An untraditional Airing of Gratitudes
After spending much of 2017 covering what has been disappointing about the city, it’s good to look back and see what positive change has come since last December
During this holiday season of Festivus, it is traditional to have an Airing of Grievances. As laid out in the canonical episode of Seinfeld that codified the rituals, and as explained by Wikipedia, at the Festivus dinner, one is to say “I gotta lotta problems with you people — and now you’re going to hear about it!” and then dinner proceeds with “each person lashing out at others and the world about how they have been disappointed in the past year.”
But shouldn’t the holidays be special? Pretty much all year consists of an airing of grievances around these parts.
It is, I think, built into the newspaper columnist gig that the squeaky wheels get demands for grease. Letting the world know how I (and others) have been disappointed is a good portion of my daily bread.
So this holiday season, I thought I’d try something different, by looking at some ways I have not been disappointed this year — ways in which, in fact, grievances I have written about here have been addressed.
It’s an Airing of Gratitudes, prompted by astonishment that sometimes things do change for the better.
The biggest and most obvious positive change is the King St. pilot project.
For years, I have been among those demanding some kind of priority project to make a smoother ride for the streetcars on King St. — long our biggest and most dysfunctional surface transit workhorse.
In 2014, I wrote in the Star that a simple pilot project clearing cars out of the King car’s way was overdue.
“Here’s the best part: it would cost very little to test this idea out, and take almost no time, by the standards of transit improvements,” I wrote then.
“If it works, you make it permanent — and perhaps introduce other improvements, such as traffic signal priority that would ensure streetcars never have to stop at a red light. If it doesn’t work, you go back to what we have now.” At the time I finished by calling it a “dream” because I never expected it would happen.
Lo and behold — a Festivus Miracle! — less than three years later, that dream has become reality: King St. has been transformed into a pilot-project priority corridor for streetcars. What’s more, it seems to be working. Early statistics from the city show reduced streetcar travel times and, even more importantly, more reliable service. It also shows that delays in car travel times have been minimal.
Still on the TTC transit front, I complained in July about the announced end of the two-hour transfer on the St. Clair W. streetcar route. It was, I said, “the exact opposite of what the TTC should be doing. It ought to be expanding the two-hour-transfer rule across the entire system, especially as it goes to a fare system using the Presto card exclusively.”
Last month, Mayor John Tory and TTC chair Josh Colle publicly called for the introduction of a two-hour transfer across the TTC, and the TTC board approved the measure. We don’t have it yet, but it could be in use by next summer, which would be, I continue to think, a great improvement in service for riders.
Late last year, I wrote that the long-standing arts and social enterprise enclave at 401Richmond St. was threatened by property tax hikes that tenants could not afford to pay. The business model the building was based on, I said, was threatened by our property tax rules, and uses like this needed to be addressed. “It is up to provincial policy-makers to fix this — and looking at what 401Richmond has given to the city, and continues to give, it’s clear that it should, and soon.”
One year later, I’m happy to report, the province took heed and did indeed fix it, giving the city the power to create a new property tax class for this type of building — and the city immediately did so.
In August, I wrote about similar property-tax increases threatening Yonge St. businesses. Though the local merchants are still not happy with the situation, they did get some relief when the provincial property-tax assessment agency agreed to revisit the valuations of some of those businesses.
Over on the police beat: my colleagues Wendy Gillis and Jacques Gallant did a lot of reporting in recent years, especially in 2016, about the secrecy surrounding Special Investigations Unit investigations into police shootings, and I wrote several columns decrying that secrecy. “The time to make changes, to bring investigations into police conduct out of the shadows, is now,” I wrote in July 2016.
By April 2017, I was able to express my gratitude that a judge formally tasked with studying the issue had concluded the same thing and recommended changes. By November, the provincial government announced “the largest transformation to Ontario’s policing and community safety in over 25 years,” including more transparency in these investigations.
So much more to be grateful for among the things I was griping about this year: I said city council shouldn’t waste time and money on Councillor Michael Ford’s study of getting rid of streetcars on Queen St. and they didn’t.
In September, I wrote about how the first outdoor ice rink planned for Scarborough in decades (which would be only the second in that former municipality), at McCowan District Park, would be delayed another year due to construction problems. But the city has built a temporary rink for this year while it rebuilds the permanent one and so, in mid-December, skaters near McCowan Rd. and Eglinton Ave. finally hit the ice.
In general over the years, I’ve been an advocate of expanding bike infrastructure and, in October I specifically hoped councillors would approve making the Bloor St. bike lanes permanent after a successful pilot. They did.
More recently, I complained that the city should not fortress-ify its seat of government by building up intrusive security measures at city hall and, at a recent meeting, council agreed (at least for now).
But OK, finally, one grievance wrapped up in all this gratitude. Last year, about this time, I’d been giving John Tory credit for finally taking a stand to raise much needed revenue for the city — a topic on which I’ve prattled on and on and on — by introducing road tolls. But in January 2017, Premier Kathleen Wynne engaged in another Festivus tradition, “Feats of Strength,” by using her provincial powers to spike the idea. “If you’re the mayor of Toronto, you need to know that you will wake up one morning with the premier’s knife in your back,” I wrote then.
It was ever thus. It’s a tradition as reliable as columnists complaining about the government. Back onto that soon. In the meantime, it’s fun to observe that sometimes these complaints are actually addressed. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire