The Parade Of The Clowns

Guess who makes TTC late? You do
March 06, 2007

It's all our fault. According to a new TTC advertising campaign, the causes of subway delays have nothing to do with a lack of investment or poor TTC planning or anything like that. Oh, no.

A poster spotted on the subway yesterday said the top five reasons for subway delays are: blocking doors, holding doors, people getting hurt from not "minding the gap" between platforms and subway cars, pieces of litter that catch fire on the tracks (when's the last time you saw that?) and, finally, passenger illness.

It all makes sense; you shouldn't get sick on the subway because you're only going to slow people down. Instead, folks should be considerate and throw up – or have heart palpitations over the latest fare increase – once they're safely outside the station.

As for the people blocking or holding doors, it appears that has nothing to do with overcrowded trains. No, according to the TTC, it's all our fault.

Can't argue with the facts. And this probably is the root cause of lousy TTC employee attitudes.

Buttons take jab at penny plan

A week after Mayor David Miller unveiled his "One Cent Now" campaign trying to get the federal government to hand over to cities one of every six cents of the federal GST, Miller's opponents on Toronto City Council were handing out buttons of their own yesterday. Printed in Miller's campaign colours of blue and yellow, the buttons have slogans such as "Road Repairs Now" and "What's Miller's Plan B?"

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong said the city faces a $300 million backlog in road repairs, but that Miller's one-cent solution was quickly shot down by the federal government. "That's why we need a plan B," he said. "We need to find more efficiencies in the system and manage our resources better and do some outsourcing."

Council will debate the city's proposed $1.4 billion capital budget tomorrow.

Hopefully the councilors distributing the buttons used their own $$$$ to buy the buttons and not their office budgets. You can't be critical of No Plan B Miller if you are dipping into our pockets also.

Sandwiches fuel Shorter meetings

Who says city councillors can't make the tough decisions?

Instead of taking a 90-minute dinner break during council sessions, then finishing at 10 p.m., councillors yesterday voted to take a half-hour recess at 6:30 p.m. and end their day at 9 p.m. But with so little time for their break, councillors decided they'd need to have food brought in.

Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby suggested staff could add crackers and cheese to the cookies served up during the afternoon snack break.

"Throw in a few finger sandwiches and that should probably do it," she said.

Councillor Rob Ford found it ridiculous that well-paid councillors would ding taxpayers for food. Assuming 10 two-day council meetings a year, staff estimated it would cost $20,000 to provide dinner for 44 councillors and up to 40 staff.

"There's no reason why, when you know you have a council meeting, that you can't brown-bag it," Ford said. "Bring a couple sandwiches to work."

"Someone suggested if we'd made it Swiss Chalet, Councillor Ford would join us for dinner," quipped Councillor Kyle Rae, who pushed for the schedule change.

Council ultimately voted 35-7 for the shorter meetings. And the sandwiches.

I am with Rob Ford....with a $53K office budget they should be able to brown bag it. And if councilors want shorter meetings then only discuss items that come under the purvue of city council. Four hours spend discussing minimum wage which is a provincial matter.

With files from Paul Moloney

and Jim Byers