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Reality Check: Rocco and his 250,000 new jobs

Today, mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi made yet another fantastical and magical promise on the campaign trail: to create 250,000 jobs within the City of Toronto in his first four years in office, in response to what he thinks is a “too high” unemployment rate in Toronto of 9.5%. Continuing my role as the voice of reality on the Rossi campaign, here is a list of reasons why Rossi’s newest promise is pure nonsense.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE, 2009 RECESSION VS. 1992 RECESSION

First of all, Rossi claimed the 9.5% unemployment rate was “too high”. I certainly agree that a high unemployment rate is not a good thing for a city. However, Toronto’s rate of 9.5% on the heels of the worst economic armageddon in the history of the world is really not that bad. During the recession of 1992-93, City of Toronto unemployment reached 12.7%, (source: City of Toronto Labour Force Data [xls]). For the balance of David Miller’s tenure as mayor, the unemployment rate has averaged around 8%, which is not fantastic, but it is not bad either, considering the City’s high level of immigration.

250,000 JOBS.

Rossi did not explain the formula he used, based on these initiatives, to come up with the 250,000 figure.

There clearly was no formula used, other than the world of magic, or whatever number his communications people thought would be a number that would resonate amongst gullible voters. It is one of those numbers where he can say, “a QUARTER MILLION!”, when more realistic figures of “ONE TENTH A MILLION” or “ONE TWENTIETH OF A MILLION” are far harder to capture in a soundbite. To put into perspective, Downtown Toronto currently has 420,500 jobs. Yonge and Eglinton is home to 30,800 jobs.  (source: Toronto Employment Survey, 2009) Through this campaign promise, Rocco Rossi is basically promising over half of a Downtown Toronto or eight Yonge and Eglintons worth of new jobs. In four years. Or, based upon the current total employment in Toronto of 1,291,000, that would be an increase of 19.3%. In four years. That type of growth has never been experienced in Canadian history. Calgary, undeniably the fastest growing economy in the country over the past decade, saw only a 28% increase in employment over ten years.

Finally, what is 250,000 jobs in the perspective of the Province’s employment forecasts developed as part of Places to Grow? This is where it becomes hilarious. The current forecast models being used predicts that under the most optimistic and compact forecasts, Toronto’s employment will grow by 550,000……. over TWENTY FIVE YEARS (2006-2031). The Greater Golden Horseshoe is expected to create 2.8-million jobs by 2031. To even think that the City of Toronto will not only attract 9% of this growth, but in just four short years?

299BloorStore Now Open with TTC Rollsigns!

Apparently, being a transit geek super chic now, at least according to Apartment Therapy, which describes it as “the new ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’”. Well, here’s your chance to get some Toronto rollsigns onto your walls. I have made up two featuring vintage subway rollsigns, and one featuring the current streetcar routes. You can check them out, and pick them up, here:

http://www.zazzle.ca/laurencelui

Citytv gets testy with caps

A few weeks ago, Torontoist revealed the folks behind the Twitter accounts of various Toronto media outlets and left out @CityNews, which at the time was nothing more than an automated headline account. Since then they have come out of their shell and have started tweeting more actively, and for that, I commend them. Earlier today, they tweeted the above, which is hilarious because it is true. Is it Citytv? CityTV? City TV? CITY TV? Well now that they made it clear, perhaps they should look within and see that it is not a mistake isolated at other media outlets and the blogsphere. In just five minutes I found three violations of the standard capitalization of Citytv:

First and foremost, the alternative text for their logo on their masthead refers to one “City TV”, and virtually all their HTML tags refer to CityTv.

This blog post on the CityLine blog uses “City TV”.

The page title here uses a third variation without the space: “CityTV”.

UPDATE:

And while we’re at it, it’s “Yonge”, not “Younge”, “Yong”, or “Young”

And finally, it’s “Eglinton”, not “Eglington”

The Morning Commute on University

To be fair, I was riding down University Avenue around 9:15am at the tail end of rush hour, but there was little of this ‘GRIDLOCK!’ seen.

