Smashed Metro Bus Windows

[elfs]

Smashed Metro Bus Windows

The other day I took the bus home from work, and saw that the two windows behind the driver's seat had been smashed. "I guess some people just don't like the bus," he told me. Even worse, it turned out that Metro knew about the problem and didn't have a bus to spare, so they pressed this broken bus into service, taping up the damage to warn people away from the potential harm.

Man, those are my tax dollars someone just smashed. His own, too.

I've always wondered why the most rabid anti-tax Republican is pro-road but not pro-transit. If the goal as "someone who governs" is to provide people-moving capabilities from one place to another, the mix of roads and mass transit would seem to be ideal: both are supplmented by non-transit, non-auto fees of some kind. I think roads are just so ubiquitous and seemingly invulnerable that we just see them, we don't think about them. It's the fragility and daily maintenence that gnaws on the conscience.

Metro just raised all prices by 25¢ to 50¢ depending on the route and time of day. The state's budget is taking a huge hit in the next two-year cycle; I hope that our county gets the mix right, because there's a lot of commuter pain coming down.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

The recent Sheppard subway extension in Toronto definitely did. The mayor rammed the project through (even though other areas would have higher ridership, and even though there was a power line corridor just north of it, perfect for a light rail line), because North York property values would soar so much with a subway. He implemented a $2000-per-residence levy on new development along the subway route, on top of the 2.35% tax rate; despite that, condos are sprouting all along Sheppard Avenue.

Here's a view of the area just as the subway was being completed (Google Maps is a bit out of date) - if you look at the area now, it's a morass of construction cranes and excavators.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=sheppard+toronto&ie=UTF8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ll=43.769653,-79.376543&spn=0.00781,0.021973&t=h&z=16

Scroll north from Sheppard and you'll see the nice power line corridor that would have made good transit sense, but would have been less beneficial to tax revenues.