King Street made for walkin’?

Kudos this week to TTC chair Karen Stintz for convincing the commission to approve a request for a joint TTC-Toronto study on the “feasibility and merits” of putting morning rush hour reserved streetcar lanes on King Street.

Like politicians everywhere, our city employees have a tendency to shy away from anything unpopular, and few missions are going to be less popular than banning cars from a downtown thoroughfare, but it’s an idea whose time is long overdue. People will deal with what is. They may complain loudly for a while, but before you know it, King Street as a streetcar-only thoroughfare in morning rush hour will be the new normal, and we won’t give it a second thought.

The King streetcar line is the TTC’s busiest surface route, with 56,700 riders a day, according to The Sun. That’s more than the ridership on Sheppard subway. Stintz said she thought they could “reasonably pilot something” in a year and a half, which does seem rather far away. A year and a half? Colour me naïve, but can’t we just put up a few signs, put up a with a week’s worth of horribly snarled traffic, and get on with it?

On his Sunday radio show, Councillor Doug Ford called the move a waste of taxpayer’s money, but he doesn’t exactly have a history of being warm and fuzzy about progressive, people-friendly changes. “As far as I’m concerned that whole board, including their chair, the cheese has slipped off the cracker,” he said, dripping with characteristic sarcasm. He should know from cheese.

TTC CEO Andy Byford said that “doing nothing is not an option,” and I’m with him there. Isn’t that, as they say, the definition of insanity? Doing something the same way and expecting a different result? Traffic in the core is a mess as it is. Why not try something that may lead to a long-term solution? Heaven knows we’ve spent taxpayer’s money in stupider ways. Speaking of …

***

The province is rolling back funding amounting to $150 million annually for social programs in Toronto, although they have also agreed to write off a $200 million loan to the city. Mayor Ford says this will mean cutting funding for programs that serve the city’s “most vulnerable.”

Which for whatever whimsical reason — silly me! — got me thinking about last month’s annual public sector salary disclosure for 2013.

I’ll let you decide what infrastructure is worth in the face of some rather, er, impressive public sector salaries. Chief business officer at the AGO? Nearly $309,000 annually. Director of staff and volunteer resources? $128,000. The administrator at Bethany Lodge makes just over $117,000. The “director, gaming” for the CNIB makes more than $126,000 annually. What exactly is a director, gaming for the CNIB? No clue. The executive director of the Catholic Centre for Immigrants, which frankly I didn’t even know existed, made $154,000 last year. The folks at Communitech Corporation (again, no clue, but apparently they help tech companies who are starting out) are hauling down some neat pay packets, with the “head of partner engagement” making more than $133,000 and the “vice-president digital media” $125,000. The president and CEO? $285 G’s. You’ll notice, I’ve gotten only as far as agencies that start with “C.” Pay the paramedics. Pay the nurses and the Children’s Aid workers. But more than a $139 large a year to be registrar for the “Transitional Council of the College of Naturopaths of Ontario”?

Am I the only thing who thinks services to the city’s most vulnerable is an appalling place to start cutting?

(If you’d like to gnash your teeth and lose some sleep, check it out for yourself.)

 

***

Since cutting public salaries is likely to happen as soon as pigs fly, let’s double development charges! Already exorbitant, Ford’s staff are calling for the near-doubling of development charges, which would see a two-bedroom apartment jump to $23,036 from $12,412, according to the National Post. A one-bedroom or bachelor unit would go to $12,192 from $8,356 in February, and up again to $16,027 next July according to proposed bylaw changes. The city also wants to increase non-residential development charges on street level retail by 32% per square metre. In a shocking display of something that surprises us not at all, office buildings and large-scale industrial projects do not pay development fees.

My head hurts.