record of traffic interference by ensuring its continued existence for another 40 years with even greater interference.
For the mid-range situation, raising an LRT system above the streets might perhaps allow both smooth transit and a well-governed automobile traffic flow, redistributed and technologically managed to ease traffic at ground level in such a way that even rush hour routes seem empty while their users rush home unstopped by unexpected inhibitions. Columns for an overhead LRT might also support a pair of exclusive-use cycling lanes on either side. [Depicted in the above-mentioned sketches.] LRTs to be considered might include one-way monorail or mag-lev systems, or the emerging Personal Rapid Transport variety of people-movers.
It’s all conjecture at this point, because although the city in visiting overseas to examine LRT systems saw how wonderfully LRTs carry their ridership (with special cars for bicyclists and baby carriages, etc), they failed to notice that those systems are designed to not interfere with traffic. My blog urges a citizens’ outcry to reconsider [the manner in which] the new LRT lines [are run] up the center of the proposed routes.
In the immediate sense, while what we have now works for rapid transit and automobiles, although badly; it doesn’t work very well for cyclists who move across all parts of the city; and all are trying to cope with the frustratingly unplanned situation that exists.
To create safe bike lanes in the existing circumstances, one of at least three solutions would have to be employed, and I’d be interested to hear of others and also of creative ways to finance them:
Ø The traffic flows on (at a minimum) the existing major four-lane routes would be changed to one-way, and thus open up one lane for the institution of a permanent, barriered-off pair of single cycling lanes, and one for parking during off-rush-hour peaks, leaving plenty of 3-lane one-way rush hour routes throughout the city, and relieving traffic on the Don Valley Parkway, Allen Expressway, and other major rush-hour parking lots. Properly timed and/or controlled lighting systems would allow packets of vehicles to move in any of the four directions through the city from one end to the other without stopping .
Ø Separate cycling lanes would have to be created along side streets (or alleyways, although those would be potentially hazardous due to cars backing out of their garages).
Ø Reserved-time lanes would have to be created against rush-hour flow for cyclists (i.e. when the rush hour is headed out of an identified business district, the reserved cycling lanes would be on the side headed in to it); or on the same side as rush-hour flow in the parking lanes [note “official plan” below] (however, those lanes are currently on reserve for moving automobile traffic during rush hours and to employ them for bike traffic at those times would impede the very traffic flow they were designed to reduce).
Typically, our current situation and the planned destruction of a coherent traffic management system for automobiles and bicycles through the institution of the planned LRT is the direct result of the current civic government’s lack of any long-range thought about what the city will evolve into; and instead is strictly limited to patch-up solutions for current issues by a deliberate stratagem of (as stated in the city’s “Official plan” --a short range document that pays no attention to a possible rosy future vision--) rigging streets to accommodate public transit while discouraging private transit, exemplified by the following excerpt which appears in each bailiwick of the proposed LRT.
The Eglinton Avenue section is mentioned in the example quote. “CITY PLANNING POLICIES City of Toronto’s Official Plan The City’s Official Plan supports continued growth in Toronto, but places greater emphasis on using available road space more efficiently to move people, rather than vehicles. Transit, walking and bicycle lanes in conjunction with providing a better variety and density of transit-oriented development are major cornerstones of the Official Plan. The [LRT] project is consistent with the policies and the objectives of the City of Toronto: The Official Plan’s Map 4 - Higher Order (sic) Transit Corridors, and Map 5 – Surface Transit Priority Network, identifies Eglinton Avenue as part of the future transit network. …The City’s transportation network will be developed to support increased transit priority over vehicles on selected corridors, including those identified on Map 5. Transit priority measures may include: reserved or dedicated lanes for transit; and, limiting or removing on-street parking during part or all of the day (Policy – 2.2 3h).
The thought that removing automobiles from the traffic equation is a good idea originates historically when some politicians were told in the 1970’s that removing automobile traffic from the downtown core
- will make it more environmentally friendly with less automotive exhaust pollution,
- will open the spaces that are formerly major city streets to become outdoor pedestrian commercial malls, and
- will allow at first only taxis and public transit to operate amongst its limited traffic lanes, and eventually only public transit.
Now, 40 years later, when there are more automobiles in the downtown core than ever, which would seem to support the ideas that people want to use them and that there is thus a need for unclogging city traffic in the streets
- there have been instances of debilitating smog in every major city that supports automobile traffic.
- Automobile traffic is responsible for terrible tying-up traffic jams both during rush hours and when event attractions end in the evenings…even when distinguished visitors come to town and the highway routes are temporarily closed for security purposes.
With all these drawbacks, we have to ask ourselves, “Is efficient –or any-- automobile traffic flow important?” And, when the evaluation is made as to its drawbacks and benefits right now, today, and also with an eye on the future, the answer is a curious mixture of a discouraged and hopeful, “Yes.”
This is not an answer that persons still living in the issues surrounding the initial impetus to rid the city of automobile traffic can respect, because espousing only one side of the issue makes one unable to rise above the issues to scout out a positive future encompassing all forms of traffic. Their agenda is to eliminate automobile traffic. But that is not a realistic agenda, and its irresolve-ability is destined to keep them unhappy because it judges its values against another group with an equally strong agenda, who are going to be outraged when the LRT clogs their roadways: the ‘motorists’.
