BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Yeah, a mayor with a traffic problem and booming urban bike "scene." I don't understand how people like him get elected.

what a peach of a guy. Cyclists get hit and he responds "I feel for them." What, with the front of your car?

My sister's living there, her husband bikes, but he won't bike downtown. He's ridden from Lake Erie to Lake Huron cross country and he won't ride downtown. This tells me a little more about why.

Very interesting. As he says, "dozens" of people on bikes get hit by people driving cars, which is probably true, but conveniently ignores the much greater number of people who get seriously injured or killed while driving cars.

Good thing I'm not planning any trips to Toronto anytime soon. I'd hate to use their roads in a legally permissible way and still be seen as responsible for the negligence of any drivers who hit me.

I've ridden in Toronto, all throughout downtown and beyond, and found it pretty great all around.

Toronto is a city made up of an "old town" urban core that got merged with several suburbs a few years back. It was an extremely close election, with Ford from the suburbs pitted against a candidate from the central city, and a major 3rd party candidate. Ultimately it was a competition based on turnout. #2 and #3 together got more votes than Ford, if only barely. [Results]

and here I though the parliamentary system eliminated the 3rd party spoilers from syphoning off votes from the popular side. bah, humbug.

I'm looking at U of T for grad school in a few years. I hope this asshole is out of office by then. Toronto sounds like an amazing bike city otherwise.

Noah, I went to U of T. If you ever have any questions about it, message me. And Toronto's a great city, Ford will never be able to change its liberal character.

Unless Toronto is differnt from every other city around, that guy jsut got a small, but solid, group of voters that will all vote against him, no matter who he runs against.

If he said that in Pittsburgh, he would have a whole forum full of folks who would go out and campaign against him.

I feel for him at the end of the election.

Mick - I think you're right. That age old argument that pops up on here all the time kind of goes against his favor - there may not be a single cohesive group of cyclists who all conspire together to run redlights and wear lycra or fauxhawks, but words like that will pull one together for the election. Lycras and hipsters alike won't like that rhetoric.

@Stu Toronto is a city made up of an "old town" urban core that got merged with several suburbs a few years back

Canada has a pretty goosd system - whenever some one sets up a suburb to take advantage of a city without paying taxes to that cityu, they get merged to the city.

So they don't have pitiful schools for the city contrasted with extravagtent schools for the 'burbs.

They don't have state legislators representing groups of folks that want all the advantages of the city and the city residents pay their way for them. Such representatives can be expected to, for example, trash transit systems for the city, forbid the city to raise parking rates without privatizing, and in general, do all sort of evils.

The fact that this leads the 'Burbites to occasionally win a mayoral race is probably a small price, IMO.

Yeah that was pretty offensive. I wonder about the context of that little diatribe? Not cool at any rate.

Anybody have any thoughts on his transportation plan? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xfsIj6gYAw

It doesn't seem anti-bike perse, but it's definitely pro-car and pro-subway. Man this guy has something against street cars.

What I love about Canada (America's Hat) is that their right wing, ultra-conservative politicians are like our center-left independents down here.

His transportation plan seems reasonable to me. All things considered: taking transit off the surface streets, traffic queuing improvements, arterial renetworking, isolated bike/ped paths and bike lanes where possible.

Although he had a pretty wild diatribe noted above, he doesn't back himself into a corner with this proposal, really.

America's hat(!!) that's great.

My brother spent some time hiking in Canada, and he used to like to harass the locals. He'd say something like, "wow, I can't believe this place. It's great up here. It's just so big. I cant believe how vast the place is... (wait for them to show some sign of pride)... I always thought Texas was our biggest state."

He was very likely making this story up, I think. I hope. Otherwise, I guess if you're going to be a troll, may as well have the cajones to do it in real life.

Context is the key to any sound bite. Check out a longer offering where he is actually advocating for separating the cyclists from the motorists.

Youtube.com

Is he a cycling advocate? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But he is definitely a humanist in that he doesn't want anyone to get hurt.

My brother works for the City of Toronto in transportation planning. He's told me that he and his people don't like the trams because they interfere with car traffic (I don't recall exactly why, whether it's the tracks or just holding up traffic). So Ford's position simply reduces to pro-car. On the other hand he's pushing a new subway line that will go through (I think) the Steele station; this makes a lot of sense as there's been tremendous growth to the north of the city and better public transit will help a lot. Irrespective of that, he's a disaster for the city.

As for the election, Ford won as a PC, beating out the Liberal and NDP candidates. His base was suburbanites. The Liberals and NDP are too different to make common cause. (On the other hand the NDP candidate was an Italian immigrant and a whole lot of the suburbs are Italian; didn't help.)

To respond to an earlier comment, the parliamentary system is at the provincial and federal levels. On the municipal level it's mayor + council, just like in Pittsburgh.

As a native Torontonian (moved to Pittsburgh by way of South Florida of all things), I follow @BikingToronto on Twitter. They do a good job in posting on local and international stories.

They're not huge fans of the new mayor from what I gather, but they're respectful.

@Ahlir, I'd imagine that it's because the streetcars hold up traffic on smaller streets in the same way a bus holds up traffic here when cars don't have a lane to go around it. Very few streetcar lines have a dedicated lane in the middle of traffic.

This guy is a jagoff. I hope the council members are Liberal/NDP and will prevent him from pushing too much through. I was shocked when Ford won-- suburbanites must have been very frustrated with the state of things in order to elect a Conservative mayor for Toronto. It sorta boggles the mind.

Car movement is being held up as the holy grail when it should be people movement. The last thing Toronto needs is more freedom of movement for cars.

Car movement is being held up as the holy grail when it should be people movement. The last thing Toronto needs is more freedom of movement for cars.

It's true... even in his more reasonable presentation of his plan, he started out with the idea of "we have to stop attacking cars". That line just rubbed me the wrong way, and colored everything else he said.

That said, I can see how for short-term getting some traffic off the street and into other places (rail) and beefing up their existing bike path network, and improving traffic flow in general can be good for everyone...but I would hope that is just a first step in developing a more DIVERSE and SAFER transportation system. Not just faster (for cars).

Obviously the mayor doesn't have the same attitude about bike lanes as he does about doughnuts. And bacon. And anything with gravy on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm-_Cnyk3u0