Few cars heading southbound at College Street

A queue at the pesky intersection at Gerrard Street just as the light turned green

Which cleared, as expected, within seconds.

So much GRIDLOCK!

Why University Avenue Bike Lanes will Work

First of all, I give Rocco Rossi a bit of credit - the Beverley and St. George bike lanes are indeed great. Little does he know, however, in applauding the great bike lane we have there, he is in fact endorsing reducing car lanes and bringing us to something he does not pay much attention to: the truth.

source: Transport Canada

Transport Canada cites St. George Street as a best practice example in road diets, a concept in road design where travel lanes are reduced and is rebalanced to provide more space for cyclists and pedestrians. St. George Street, despite losing one travel lane in each direction, still carries the same number of vehicles it did before the diet, the number of collisions decreased by 40%, and the number of cyclists increased by 10%. Most importantly, it’s created a place in the heart of the University of Toronto campus, and is often described as one of the most pleasant places to be in the city.

So onto Rossi’s assertion that adding a segregated bike facility on University, the first of its kind in the city, will cause GRIDLOCK! There are two things completely wrong with this assertion. First, University Avenue has excess road capacity, and operates at an above acceptable level of service throughout the day. And second, it may come as a complete surprise to Rossi, but my belief is that reducing University Avenue by one lane in each direction will actually improve vehicular flow. 

UNIVERSITY AVENUE IS NOT AT RISK OF ‘GRIDLOCK!’

I ride my bike up and down University Avenue on a daily basis on my commute, and I have seldom encountered these ‘gridlock’ conditions Rocco Rossi is speaking about. In fact, it is quite the opposite. There is excess capacity even during rush hour. These photos taken on my bike ride home this afternoon between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. prove this excess capacity.

University Avenue at Queen Street, looking north, at 5:45pm

What may appear as ‘GRIDLOCK!’ at Gerrard Street…

…cleared within 10 seconds of green time

The greatest irony is that in this location where I observed the greatest northbound delay in car travel, it was caused because of the advance southbound left turn signal. As a result, the northbound traffic is delayed by several additional seconds. So in this case, it is actually cars causing ‘GRIDLOCK!’, not cyclists. 

Finally, a look at picturesque Queen’s Park. Check out all that ‘GRIDLOCK!’ blocking the view of this fine piece of architecture.

I will take similar shots during the morning rush hour tomorrow to document alleged ‘GRIDLOCK!’ conditions.

HOW UNIVERSITY AVENUE COULD IMPROVE WITH BIKE LANES

My theory, that similar to St. George Street, and with many successful road ‘diets’, reducing University Avenue by one lane in each direction, between Wellesley/Hoskin and Richmond Street will in fact improve traffic operation on the street. Why? University Avenue is inconsistently configured, leading to bottlenecks, constant lane changing, and confusion for unfamiliar drivers. Here is how the street is inconsistent:

• North of Bloor Street, Avenue Road is a six-lane roadway
• Between Bloor Street and College Street, Queen’s Park Circle is a couplet of two three-lane one-way roads
• Between College and Richmond Streets, where the segregated bike lane is planned, is where University Avenue widens to an eight-lane roadway
• South of Richmond, University Avenue squeezes down to six-lanes again, and finally, south of Wellington Street, squeezes to four-lanes.

It is at the Wellington Squeeze, as I will call it, that congestion becomes a problem, as impatient drivers try to cut around cars. Similar issues occur at Bloor Street and Richmond Street, where the street narrows. So when the segregated bike lane is placed into the eight-lane section of University, it will finally standardize the road configuration throughout its length.

IN CONCLUSION…

I am absolutely certain that if there was a serious risk of ‘GRIDLOCK!’, the Transportation Department would not be proposing such a bold move without further study. You see, I trust the bureaucrats that run our City, who have dedicated their education and careers to their field. Should the public trust them? Or should they trust Rocco Rossi, whose only expertise is in divide and conquer politics, grandstanding, and manipulation of the truth.