SAVE Transit City (1): "Join this event to show your support for Transit City!
People we have work to do. Your city needs you. The war on our great city has begun!!
On his first day as mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford told 680News that 'people do not want streetcars'. He said, 'The war on the car is over!' Well, not so fast Mr. Ford! All of this has been decided without a public debate or comprehensive analysis of the impact of a decision made by one person, alone in an office at City Hall
Do you think all Torontonians deserve good public transit no matter where in the City they live?
'As a municipal project, much more than just transportation needs are addressed by Transit City. The programme delivers train service to virtually every corner of the city while providing opportunities for economic, social and cultural renewal to some of Toronto's most distressed neighbourhoods."
After Mayor Rob Ford announced Transit City was “over,” a group of activists trying to save the transit plan took to the streets of the central city, at Yonge and Eglinton. A week later, on Dec. 11, the campaign moved to Malvern, an area that would directly benefit from the plan to be axed, and an area that voted for Ford. (Mayor Ford’s proposed subway expansion that would replace Transit City, meanwhile, would leave the Malvern transit situation roughly where it is now, which is the middle of nowhere.) Sixteen volunteers—people who grew up in Malvern, transit advocates from across the city and candidates from the last election—set off in pairs that day, determined to bring the conversation to the people’s doorsteps. We tagged along with two of them to see how the debate is playing out in the inner suburbs.... http://www.eyeweekly.com/city/features/article/108443--knockin-on-malvern-s-door
Thunder Bay Mayor Defends Transit City - CityNews: "The mayor of a northwestern Ontario city with a stake in Toronto’s transportation has come forward in favour of the plan Rob Ford has declared “over.”
Keith Hobbs is hoping to convince Ford not to kill Transit City and the light-rail streetcars now being made at the 475,000 square-foot Bombardier plant in Hobbs’ city, Thunder Bay."
...When the automobile is used as the primary mode of mass transit, the poorest are hardest hit. In 2008, for instance, the poorest fifth of Americans spent 13 per cent of their income on gas. The top fifth spent 3 per cent. In Highway Robbery: Transportation, Racism and New Routes to Equity, Robert Bullard notes: "Those earning less than $14,000 per year, after taxes, spend approximately 40 per cent of their take-home pay on transportation expenditures. This compares to 22 per cent for families earning between $27,177 and $44,461 annually, and 13 per cent per year for families making more than $71,900 per year."
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. households earning less than $15,000 a year own a car, and in an extreme example of auto dependence, tens of thousands of "mobile homeless" live in their vehicles.
The poor purchase cars because there is no other option in a society built to serve the needs of the automobile. If you want to work, you need a car. If you want to visit your friends, you need a car....
