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May. 26th, 2015
Transit Toronto's Richard White was the first blogger I saw last night who talked about the proposed expansion of the TTC's bus service, late at night and overnight.
Transit blogger Steve Munro had a more critical take on this, noting that this amounts largely to a restoration of coverage removed by previous cuts.
Toronto Mayor John Tory and TTC Chair Josh Colle today announced service improvements to 61 bus and streetcar routes that will make it convenient and viable for all Torontonians to count on transit at any time of the day or night for their travel. These improvements, which will be recommended to the TTC Board at its May 27 meeting, are funded under the $90-million investment in transit that was approved in the 2015 City Budget.
The TTC Board will be presented with recommendations for new and restored off-peak bus services and new and expanded overnight bus and streetcar routes starting in September 2015. These improvements to service make the TTC a more available, predictable and consistent travel option for a great number of Torontonians, in particular shift workers and people working non-traditional hours. The expanded coverage of the overnight network will result in 99 per cent of Toronto residents living within a 15-minute walk of overnight bus and streetcar service.
“These service improvements are the type of sensible and caring investments expected by Toronto residents. We need a reliable transit system so people can get to work on time and get home faster to spend more time with their families,” said Mayor John Tory. “The ability to move in this city is fundamental to economic opportunity, to an active family and personal life and to uniting a city.”
The recommended changes to off-peak services, where 57 per cent of TTC trips are made, are expected to attract 1.3 million additional riders a year. The enhancements to the Blue Night Network would increase annual overnight ridership to approximately 5.2 million from 4.7 million riders.
Transit blogger Steve Munro had a more critical take on this, noting that this amounts largely to a restoration of coverage removed by previous cuts.
Most of the 2011 service cuts rammed through by former Mayor Rob Ford and former Chair Karen Stintz will be restored. The “greater good” of the system, a phrase beloved of Ms. Stintz, clearly no longer includes slashing transit service.
One rather contorted paragraph in the report gives an insight into the process by which routes got on the 2011 list:
The use of the productivity standard of boardings per service hour, commonly used throughout the transit industry, began in 2011 at the TTC. It was first used to identify the services that were recommended for removal as part of the budget cuts in that year. The standard used at that time was 15 boardings per service hour or, in some cases where there was a long walk to alternate service, the standard was reduced to ten boardings per service hour. For 2015, the boardings per service hour standard has been continued, but at the lower, currently-affordable level of nine boardings per service hour. The calculation of boardings has also been simplified, and now counts all customers on the entire route or branch section, as appropriate. Previously, a more-detailed and labour-intensive evaluation was used to try to separate and weight differently the boardings that would be made at unique stops, at stops with intersecting routes, and at stops along common sections of multiple routes. The new, simplified method of counting substantially all passengers is simpler to apply and understand, and allows the threshold level to be lowered.
In other words, the 2011 evaluations didn’t actually count passengers, but applied a formula and process to determine which routes made the cut. It is no wonder that some riders and Councillors were baffled to see routes with real live riders, but be told that there were not enough of them.
The Toronto Star's Sam Grewel writes about one way post-McCallion Mississauga is trying to address its infrastructure issues and its taxation needs, all at once.
Mississauga — a city known for asphalt, an iconic sprawling shopping mall at its centre and suburban-style monster homes — has a message: if you want to keep paving paradise, get ready to pay more.
In a move that’s a first for the GTA, Canada’s largest suburb and its sixth largest city will soon charge home owners and businesses for storm water costs based on how much of their property is covered. If you have a very small house that causes little run-off water, you will pay nothing. But if your home is in the highest of five size categories, it will cost $170 in 2016 for your share of the city’s storm-water management costs. It’s an approach that Toronto is also looking at ahead of its 2016 budget process, according to a city spokesperson.
At a Mississauga committee meeting Wednesday, the new funding system was passed unanimously and will likely get final approval next week. The new approach will raise millions more each year, as flooding in the city from major rainstorms over the last decade provided proof that its storm water infrastructure can’t handle climate change and all the increased run-off from so much covered land.
“You allowed too much asphalt and too many homes,” said Councillor Nando Iannicca, claiming that residents will call council members “morons that didn’t manage things well” once the new charge shows up on dedicated utility bills for single family units starting in 2016. City staff said the replacement value of the storm water system is $1.8 billion, which can’t be covered by the property tax bill. Much of the infrastructure is in need of replacement.
Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc talks about the future of the Gardiner Expressway, wondering if factions on Toronto city council can come to a broadly acceptable compromise on its future.
In the wake of the intense session at the public works committee, the Gardiner East battle was joined by North York councillor James Pasternak, who is said to be shopping around a toll proposal, and then city planner Jennifer Keesmaat, who on Friday set planning tongues a wagging by publicly breaking with Mayor John Tory and backing the remove option.
It’s not clear whether either of these will influence undecided councillors.
Pasternak’s move looks to me like a half-baked ploy meant to assuage right-of-centre suburban councillors who are feeling squirmy about the high cost of the hybrid. Perhaps Pasternak reckons he can firm up the pro-hybrid faction with some kind of motion asking for a study on tolling options/revenues, etc., etc. But I’m guessing his supporters would go to ground at the first sign of trouble – e.g., directed robocall campaigns, talk radio call-in sessions, etc.
As for Keesmaat, my feeling is that she’s preaching to the choir, and everyone at 100 Queen West. understands that fact of council life. Initially, it seemed vaguely scandalous that such a senior official would break with the chief magistrate. But her views on planning issues are nothing if not well known. In any event, she would have been asked the question when the Gardiner debate starts in council. Unless her boss John Livey decides to bench her for the duration, Keesmaat would have expressed her professional opinion. She just did it a few weeks early.
The question I have is whether council is prepared to consider some kind of middle ground – an art-of-compromise deal that splits the difference by assuaging the suburban right’s concerns about traffic and cost, and the downtown left’s critique of highway building.
Open Democracy's Vassilis Petsinis looks at how Macedonia's embattled president has managed to slip from pro-Western to pro-Russian camps because of his very neoconservative slipperiness.
Following the unrest in Kumanovo and the massive anti-government protests, FYR Macedonia has captivated the interest of the international press. The most recent mobilization has been the peak of a wave of discontent that commenced with the countrywide student protests some weeks ago. In the domestic front, opposition circles have issued a series of charges against the government led by the conservative VMRO-DPMNE such as: promotion of nepotism, unwillingness to combat corruption, illegitimate surveillance of political opponents and, on top of all, growing authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, political analysts have detected a certain rift in the relations between Skopje and the West which has resulted in the Macedonian government’s more decisive reorientation towards Moscow. Russia has pledged its political support to Nikola Gruevski’s and the two sides have extended their cooperation in energy issues and other areas of economic concern. Without neglecting the crucial impact of shifting geopolitics, this brief piece mostly concentrates on VMRO-DPMNE’s, predominantly, neoconservative agenda under the leadership of Nikola Gruevski. It also sets in a comparative context how this neoconservative platform has remained intact despite the gradual readjustment of the state’s foreign policy from Euro-Atlantic institutions towards Moscow’s orbit of influence.
In 2003, Nikola Gruevski succeeded Ljubčo Georgievski in the party’s leadership. An ambitious young politician back then, Gruevski’s main ambition was to centralize decision-making within VMRO-DPMNE and modernize the party’s structures.
The latter objective was achieved via the recruitment of a younger pool of cadres. Following a widespread trend all over Southeast Europe (e.g. Albania’s Edi Rama and Serbia’s Vuk Jeremić), the party’s central committee and later the Cabinet of Ministers consisted of young, aspiring and, often, Western-educated individuals (e.g. the Foreign Minister between 2006 and 2011, Antonio Milošoski). Moreover, Gruevski maintained the central aspects of Georgievski’s strategy of rapprochement vis-à-vis the ethnic Albanian community.
Despite this, Gruevski’s term in office has been marked by the emphatic endorsement of Neo-Macedonism to the detriment of the modernist narratives over the Macedonian ethno-genesis in the nineteenth century. The adoption of Neo-Macedonism became further institutionalized through the endorsement of grandiose architectural projects, largely inspired by classical antiquity, which commenced in 2010.
The Toronto Star's Jacques Gallant looks in detail at how controversies over church politics and personal behaviour have led to Bishop Georgije Djokic being removed from his position as head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Canada.
The decision came after the gathering listened to accusations for three days, and one day for Djokic’s defence, said Rev. Ljubomir Rajic of All Saints Serbian Orthodox Church in Mississauga.
