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Newsstand: March 30, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
Mayor David Miller says he’s not having any second thoughts about leaving city politics, even though the past couple of months saw his protégé self-destruct in a hail of sexts and cab chits and his Transit City legacy brought to a screeching halt by a cash-strapped province. But, with that said, he wouldn’t mind taking just one more year to tie up a few loose ends, like, if that’s an option.
Assuming Miller doesn’t get his wish, the top candidates to replace him are going to want to stake out their positions on city issues, which hopefully means more events like yesterday’s debate at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School in Scarborough. The room was so crammed with supporters of Rocco Rossi and George Smitherman, both new to municipal politics, that reporters had a difficult time talking to local residents. Meanwhile, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) was left feeling sorry that only six of his friends (the limit requested by organizers) showed up to stare down the army of Smithermen and Rossae. On to the issues. Here’s a recap:
Sarah Thomson: We should use road tolls to pay for a bigger subway network.
Giorgio Mammoliti: Road tolls don’t work. Our spending priorities are all wrong.
Joe Pantalone: For every kilometre of subway tunnel we could have ten kilometres of streetcar track.
George Smitherman: We should decide whether we want road tolls and keep our options open.
Rocco Rossi: Transit’s not the main thing. Bikes lanes need to get out of the way.
Rob Ford: I will cut city council in half! [He might mean this literally]
Ford also promised to make Julian Fantino our police chief again and abolish a hated bylaw that protects trees. Torontoist will have more about the debate soon.
And Toronto’s road congestion could be costing five billion dollars per year, according to the irate Board of Trade report we mentioned before. That report found Toronto’s astonishing eighty-minute average commute the worst of nineteen major cities. On the upside, while it may take forever for us to get to work, we must do a hell of a job once we’re there: Toronto is the fourth most prosperous city in that same study—though whatever “prosperity” means by its definition, all we know is that only Boston, Dallas, and Barcelona have more of it than we do.
Mammoliti also wants people convicted of gang-related crimes to have to wear radio collars or something. Actually, he was a little vague on the specifics when he called for a police database and a task force with “the necessary powers” to track ex-convicts’ movements around the city. Also notable in that article: the Sun seems to think that gang members and gangbangers are the same thing.
The TTC is reportedly “on the lookout” following the suicide bombing yesterday in the Moscow subway. The attack killed at least thirty-eight people and is believed to have been carried out by separatist rebels. While the TTC is not increasing security spending or changing protocols, the agency urged special constables to be “extra aware” of potential badness.
Cops have begun a week-long bike blitz in which cyclists caught riding without bells, running red lights, riding on the sidewalk, or crossing intersections without getting off the bike and walking risk getting a ticket. One of the officers staking out Broadview and Danforth took a moment to explain to the Sun how cyclists could stop drivers from getting mad at them by waving thanks to cars that let them into traffic. “You have to share the roads and I hope that if we can get this wave going, it will be repeated by others and hopefully it will bring more respect and courtesy to the highways, make it a safer place,” said Sgt. Jack West. Does this lesson have a sing-along component? Hooray!