That's a little disingenious isn't it. Miller got an overwhelming 57% of the vote in 2006, and his main rival got only 32%. Compared to the previous (2003) election where Miller only got 43% of the vote, compared to 38% for his rival. There's no evidence to suggest that the majority of people who didn't vote, would have voted differently.
The official plan revisions were well underway before Miller became mayor in 2003, and the Surface Transit Priority Network was added well before the 2007 election, which calls for "
reserved or dedicated lanes for buses and streetcars". There's only minor tweaks since then.
Surely the increased support for Miller between 2003 and 2006 indicates that people aren't up in arms about this plan.
Let's have debate here on the issues, rather than federal-style poisoning the discussion with misinformation and blatant untruths.
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I also should add, that Transit City is the progression of the TTC's
Ridership Growth Strategy released in March 2003, when Mel Lastman was mayor. It called for surface rapid transit corridors on many of the same corridors that Transit City is now using. Incidentally that March 2003 document discussed the new City Plan in the past-tense, referencing a 2002 date for it. The truth is, this has all been slowly building since amalgamation.
What rubbish! Anyone with half a brain can see that Miller increasing his vote total by running against a relatively weak candidate in 2006 does not constitute support for a transit plan released in 2007. A chimpanzee could see this. Doady's notion that 'you get what you voted for' is patently false. If I had even the slightest hint that Miller would propose a billion dollar LRT line on Morningside, I wouldn't have voted for him in 2003.
Only 3 out of 7 Transfer City lines were mentioned in the RGS as priorities (note that they were cited for suitable surface improvements, not LRT lines) and most of these corridors were not designated Avenues. They're still not. Of that 3, one of them, Sheppard, still had a subway extension on the table and Rocket bus/bus lane improvements were suggested in the meantime.
It's a shame that the RGS was ditched because it grew from a recognition that certain routes are dysfunctional and it asked "how do we improve these routes?" It tried solving existing problems and didn't ask "where should we put LRT lines?" The RGS document doesn't even mention LRT lines. Of course, the RGS was a TTC document and Transfer City was a product of the mayor's office.
Thanks for supporting my argument by quoting "buses or streetcars" from the surface transit priority network, which, if you didn't notice, was not a plan to add $10B worth of LRT lines, it was a plan to address transit problems on about 20 corridors. Several maps have been released over the years and virtually every major route in the city has been one at least one of them. Many of these corridors will have to go without improved transit as attention has shifted to, for example, Sheppard & Morningside, which was never slated as a priority but will now be the intersection of almost $2B worth of LRT lines. Transfer City is exponentially more expensive than what was proposed in the RGS or the surface (read: largely bus lanes) network suggestions, hardly a "minor tweak."
Transfer City actually disagrees with previous plans...it doesn't improve the busiest or most dysfunctional routes, it doesn't follow previously approved Avenues, it doesn't support suburban centres, etc. It may be true that most of the lines were included as potential surface transit improvements at some point but they were listed amongst a dozen others and as
surface improvements, not a surprise $10B plan including multi-billion dollar tunnelled segments that, due to an extremely high cost, will preempt other projects and need to be mostly or fully funded by the province/feds.
"Transit City is completely new. Many of the lines in this plan have never been part of old transit studies, or have appeared as full-blown subway lines, not as LRT." Steve Munro said that.
It's funny how at the Transfer City meetings, almost every official would spout lines lifted directly from the brochures and finding someone willing to give an honest professional assessment of the lines was quite difficult, but at the recent YRT meeting I went to, every official in attendance that I spoke to gave nothing but their honest opinion, even disclosing potential flaws in their transit plans. It was refreshing!
