No, Mayor Miller didn’t lose his biscuits after a night on the town, but he did seriously endanger Toronto’s chances of getting some much needed infrastructure repairs done in a timely manner. And under Federal Largess.
From the mayors point of view, Toronto did not need any work done on parks, repairs on bridges, upgrading 70-year-old sewers or even new roofs on dare care centers. And in fact the city did not even seem to want to get their much balloho’d and very expensive streetcars.
By submitting only one project that was sure to be rejected by Ottawa, our fine city of Toronto made sure it cannot get access to the federal anti-recession package. Was this personal issues or good negotiating or political gameship? Or a mix of them.
So instead of getting funds, the city will be giving funds to Thunder Bay from 2011 to 2018 for the streetcars. And tying up funds from Ontario that could be earmarked for Toronto during that time.
Karen Stintz, a Toronto Councilor said: “With the streetcar contract, we’ve seen the province has been caught off guard. Now, the federal government has been caught off guard.”No wonder John Baird muttered that Toronto should f off.
You know, if Toronto wanted a better transit system it should consider reducing the interaction between streetcars/busses and cars. And to be fair they have; but wouldn’t this funding have been best used asking for say garages to park cars in near streetcar routes; allowing cars to be taken off the streets? That way it’s the best of both worlds as then cars can zip in the outside lane, and street cars move in the inside lane.
