April 20, 2010 | Rants

Marge Simpson proclaimed, on a Simpsons sojourn to TO….“Everything is so clean and bland…I’m home!”

Toronto’s outgoing mayor, who literally swept to victory brandishing a broom at campaign rallies [it can barely be made out here on this filthy city vehicle's 'Clean City, Beautiful City bumper sticker] is now leaving an increasingly dumpy town to his successors and this, well after the city’s lengthy and stinky garbage strike.

Worse, in his last few months in power he’s now reduced to disconsolately pleading for provincial transit funding on of all things, the city’s subway PA system (!)—an open mic night, no sign-in required level of amateur hour.

A complete and total embarrassment.

This is a provincial city after all though.

The transit infrastructure is crumbling, shabby and hopelessly out of date, and yet the province yanked Transit City funding—an upgrade which would’ve brought the city into the 80s if this was Europe and given Toronto a measure of hope in terms of ferrying about the influx of visitors for the upcoming Pan Am Games (Not the Olympics but hey, cities get the games they deserve).

For a city of 4 million, the subway system has only 3 lines (!) and 4 interchanges  (and yet people still somehow get lost).

Compare this to Chicago, a city with a metropolitan area not that much larger than Toronto which has 8 lines, twice as many interchanges, more than twice as many subway stations and actually runs 24 hours. Toronto’s subway runs until 1:45AM and on Sunday morning, the first ones rumble out of the stations at 9:15AM  (!). Curious tourists will watch crowded all-night buses lurch by along the roads normally serviced by trains and wonder what the hell happened to the subway (Toronto boozehounds know the Yonge St version of this all night bus as ‘The Vomit Comet’).

TTC staff make the rather suspect claim that this time off is required for track maintenance, but what do other cities do that run their systems all night or have to fix them when terrorists take a Pelham, 1 2 and 3?

Above is an alternate entrance built for a Greektown subway station. It opened, and almost as soon as it did, promptly flooded. How long does it take to fix a concrete entranceway with barely two dozen steps leading to a subway? You guessed it. Eight months! This, for a construction project hardly of Burj Dubai proportions.

However, this is not too surprising since it took a hundred million dollars and several years to lay down 6km (nearly 4 miles) of lousy trolley tracks. As the National Post put it, “When I try to compute how anyone could possibly spend $15.6-million per kilometre…to lay some streetcar tracks, rejigger some sidewalks and bury some power lines, my brain just freezes.”

If a train link is ever finally built out to the airport….we might live to see it provided there are significant advances in human cryonics.

Here is a token machine at a west end subway station that is in need of a Few Good Men to fix it, as disgruntled passengers have been yelling, You’re Out of Order! incredulously for several months now.  (Note the ever so classy black tarp slung over it) 

The fare system is a complete farce. Instead of being able to get a card from a machine and put whatever dollar value you choose on it (like most civilized places), you line up and buy passes and tokens from someone in a booth—that is, unless to prevent “ticket hoarding”, they decide not to sell you any.

Not too long ago, a cardboard sign slapped onto a wall with plastic tape at an east end subway station directed visitors to the Toronto Zoo bus route.

The insides of the stations themselves are showing neglect and are starting to resemble the spacehip from Aliens with all the exposed pipes. Throw in a few missing chunks of drywall that would not be out of place in an apartment building vacated by deadbeat bikers and you’ve got yourself one hot mess.