Washington versus Toronto: An insider looks at how the two cities stack up
The Toronto Raptors vs. Washington Wizards in the first round of the NBA playoffs.
Beyond mayors with crack, how do the cities stack up?
They sacked us, we burned them. They had a crack mayor, we had a crack mayor. We have too many raccoons. They have occasional opossums. Which are animals so cool they walk around with babies in their pouches. Advantage Washington. But they also have stinkbugs. Which stink. Disadvantage Washington.
POWER
D.C. rules the world. Toronto — notwithstanding the absence of a White House, a Congress, a Pentagon, a CIA, an NSA, an FBI or even an NCIS — is the Centre Of The Universe.™ Advantage Toronto.
THE OTHER POWER
Never mind global geopolitics, can they keep my lights on? Torontonians who endured the ice-storm-induced blackout of December 2013, know that D.C. feels your pain (and I have a generator to prove it). Outages are so absurdly commonplace that even the White House went dark earlier this month. Reasons vary, but blaming Pepco (“America’s ‘most-hated’
company”) is a sport unto itself.
TRAFFIC
Gridlock here, gridlock there — so what’s the qualitative difference, whether you’re at a standstill on the Gardiner, the DVP or the outer loop of the Beltway? Well, what you don’t see in D.C. is the screaming road rage common to Toronto. Why? Some suggest bureaucratic conditioning — D.C. drivers know that no matter how quickly they get to work, political gridlock awaits. Others say it’s a cultural hangover of antebellum gentility. George Washington himself famously copied out the “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior” as a boy (“Bedew no mans face with your Spittle.”).
TRANSIT
The D.C. area got truly serious about public transit in 1976 — right about the time Toronto stopped — with the launch of Metrorail, which now runs six subway lines to 91 stations (22 more than the TTC), including rail links to Reagan National Airport and (by 2018) Dulles Airport too. When Toronto fully implements the PRESTO swipe card, you will love it — D.C. launched its token-less, pre-loaded SmarTrip fare card system 16 years ago. A huge factor in D.C.’s transit expansion: massive federal funding support from Washington covering some 60 per cent of capital costs.
EXTREME WEATHER ALTER-EGOS
Every few years Toronto suddenly thinks it is Winnipeg and plunges into car-won’t-start sub-zero madness and for a month or so you just pretty much die, right? Every summer, meanwhile, D.C. does a scorching and sustained impression of the Seventh Circle Of Hell. Hot enough to fry the whole henhouse while Toronto cooks an egg. Humid enough to suck the sear off your seersucker suit. Which some Washingtonians still wear.
PEOPLE
The Greater Toronto Area, at 6,054,191 people (2011 census), slightly edges the Washington Metropolitan Area (5,860,342, 2012 census). The WMA, however, is the most educated city in the U.S., if not the world, with more advanced degrees per capita. Washington also has all the world’s heavily armoured embassies. Unlike D.C., Toronto has all the world’s peoples. Which is infinitely better. Mitch Potter has recently returned to Toronto after six years as The Star’s Washington Bureau Chief. He is willing to testify under oath that not a single American is aware basketball was invented by a Canadian.