From the guy who complains about me posting pics and making "stale" posts, roflmao
Here's a good opinion piece from DiManno which clarifies why the rear doors were closed..
DiManno: Subway-hugger Ford needs to look at Stintz’s visionary chutzpah
Strong like bull, smart like streetcar.
I don’t actually know what that means, whence it’s linguistic provenance, nor whether it was intended as an incongruous expression — because streetcars, inanimate and linear, can’t be smart, can they? So maybe it’s a quasi-oxymoron.
The weird catchphrase came to mind with reports that Mayor Rob Ford, a bull in a china shop — my day for clichés — had been in a confrontation last week with a nemesis streetcar, purportedly driving past its open door on Dundas Street, which would be a Traffic Act violation. He’s violated, variously, before. This time he was the matador and the streetcar the bull.
On Tuesday, Ford denied the accusation, saying he’d stopped well back of the open front door and the rear doors were closed. In fact, streetcars are built so that the rear doors are activated whenever the front exit is open — meaning that closed rear door would have folded open if anyone had stood on the step, which is why drivers are required to avoid encroaching on either. That nobody stepped into the path of Ford’s vehicle is only good fortune.
Ford famously hates streetcars. As someone who has on more than one occasion very nearly been hit by motorists ignoring this particular law, I very nearly hate Ford. There is enough roadkill on our streets without Toronto’s mayor potentially adding to the casualty count, no matter how he attempts to justify his carelessness.
In this instance, there was an exchange of words between the driver and the mayor, a yippy altercation Ford found sufficiently aggrieving that he complained to the TTC. How nice for Ford to have the ear of CEO Andy Byford, his own appointee and a guest on his first radio call-in show. Next time the mayor gets a speeding ticket perhaps he can ring up Police Chief Bill Blair directly, too.
“It’s not appropriate for the mayor of the city to appear to use his influence over something as insignificant as this with the head of the TTC,’’ says Bob Kinnear, president of Local 113, Amalgamated Transit Union.
Byford has confirmed Ford’s complaint came into his office and that he spoke with the mayor about the matter, though insisting Ford was treated no different than any other member of the public. As if. The driver was spoken to as well and no further action taken.
The mayor’s office had no comment. That is Ford’s modus operandi. When there’s something he doesn’t want to talk about — cops called to his home, the investigative aftermath of a bizarre encounter with a Star reporter beyond his backyard fence — Ford and his office clam up. I cannot recall any other civic official afforded this kind of no-comment latitude.
A mayor is the mayor 24/7. He’s on the record even when he’s in his car, at home, on public property or at a KFC franchise. If Ford rejects that kind of attention he shouldn’t have run for the most important office in Toronto. Of course, when the mayor has something to say, he spares no blather saying it.
On the suddenly resurrected issue of subway expansion, for example, Ford was all bull charging at the OneCity transit blueprint floated by TTC chair Karen Stintz a week ago. Her scheme, co-crafted with Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, posits a far more ambitious underground and above-ground transit network than the version Ford championed and failed to sell among council colleagues to either left or middle.
Ford loves subways, unless somebody else is driving the plan. Ford loves subways, as long as somebody else — private enterprise — is paying for them. He never could come up with a realistic funding formula. The private sector had no appetite for it. An alternate vision is slammed out of hand by Ford and his media acolytes because it’s not really about public transit and a long-term vision for the gridlocked city; it’s about political jostling and the next election — the one where Stintz insists she won’t be challenging for the mayor’s job though OneCity is clearly a shot across Ford’s bow.
I liked subways when Stintz didn’t. I still like subways now that she adores them.
I liked subways when there was no money to pay for them. I still like subways now that . . . er . . . there’s no money to pay for them.
I liked subways when Stintz and her supporters argued time was running out on funding promises for public transit from the province, which is why a new light rail was ostensibly the only viable option for replacing the Scarborough Rapid Transit Line. Now she’s arguing that more time is needed, though construction has begun and vehicles already ordered.
Taxpayers like and prefer subways too, according to polls. We’ve long understood they could only be built as a long-term joint venture, a covenant between government and property and business owners. Who ever seriously bought Ford’s no-charge subway daydream?
Stintz’s bold proposal for 170 kilometres of new subway, light rail and bus lines is admittedly sketchy and would depend on a $10 billion infusion from Ottawa, another $10 billion from Queen’s Park and an “uplift’’ transit tax from everyone else, with an annual tax bill increase on most homes of $180 a year once it’s phased in. That is not an outrageous gouge for a necessary service, as long as it’s a truly designated tax and firmly capped, with taxpayers protected from the overrun on costs that would undoubtedly ensue.
Yes, the province is exasperated with Toronto’s endless debate on public transit. But the impatience at Queen’s Park doesn’t hold a candle to the frustration of Toronto’s TTC commuters, many of us disgusted by the minimalist and jerry-rigged transit network that Stintz pushed through council less than five months ago.
Ontario Transport Minister Bob Chiarelli has all but strangled Stintz’s OneCity baby in its crib. To my surprise, union honcho Kinnear is also cool to the idea. “We’ve learned to distinguish between a dream and reality,’’ he told the Star Tuesday.
Stintz has only belatedly seen the light and maybe she has been dazzled by her own fanciful vision. Perhaps it is nothing more than a strategic political ploy. But for its visionary chutzpah, the proposal merits at least further study and debate by council.
If subway-hugger Ford can’t see that, he’s being blinded by bullheadedness: dumb like streetcar.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/art...-needs-to-look-at-stintz-s-visionary-chutzpah
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