The allegations against Djokic, head of the church in Canada, have not been made public. Allusions have been made to “indecent behaviour” in Serbian media, which also reported that Djokic denied the allegations.
“The bishop is about 67 years old. He had promised to retire when he reached 65, so probably the best thing he could do is to accept this (decision) and bring peace to the Serbian community by retiring,” said Rajic.
“There’s nothing wrong with retiring at the age of 65. Myself, I can’t wait for that.”
Djokic is reportedly still in Belgrade until the weekend and could not be reached for comment. He retains his title of bishop, according to church officials.
[LINK] "Another New England — in Crimea"
May. 26th, 2015 06:34 pmStrange Maps' Frank Jacobs recently turned up something astonishing: For centuries, a Byzantine-sponsored colony of English migrants who fled the Norman conquest existed on the Crimean peninsula.
“I don't want to change the world”, sang Billy Bragg in the early 1980s, “I'm just looking for a New England.” Some nine centuries earlier, a similar thought must have crossed the mind of an obscure Saxon nobleman as he sailed away from his recently vanquished homeland.
The story goes that in 1075, a Siward, earl of Gloucester led a flotilla from England into the Mediterranean. Onboard was the flower of England's native aristocracy, disenfranchised by the Norman Conquest of 1066. They reached Constantinople, gaining permission from the emperor to settle in Byzantine lands on the Black Sea's northern shore — if they could reconquer them.
They did, and founded a Nova Anglia, the towns of which echoed the names of the ones the settlers had left behind. No trace of the colony remains today, but this New England (on the Crimean peninsula, and immediately to its east) must have survived for at least a few hundred years. Well into the 14th century, the New Englanders' annual Christmas greetings to the emperor were conveyed “in their native language, English.”
[. . .]
The Norman conquerors, no doubt glad to be rid of this troublesome bunch, may have directed the English émigrés to recent conquests by their kinsmen in the Mediterranean. En route to Sicily, the English fleet ravaged Ceuta, seized Majorca and Minorca, but eventually laid a course for Constantinople after hearing of heathens besieging the imperial capital.
On Saturday on Facebook, after news of the success of the "Yes" side in the Irish Irish referendum on same-sex marriage, I shared Irish politics journalist Ursula Halligan's heartbreaking article about her generation of life in the closet. So sad, so real. May she be able to find happiness now.
I loved a girl and I knew that what wasn’t right; my mind was constantly plagued with the fear that I was a lesbian. I hated myself. I felt useless and worthless and very small and stupid. I had one option, and only one option. I would be “normal”, and that meant locking myself in the closet and throwing away the key.
I played the dating game. I feigned interest in men. I invented boyfriends. I listened silently to snide remarks about homosexuals. Tried to smile at mimicry of stereotypical gay behaviour.
In the 1970s, homophobia was rampant and uninhibited. Political correctness had yet to arrive. Homosexuals were faggots, queers, poofs, freaks, deviants, unclean, unnatural, mentally ill, second class and defective humans. They were society’s defects. Biological errors. They were other people. I couldn’t possibly be one of them.
Over the years I watched each of my siblings date, party, get engaged, get married and take for granted all the joys and privileges of their State-acknowledged relationship.
My coping strategy was to pour myself into my studies and later into my work. I didn’t socialise much because I had this horrible secret that must never come out. It was a strategy that worked until I’d fall in love again with a woman and the whole emotional rollercoaster of bliss, pain, withdrawal and denial resumed. It was a pattern that would repeat itself over the years.
As I said on Facebook when I shared this Irish Times report, it may be worth noting that the Irish people I do know lean strongly towards anti-clerical radicalism.
Also.
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, has called the result of the Irish same-sex marriage equality referendum a “defeat for humanity”.
Until Tuesday night, there had been no official Holy See reaction to the Yes vote in the referendum.
When that reaction finally came from Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican equivalent of prime minister, it was nothing if not hardline and outspoken:
“This result left me feeling very sad but as the Archbishop of Dublin [Diarmuid Martin] pointed out, the Church will have to take this reality on board in the sense of a renewed and strengthened evangelisation. I believe that we are talking here not just about a defeat for Christian principles but also about a defeat for humanity,” Cardinal Parolin told reporters on the margins of a Centesimus Annus conference in the Vatican.
Also.