Transit cops or free transit?

rankandfile.ca: "Fare accounting costs, ticket and pass production costs, and various other costs associated with fares could be eliminated. Immensely expensive transit pass programs can be buried. Even with tokens and tickets eliminated, the Presto card system in Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area has been enormously expensive. While transit users will save a bit on fares with Presto, the province’s auditor general says hundreds of millions have been blown on its installation.

All these resources could be freed up and focused on better transit services, more jobs, and better infrastructure. Transit workers can be redirected to other parts of the service, such as attendants at major transit stations, retrained for operating, maintenance and other services."

EDITORIAL: It's time to stop the Scarborough Subway

Spacing Toronto : "Boosters, beginning with but not limited to Mayor John Tory, claim that what the City is doing is building transit, finally. But by any reasonable review of the facts, the SSE is really about NOT building rapid transit, and indeed making Toronto’s existing transit system even less functional than it currently is.
It is a move backwards, not a move forwards."

Success of free passes for youth in Kingston

Public transit: A modern necessity: "Student passes work seven days a week, allowing students to find work; youth who may never have had that option before. The passes are valid from September to September, so students may use them for months after graduating. Community groups and public educators in Kingston have told me that this has been the best anti-poverty initiative for youth that the city has ever undertaken. "

Cars bring 4% of shoppers, get 30% of space

TreeHugger: "But what I find most interesting is the breakdown of that 72 percent- 53 percent of the visitors come on foot, and they do get their own dedicated space, but it is shared with the retailers who fill it with stuff, trees, newspaper boxes, parking meters. When you look at what is left for walking, it is almost nothing, barely enough for people to get by each other.
19 percent come by bike, and they get worse than nothing, they have to ride down a thin strip between the parked cars and the streetcar tracks, an absolute death zone where a poorly parked car or truck or a door opening forces cyclists into the tracks.

Only 4 percent of the people hitting the street come there by car, yet they get to store their metal boxes on close to 30 percent of the road allowance."

Car driving commuters are minority in Toronto

.@strobelsun Commuters who drive are, by far, the minority in Toronto. Time for drivers to make way for prevailing modes. #TOpoli pic.twitter.com/gFBz6k0ahJ

— Martyn Schmoll (@martynschmoll) November 29, 2016

#dumbtrack Toronto still ruled by oil trolls, sabotaging sensible #publictransit

Toronto now the last bastion of old-style conservatism: Hume | Toronto Star: "The Toronto the car built is giving way to another city, one that’s dense, highrise and compact. It is a city where bicycles make as much sense as cars, and in which pedestrians are demanding freedom of the streets.

It is no longer a city defined by ease of driving, but quality of life. As Toronto adopts contemporary values, it’s clear the old guard isn’t up to the task."

Toronto - Banks and oil companies want subways to create debt and get people out of the way of cars

Toronto Star: "City council has endorsed moving ahead with a one-stop subway extension in Scarborough, rejecting a push to revive a seven-stop LRT as part of a light-rail network that could serve more residents for less money.
The vote Wednesday was a conclusive win for Mayor John Tory, who has adamantly backed the need for subway connection to the Scarborough Town Centre he promised to build during the election. It also effectively killed the original seven-stop LRT that would have been fully funded by the province."