Results tagged “ttcchair”

Sarah Lazarovic––curator of the garage-based Montrose Portrait Gallery of Canada––is painting a portrait of a Torontonian (be they Mirvishes or Meashas) every day. Each Monday, we'll feature one of those portraits here.

Left to right: TTC market research director Mike Anders, TTC Chair Adam Giambrone, irate civil engineering Engineering Science student Ryan Campbell, and Giambrone executive assistant Kevin Beaulieu.

Selected quotes from "Toronto's Type and Tile Heritage" by Edward Keenan, from the November 14th issue of Eye Weekly:

When we interviewed TTC Chair Adam Giambrone in August––at the height of anxiety over potential cuts to his system––he told us that the TTC has "an acceptable level of advertising. Could it be less? Absolutely. At this point any reduction would be a budget reduction, and I'll tell you I'm not really prepared to reduce the budget of the TTC to reduce the advertising. At the same time, I think we certainly have enough...

Mayor Miller was in Etobicoke yesterday, trying to convince the people who regularly vote in Ford, Holyday, Nunziata, et al. that new taxes are a necessity. It went about as well as you'd expect.

The CBC is reporting that the provincial government announced an ambitious new project today to revamp Kipling Station and turn it into a major transit hub for Etobicoke and Mississauga. The announcement came from Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield and Environment Minister Laurel Broten early this afternoon.

Photo by Jason Thompson Photography.

Toronto city council has approved a new design for the city's street-name signs. The city replaces roughly 2,000 to 2,500 signs each year anyway, so the new design will be phased-in gradually. Fortunately, it looks like this may not be as large a waste of taxpayer funds as one might expect.

TTC Chair Adam Giambrone has responded to Toronto bloggers' (that's us, BlogTO, Reading Toronto, and Spacing) open letter to the TTC about fixing their website. And the news is allll good.

It seems its website isn't the only thing embarrassingly behind the times at the TTC these days: the above scan is of a current January Metropass. (Councillor Howard Moscoe was TTC Chair from 1998-2000 and 2003-2006; his successor, Councillor Adam Giambrone, was elected by the Commission as its Chair on December 6 of last year.) What makes this a particularly odd error is the fact that it's not simply a case of the TTC forgetting to change the wording on the back of the pass between months; rather, the information and legal text is always tweaked and revised from month to month, and this is actually the first Metropass since August 2005 to bear the name of a Commission chair.

An officer was shot at earlier today which prompted a manhunt in Etobicoke. Police kept a nearby school and community centre closed for safety reasons.

Despite criticism from the media, many councillors and Rick Ducharme's public admission that his actions as TTC chair made him quit, Howard Moscoe made it clear he won't be stepping down from the Chair. That is until he talked to his wife. Gloria Moscoe, his wife of 46-years, would like him to spend more time with his family which means Moscoe might step out of the TTC Chair's role but not until after the November election. Many say that's not soon enough.

Things get worse for the TTC. In light of GM Rick Ducharme's resignation the TTC have decided to tell him to leave right away instead of waiting around till November. Ducharme is fighting this and threatening to call his lawyers. He also pins the blame for his resignation on interference by TTC Chair Howard Moscoe and even Mayor Miller . Many councillors are now calling for Moscoe to step down. Ducharme is the third TTC GM to quit under Moscoe's reign as TTC Chair.

The man with the second most thankless job in the city (TTC Union head Bob Kinnear takes the cake for this one we think) has tendered his resignation. The Star has a nice PDF of it here and a story on the whole sordid situation. The CBC doesn't shed much more light except that it was Adam Giambrone who confirmed the resignation.

TTC Chair Howard Moscoe and injured TTC driver Bobby Lowe had a nice chat yesterday and cleared up a few things. Lowe actually said that his beef wasn't with the TTC but with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. They held up his cheque for five months and Lowe lost his apartment and had to break up his family because of that. Howard Moscoe also apologized for calling Lowe a liar on a radio show earlier in the week.

Inquests have been ordered on the death of two patients in the care of Toronto mental health institutes. There are suspicions that these patients were neglected. Under the coroner's act, inquests aren't mandatory in the case of deaths under psychiatric care. These incidents might change that.

Everyone is talking about how TTC Operators will now turn a blind eye on those who are evading fares. The union is complaining about the rising number of assaults and "passenger rage." TTC Chair Howard Moscoe says that people still have to pay their fares. The Sun's story is here and has some wacky numbers like the fact that assaults have gone up over 30% in a decade. The Star's piece has more of the back and forth between TTC Chair Howard Moscoe, TTC Manager Rick Ducharme and Bob Kinnear president of the union representing TTC operators.

As the TTC's Pizza Pizza campaign ends, they turn the page to Pizzazz. I once was told by a reliable source that TTC Chair Howard Moscoe said they don't have a process for reviewing ideas submitted by the public. This explains why it's nearly impossible to get the TTC on board for amazing ideas like the subway buttons and the Metropass Affinity Program.

Normally, I like to post positive transit stories, and then put an even more positive spin on them. But I couldn't help feel disheartened today looking at my Google news RSS feed for "TTC". Google news doesn't pickup everything, but it seems they pickup the worst of what's going on. I know it's nothing new in the world of news, but it's unfortunate that violent news stories get a huge amount of press. And that when people read about the TTC, it's usually one of these crummy stories.