A smart way to get young people to vote

While walking around York University on Tuesday, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the City of Vaughan had set up an advanced polling station in the heart of York’s Keele Street campus.

A cure for the Allen Road blues?

Over the past few years, I have noticed that the Allen Road has been changing. North of Sheppard, three new traffic lights have been installed over the years that slow traffic considerably.

The section south of Sheppard and north of Transit Road has been completely changed from an express road to a confusing all-day bottleneck! Two new traffic lights have been added, one of the three north lanes has been “removed” and the lane markings don’t line up on either side of one of the new street lights.  What used to be a relatively speedy route to travel north and south has been turned into a traffic nightmare!

With these changes to the northern section of the Allen Road, it makes little sense to me why there would be a proposal to continue the Allen Road all the way to the Gardiner – in a tunnel, nonetheless (have we learned nothing from Boston’s Big Dig?).

I wasn’t even born when the Allen Road was proposed, but from what I have heard there was quite a bit of opposition and controversy (to put it lightly!) surrounding its development, and that it was ended at Eglinton. I can’t even begin to imagine the opposition and controversy that extending the Allen to the Gardiner would spark if it made its way from just a statement to a studied project!

I think instead of wasting our time looking into extending the Allen Road to the Gardiner, we should be looking at how to make the existing road more safe and efficient to drive on. The current condition of the road makes me feel bad for anyone who lives near (me included) as it appears that more and more cars are using neighborhood streets that were not intended for such use instead of the Allen.

As well, for anyone who has gotten off the Allen at Lawrence or gotten on at Eglinton you have surely seen a “Creeper” (car that butts into line at the last minute, without waiting its turn) making a dangerous move to save themselves a few minutes! Instead of wasting our time talking about extending the Allen, let’s figure out how to prevent the dangerous “Creepers” and how to make the traffic flow better at these points so we pollute less, while  idling getting on and off the Allen Road!

About Adam Zendel

Idle thoughts on red lights, traffic flow and pollution

While I applaud the city for recently making their anti-idling bylaw more stringent (decreased permitted idling time from three minutes to one minute) to help reduce pollution. I wonder if there are other ways that the city could make changes to help reduce pollution from cars.

I was driving down Bathurst St. last week at around 1 a.m. and somehow I had to stop at every traffic light from Steeles Ave.all the way down to south of Lawrence Ave.

As I was sitting there idling my car at each of the red lights I kept thinking about the amount of pollution that I was creating. I could understand having to stop and start if I was driving in rush hour traffic, however, I was coming down Bathurst at one in the morning!

There was no more than a handful of other cars on the road and I waited at a number of lights where no other cars or pedestrians crossed my path. I think if we could figure out some way to reduce the amount of unnecessary stopping and starting on major streets when traveling straight in one direction, we would be able to probably reduce our pollution by even more then the savings in emissions from reducing the amount of time one can idle their car.

I understand that if I'm driving along and making a number of turns and stops it will be inevitable that I will get some red lights, but when traveling down a major road with two lanes of traffic in each direction, there must be some way to set the traffic lights so that once you get a green light you can continue to get green lights after that if driving at a continuous speed.

I think the city, its councillors and civil servants should be looking at every way to reduce the amount of pollution we emit when driving as the way our city and region has developed often makes it necessary to drive places instead of walking or taking public transit, the ideal, less polluting alternatives.

About Adam Zendel

Niagara ads should be a wakeup call for Toronto

The recent controversy surrounding the Niagara Parks Commission ad campaign promoting Niagara by exploiting the negative stereotypes of big city’s like Toronto has struck a nerve with some Toronto residents and politicians.

This overblown reaction by Toronto is based on a deep-rooted insecurity and arrogance that highlights the need for Toronto to do more to promote itself within the GTA and neighbouring regions.

I was planning to write about the need for Toronto to do more to promote itself to the 905, but this recent controversy has added a new aspect to my position.

The depiction of “the big city”, (which is perceived by most to bear a striking resemblance to Toronto) in the Niagara ad campaign is reasonable. Although the characterization of Toronto as crowded, dirty and unsafe is exaggerated, the ads do play into a stereotype that some GTA residents have of Toronto.

Let’s not forget that although Niagara is a friendly cousin of Toronto, it is a competitor when it comes to tourism. As such, this ad campaign is fair game in the battle to attain more tourist dollars. Tourism is a competitive industry by nature. You can either promote your city based on its strengths, or by exploiting another city’s weaknesses, however exaggerated that may be.

It is slightly amusing and somewhat ironic that the backlash from Toronto regarding the ads has actually helped Niagara tourism through additional earned media. It was a crafty decision on Niagara’s part to include this controversial slant to their ads because of the prolonged exposure that it is receiving from the media. And with some politicians wading into the issue, the results will be that much more lucrative for Niagara.

Toronto’s response to the Niagara ads should not be that of anger or offence. It should be a wakeup call that Toronto needs to do more to compete with Niagara and other regional municipalities that are fighting for increased tourism market share.

Toronto is a world-class city that should not be insecure about its strengths, neither should it take these strengths for granted. We have so many attractive features of this city that most would want to experience. We just need to start focusing more of our attention on promoting our strengths, as opposed to complaining about our perceived weaknesses.

About Dan Bordonali

Why no infrastructure cash for hosting the G20?

