THE RIDE YOU DIDN'T WANT

Hey my fellow Torontonians and Ontarioites it genera, don't you feel great? Don't you feel secure? Isn't it lovely have a provincial gov't that has our best interests at heart?

The GTA is crippled by gridlock. It really really is. We need help. We need more and better mass transit. We keep allowing these massive condo complexes to be built (Liberty Village I'm looking at you) and pouring tens of thousands of more people into the city core.

Great life, I suppose if you live and work in the core; you wouldn't need a car, you could bike or transit to everything. But oh wait, SO many people are being poured into the core there are not enough jobs down town to support them. So, um, what now? Oh yeh they have to move daily in and out of the core to find work

People in Liberty Village (and other places) come out in the morning and have to watch half a dozen fully packed streetcars buzz pass before they come jump on one. And that streetcar will take them to the subway system that is clearly falling apart. More and more delays and on one day, a complete shutdown

So yeh, we need more transit

I contend that bicycles are not mass transit. They help those that live and work in the core, certainly. The fact they are so irresponsible as riders that we have to create these divided bike lanes, often cutting off a traffic lane, does not help the rest of us but hey, they are the Downtown Cyclists, bless them all

So, of provincial govt is working hard and spending 100's of millions of dollars to improve GTA mass transit. Street cars, or LRTs, gosh they do love these things. The St Clair dedicated LRT, whereby they created a separate, slightly elevated street car lane in the middle of the street, and took way too many years to finish, well that keeps the streetcars out of traffic but it also forced many businesses to close and has created major safety issues as people try to cross over them

But hey, we love our LRTs. We love that we ordered a whole new spiffy line of streetcars, streetcars that are way behind their delivery date and when they are arrive, our completely subpar in their manufacture. And, oh yeh, we love the streetcars platforms that are too short for these expensive subpar cars

We love that

But have no fear brothers and sisters, your govt is here to save you. The provincial gov't has announced an expenditure of 10 million dollars that will solve our gridlock problems. Bicycles. Not  bike lanes, bicycles. More bikes

Bixi is a local bike share program. They have stations all around the city  where you can stroll up and "borrow" a bike to get you on your way You can buy a membership or a "casual" rider pass that gives you a code that will unlock your bike This started out as a private business that failed after a year; businesses fail when they provide a service that people don't want, just saying

But wait! City and provincial gov'ts to the rescue! The business is failing because not enough people are using it? Huzza! We'll buy it and run it at a loss. Yeh, you know who's money they used to buy it

So now come the provincials. This service that still does not have an adequate usership? We'll expand it, gosh darn it! Spend 10 million dollars to put even more bikes and stations all over the GTA

So, more bikes. But no extra bike lanes. No licensing, no insurance for bikes. Even the intradimensional lunatics of the bike adovcasy see an issue with this. At least the "more bikes but no more lanes" deal. The bike nuts have their bikes, they really really do. What they want is speshul places in which to ride them

Thank you Oh Generous and Omniscient Govt Overlords. Now, when my car is so snarled in traffic that it cannot move, I can take my ten dogs out of the Subaru and put each of them on their very own ride share bike and we'll all peddle over to Dogtown

Yes indeed Wicked Witch Kathleen, me and my little dogs too