August 16, 2006
Worrying About Bike Posts, Fewer Report Cards Please, So Many Budget Shortfalls So Little Time
Everyone writes about the city's revelation that thieves are using two-by-fours to bust up the city's beloved lollipop bike posts. The Star's Betsy Powell, who broke the story last week, has her piece here. The Post marvels at how city staffers who are usually slow to act in August managed to react quickly to the problem. The Sun reports that around eight bikes have been stolen from busted stands in one week alone. Finally you can read our take on things here. We suggest a stakeout. Torontoist will bring the coffee.
The Star also reports that someone has been destroying transit shelters along Lawrence Ave. E. A city staffer frighteningly suggests that the shelters are victims of drive-by shootings.
Police are looking for three men driving a beige Accord who are responsible for abducting and forcing people to go to ATMs and withdraw cash.
Soon kids might only have to face those dreaded report cards twice a year. The proposal would let teachers spend more time working with kids rather than writing report cards.
The lawyer for the Ianiero family points fingers at a former Mexican paratrooper as the murderer and also shames the Mexican and Canadian authorities for their mishandling of the investigation.
Better go down to Union and buy some merch, crappy or not. The TTC is heading towards a $1 billion shortfall. Yes, one billion. Cuts to provincial funding are to blame.
Toronto schools are also facing an $84 million shortfall. Sadly this may translate into cutting 700 teaching assistants, closing pools and cancelling outdoor programs.
Also Torontoist would like to hand the Jackass of the Day award to Steve Handler for his protest on behalf of the Small Investors Protection Association. Handler orchestrated a protest outside of the AIDS conference yesterday with a topless York U student. Equating stock market fraud with more money for AIDS is just about the most idiotic thing we've ever heard. Mr. Handler you should be ashamed.
Photo by kitsch:in:synch from the Torontoist + Flickr Group.
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Wow, for once Stephen Harper isn't the jackass of the day.
And here lies the trouble with the public sector. Only in the public sector would you get an organisation saying "Oh...we're going to lose $1 billion this year....let's just keep our spending and prices the same, and maybe the problem will magically go away."
There's two options:
1) Increase fares
2) Decrease services
Neither are nice options, but they're both better than bankruptcy, which is the way the TTC is heading.
And there lies the trouble with the private sector. Only in the private sector would you get an organization saying "Oh... we're not going to make $1 billion more this year... let's cut way back on spending (aka employees), and maybe the problem (of not making shareholders wealthier) will go away."
There's one option:
1) Increase fares, enter into obnoxious synergystic ad relationships, cut service way back, hire non-union employees and pay them $3/hr, enforce a rider loyalty program that makes riding other regional transit impossible or illegal, and sell everything that isn't nailed down
It's a nice option, and it'll make the most important people in "public" transit happy: our shareholders.
LOL! That's such an over-the-top lefty response, it could have been posted by Lenin's ghost. "Oh...I don't like how the basic laws of Economics work, so I'll launch into some ridiculous slippery slope arguement about how balancing the books involves breaking minimum wage laws and corporate conspiracies"
I'm totally for union-busting and flooding the system with ads, if it means the system can continue to run without further bleeding the shareholders (read: taxpayers).
I think that was his point. I know *I* for one took your post as an over-the-top conny response even before your comments on union-busting and ad-whoring.
(I wouldn't mind all the ads if they were helping the system run and keeping fares reasonable, but they aren't.)
The problem of bike thefts in toronto is getting ridiculous. We need to do somthing.
Stakeouts are one option. The risk of loosing the bait is an issue as is the safety of those on stakeout.
A safer option is to use GPS tracking. I think we need to embed a tracker on a bike and wait for it to be stolen. For $600 we can get a tracker and the associated accessories to start tracking a bike. Commercially available sensors will call a cell phone to tell you when the bike is stolen. 20 Hour battery life. Just lock up a bike with a cheap lock...wait for it to be stolen...call the police with coordinates of the bike.
Any bike groups want to pitch in some money for this kind of thing. I'd be happy to put in the labour if we can secure funding.
Tilak Dutta