[Was it Artie Shaw who originated the glad inquiry, “Is EV-ry body HAPPY??”]
To rise above siding with the anti-automobile agenda, one must examine the reason for automobiles’ existence in society by asking, “Why has efficient automobile traffic flow become important to the city?”
There are several reasons.
- First, large cities like Toronto are enabled by a commuter class; in fact the commuter’s ability to travel from the outskirts to work via automobile was the sole cause that enabled large cities to develop and exist all over North America and in most of the rest of the world. Modern large cities, in a sense, were the result of and continue to exist because of the invention of the automobile in its various forms, including public transit. City traffic lanes were designed for it. Our transit system provides large parking lots at the terminus of each subway line as well as at interim stations, since there is just not enough room in the downtown working areas to park every commuter’s car. Those parking lots are a silent recognition of the fact that automobiles move Toronto’s citizenry. [700,000-plus people commute over 40 kilometers to Toronto for work every day via train, bus, and automobile. Probably close to twice that many commute from areas closer than 40 km. The anti-car faction has the unrealistic expectation that the number of commuters and travelers in the downtown core using automobiles can just be made to go up in a puff of smoke by changing the rules to make it difficult for them to get around town! Mayors don’t have the luxury to fantasize like that.]
- Secondly, although automobiles are expensive to own, insure, and run, the people who have them are comforted by their sense of immediacy with their connections and support systems. In suburbia, it’s not often possible to walk to the supermarket or household needs vendors to pick up things one would require a flock of bicycles to transport back home; and there’s often no local public transit from the front door of the house to the front door of the store. Urban life is often typically lived in a more hurried style, and the automobile is an indispensible tool in supporting that lifestyle. In an automotive tradeoff between dollars and convenience, it seems, convenience wins.
- Thirdly, the automobile industry is developing pollution-less engines to ensure the longevity of their businesses (and their sub-businesses, such as parts manufacturers, aftermarket industry, traffic control industry…the list is daunting), which employ millions of workers…so many that Federal governments will give billions of dollars to them in unsecured loans based upon deals of payback and continued employment. The aggregate number of automobiles built and sold in this country each year is staggering…in the millions.
The evolution of the automobile as envisioned by 1950’s science fiction paperback covers sees us all eventually flying around in our own vehicles, supported by anti-gravity, and controlled by satellite traffic systems. We’ll be able to get to a destination at hundreds of kilometers per hour while enjoying a game of scrabble over lunch in a little mobile lounge called the family car just by programming in our destinations. This is fantasy, but the point being made is not. The car is not going away.
That means people will continue to use theirs even if their roadways are made impassable, either by sitting angrily in traffic jams (witness the destruction of St. Clair Avenue West by the reserved streetcar lanes built down the center of that six-lane roadway), and/or finding other routes to drive to their destinations.
- The roads we currently enjoy were initially designed and are paid for by a population greatly invested in cars. In a sense, the car has paid for our roads by its very existence and our tax dollars in support of it. To assume somehow that cars are secondary in importance to the institution of a rapid transit system down their centers or replacement by alternative methods of transportation such as bicycles, and that the smooth flow of traffic is of no consequence or a negative burden on our city streets is just limited judgement.
- This is where the value of a genuine future plan illustrates itself. Now that air pollution is definitely being eliminated from vehicles operated formerly by mainly toxic-emissions internal combustion engines, an alternative might be to make traffic in the downtown core operate smoothly and efficiently by simply using currently available technology designed for that purpose.
By comparison to today’s traffic flows, the downtown core might be made to look almost empty by efficient, smooth, and pleasant traffic management. By raising the LRT above the roadways, public transit machinery and privately owned vehicles (including commercial support vehicles and taxis) might not interfere with one-another. By including raised bicycle lanes supported by overhead LRT columns, cyclists might be able to ride in safety and comfort for the full length of those transit corridors.
The point is not that any of these is an answer to today’s issues; but more importantly, that a genuine future plan would address all of those things in consideration of a well-thought-out, distant future; and would assist us in knowing how well we were doing in support of that future rather than the current strategy of accomplishing things for the present. This latter strategy seems to address present concerns with no regard for how they might impinge on the city’s future generations because each apparently forward movement tries to address current issues within the purviews of an isolated governmental department, each working at whatever it thinks is a good idea for its own area of responsibility.
Lacking an overall picture makes even the best of these ideas only a guess at its relevance. And after all that, here’s the bottom line answer to your question. Any form of sustainable transportation styles in the city will make better sense when we know what we want to have the city become in its future, what we hope somebody two hundred years from now will be looking at when they step outside the door, and the orchestrated steps we need to make that possible.
Notes: My use of the words “sustainable transportation”. Sustainable transportation is about meeting or helping meet the mobility needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The term is also used to describe all forms of transport which minimize fuel consumption and emissions of carbon dioxide and pollutants. It can refer to public transport, car sharing, walking and cycling as well as technology such as electric and hybrid cars and biodiesel and Personal Rapid Transit and other green transport. --Wikipedia.
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