The Muskoka region that hosted the quiet G8 summit a day before the G20 received tens of millions of dollars of federal funds to improve infrastructure.

Roads throughout the region were rebuilt, buildings were built or expanded, airports were enhanced, power grids and cellphone coverage were improved and even municipal signage was perked up! The region got quite a bit of improvement that will live on long after the memories of the summit have faded.

Toronto on the other hand, which was forced to host to the much larger G20 Summit, had public and private property destroyed and to the best of my understanding did not get any infrastructure improvements related to the G20.

This seems a bit unfair, the Muskoka region got lots of money pumped into it and had only peaceful protesting, while Toronto got no money pumped into it and had violent destructive protesting that almost closed down the downtown core. And to make matters worse the federal government has made it extremely hard to get compensation for the damage that was done to private property during the G20.

It seems to me that there was a severe imbalance of funding between the G8 and G20 summits. Toronto could have desperately used federal funds to improve its roads, build or expand public buildings, improve its airport and power grid, enhance its municipal signage and not to mention, improve its public transit infrastructure!    

I guess once the memories of the G20 fade all we’ll be left with is a bunch of businesses with increased insurance premiums because of the damage done to them during the Summit rioting!  

About Adam Zendel

Why won’t the government pay for G20?

I am so disappointed in the way the government is treating the businesses that operate in the downtown core and were damaged as a result of the G20 Summit.

After our government spent over $1 billion, one would assume that our city would have been protected from physical damage, however, that does not appear to be the case. The area inside of the Security fence looked pristine, however, outside of the security perimeter it looks like a tornado blew through, with some areas damaged and other not. I took a walk through downtown and saw many windows either broken, boarded up or in the process of being repaired.

It seems like the security was exclusively to protect the international delegates attending the Summit and the rest of the downtown and city was left to fend for itself.

I can’t understand why the federal government is refusing to pay for the property damage that was caused as a result of their choice to host the summit in downtown Toronto.

They were the ones who chose to locate the Summit at Metro Toronto Convention Centre in the heart of our downtown; this was not the decision of the businesses that had their properties damaged. The businesses were just swept up into this mess without a choice; they were just innocent bystanders. I have not yet heard a valid argument for why the federal government should not pay to put our city back into the same condition as it was before the Summit. The government spent an exorbitant amount of money organizing the Summit; the least they could do is pay to repair the property damage that was done during the summit! 

About Adam Zendel

Let's preserve the Gardiner

The Gardiner Expressway is one of the main transportation arteries that connect our city. While I would like everyone to arrive at each of their destinations by public transit, that is a completely unrealistic desire as cars are such an intrinsic part of our transportation network.

I have heard of many different plans for dealing with the deliberately unkempt and deteriorating elevated section of the Gardener Expressway and I think that any plan that involves demolishing it and putting traffic at grade will be a huge mistake.

We have already seen the increases in travel time for those who must use the east section of the Gardiner that was demolished and incorporated into Lakeshore Boulevard a number of years ago and I don’t think we want to repeat this mistake again. Burying the Gardiner ... well, I think all I need to mention is Boston’s Big Dig and that idea can be sent out the window.

I just heard about a very interesting proposal to cover the elevated section of the Gardiner with a suspended green roof that would also function as an elevated park. The proposal is called Toronto’s Green Ribbon.

I like this idea as it retains one of the main arteries and improves on it. This proposal may reduce the maintenance costs on the roadway as the road will be covered from the elements and will not need to be salted in the winter -- road salt is one of the main reasons for the deterioration of the structure. It also fits with the City’s mandate of incorporating green roofs into the City. While a covered roadway was probably not the original idea behind the Green Roof By-law, a green roof over a roadway fits nicely with the By-law and could be a huge promoter for it.

We fight to preserve building and structures with far less history and purpose all over the city. The Gardiner was originally conceived to link the towns and villages that were incorporated into Metropolitan Toronto and is a symbol of that amalgamation. It also serves to transport many, many people on a daily basis. Let’s not try to wipe out a productive piece of our City’s history, but let’s work with its challenges and try to improve on the Gardiner and our City in the process.

About Adam Zendel

Retail in our neighbourhoods

Adam Zendel.

Why do we have such an aversion to the development of retail space in the city of Toronto?

We all use retail spaces on a daily basis, and if we had easier access to retail spaces we would not need to use our cars as much to drive outside of the city or far away from our homes to get to the stores that we need. If we made it easier to develop retail spaces in closer proximity to residential spaces we could walk to stores.

I just spent a weekend visiting a friend living in an area of Chicago call Lakeview and had the opportunity to see how great it can be to live in close proximity to retail. I didn’t get in my car once over the weekend and when we wanted to go out shopping, all we did was walk down the street (no more than one minute) to the grocery store (2), pharmacy and many other retail shops, cafes and restaurants. When we ran out of milk it was a quick walk to get some more – not a drive!

What if we all lived like in areas like this? We would not need to get in our cars for simple little tasks like getting a litre of milk or a head of lettuce.  We could walk down the street, see our neighbors and get what we need. 

I don’t think that we can develop retail spaces like this overnight. However, if we thought outside of the box and allowed for these types of developments in close proximity to residential areas, I think we could create a more livable and more enjoyable city!

About Adam Zendel