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Welcome to Chow's Toronto. You get what you vote for.

This is an incredibly silly comment.

Olivia Chow has been the Mayor for less than 2 years; problems w/fare evasion, homelessness and mental illness predate her mayoralty by several years.

What policy initiative that she has undertaken in her time in office has made matters worse in your judgement? Please submit some evidence.

I would note that fare enforcement has been increased, not decreased during her time as mayor, and that there are shelter outreach workers on TTC regularly, every week, trying to get people to accept help.
 
What policy initiative that she has undertaken in her time in office has made matters worse in your judgement? Please submit some evidence.
Since you asked... her antisemitism and 10% increase of my property taxes. As to the homeless/mentally ill situation, she's done absolutely nothing (that's the problem).
 
Since you asked... her antisemitism

An allegation without any substantiation. Try saying that under your real name and enjoy the resulting litigation.

and 10% increase of my property taxes.

Which was perfectly reasonable and ovedue, Toronto property taxes remain below their peer municipalities which have higher tax rates almost across the board.

This is a correction for years of tax freezes and increases below inflation and that never accounted for population growth.

I have no idea why you would expect better services for less money.

As to the homeless/mentally ill situation, she's done absolutely nothing (that's the problem).

Except that's not true, as I just posted above.

I asked for evidence, you have not only provided none, you've failed to address the evidence that was provided for you.

***

Exactly what would you like the Mayor to do about mental illness? The laws under which people are committed are provincial, the healthcare system that makes those decisions and has the resources is also provincial. The City does not operate any mental healthcare facilities, nor does any other municipality in Ontario.

As to homelessness, the evidence seem to suggest that the Mayor is finally getting some projects off the ground, which is better than her predecessor managed. Is that adequate? No, not even if it works.

But the problem results from the above noted mental health system issue; as well as low wages, low minimum wage, and low social assistance rates, all of which are provincial.

******

Now........if there is a desire to continue this, and I'm not shutting anything down, lets move it to the Mayor Olivia Chow thread........ rather than the TTC thread.
 
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... It's in part on me for sitting at the very back of a soon to be busy empty streetcar...
Well, yeah, your fault. I rarely ride on the streetcars, but even I know the back of them is what they use for their toilet.
... outreach workers on TTC regularly, every week, trying to get people to accept help.
Hmmm. I think they must be asking them very nicely and politely, but they're being ignored or getting 'no' for an answer.
 
Well, yeah, your fault. I rarely ride on the streetcars, but even I know the back of them is what they use for their toilet.
I almost never ride any crosstown routes, but I have always found the 509 and 510 to be quite civilized.
 
I almost never ride any crosstown routes, but I have always found the 509 and 510 to be quite civilized.
There's issues on all of the streetcar routes, the 509 and 510 certainly are no exception. I've seen plenty of mentally ill, and homeless individuals on these routes.

The problem has always been there, but in all of my years commuting the issue really started to spike around the time the Flexities started to arrive ~2012-2013. Clearly the new streetcars arent the cause of the issue, it's just that the issues we're seeing today in the TTC started to become exponentially more and more apparent around the same time.
 
Heavens, I took the 506 from Sherbourne to Spadina past noon today to pickup a suit at Tom's Place in Kensington Market. I figured it's cheaper than driving and a nice day for a walk to the stop. But I was not prepared for the cuckoos nest that made up my fellow passengers. It's in part on me for sitting at the very back of a soon to be busy empty streetcar. I would estimate that maybe 4/10 tapped on, and of those 6/10 who did not, most were muttering at themselves, flaying about or otherwise mentally or chemically troubled. I just MMOB, headphones on listening to the RevZilla podcast on landsplitting (should be a thing in ON, imo), but then one guy recognized another from the social and the latter starting shouting that the other go away, whilst the first starting singing toward the second chap. What a circus, but I never felt threatened, and saw it more like I was on safari in an asylum - I could almost hear Sir David Attenborough narrating upon the thrashing, manic behaviour. I suppose all the normies were in class or at work, so this is what's left, just the nutters and a guy buying a suit.
I feel like they should do another survey



Since you asked... her antisemitism and 10% increase of my property taxes. As to the homeless/mentally ill situation, she's done absolutely nothing (that's the problem).
She got hundreds of millions in funding from the feds for the homeless people in the city, is that "nothing"
As a homeowner, property taxes have been BELOW inflation for several years, did you not expect reality to catch up?
 
it's just that the issues we're seeing today in the TTC started to become exponentially more and more apparent around the same time.
More like since the pandemic, definitely not back in the good old days of 2012/2013. Even in 2019 things didn't seem bad enough to sound the alarm bells.
 
There's issues on all of the streetcar routes, the 509 and 510 certainly are no exception. I've seen plenty of mentally ill, and homeless individuals on these routes.
It's too pricey to ramp up staffing city wide, but I'd like to see a 6-12 month campaign to greatly increase fare enforcement on all four streetcar routes inside this box between University and Sherbourne. Make it almost guaranteed that you will be caught for non-payment and we'll keep the disruptive folks off the TTC.

IMG_3374.jpeg
 
I ride the 504 daily and it's quite civilized 99.9% of the time.
Yes, I alternate between the 503/4 to get to work and I take the 501 home because the 501 detour helps me save some time, though the service is so infrequent and erratic I have to check online and plan out my departure.
However the 501 riders are very very different group from the 504 riders.

Not to say the 504 is perfect; looking at you people having facetime calls on speakerphone and thinking that is totally a normal thing for an adult to do.... most of these being George Brown College students.

But, that being said, the 501 inevitably has very "esoteric riders" on it, and sometimes a lot of them. I've seen open drug use on it multiple times last year, I also saw someone getting a blowjob last week. But it still saves a few minutes to get me home, and I can live with it with headphones set to max volume with white noise app going and my eyes closed.
 
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Personally, my single biggest bug bear with the TTC is their atrocious line management. On paper, many services that the TTC runs should be very good, but the issues with line management must run deep in the institutional blood, because it's been on going for decades - surely there must have been some personnel turn over in the last 20 years - and I haven't seen it in such a large capacity in any other city I've been to. Prague's trams (apart from not being slowed down by ridiculous safety rules like they are here) run in a mix of private ROWs, mixed traffic, and pedestrian only zones, and I've never experienced anything like this there.

Also would like to see:

-better communication vis a vis delays
-all door boarding, everywhere, at all times
-for the drivers to be taught finally that they're not the stars of John Wick and to stop yelling at transit photographers

I was in Prague in October 2023, and I rode plenty of trams outside the city centre. They ran trams on temporary track in road/watermain work areas, something we haven’t done since the 1970s.
 

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