Off Off Topic: Cool Toronto People's Thread

[serge 904]

You can fight any ticket. What is changing is that the court can't lower the fine. It's either $150 or nothing if you successfully fight the ticket.

 

I think a lot of the problem is that we are talking apples and oranges. The above change is only for those curbside parkers when they shouldn't be. Those people create huge problems so the purpose of increasing the fines is as a deterrent not as a cash grab. Everybody would be happy if nobody paid these fines because people weren't doing it.

 

A lot of the petty stuff you are complaining about like Chris said is used as a source of revenue for the city but there does have to be some rules and things can't be a free for all.

 

And complaining about the cost of parking just shows that the fines need to be high in order to make the illegal parking not worth the gamble of getting a ticket for those who don't want to pay in a lot etc.

 

Well put...I have parked illegally like the examples you are citing...So I am good there..

 

I actually like the GREEN P spots as they seem to cheaper and reasonable..But there doesnt seem to be enough...

[Zach6668 513]

Need to start paying attention to class. Ill catch up after. Fun discussion.

[serge 904]

Good points Zach...But its very utopian and not realistic in Toronto..Huge percentage of the population in the GTA live far enough from downtown for it to be difficult at best..

 

I have been watching Weeds religiously the past couple of weeks..Whenever you bring up suburbs, I think of Weeds...

 

Great show btw, except for the fact they portray Armenians to be drug dealing murderers.

 

Parking is a huge issue for me...One of the major deciding factors of me going to store, restaurant is if there is parking nearby..

[mrdannyg 274]

Good points Zach...But its very utopian and not realistic in Toronto..Huge percentage of the population in the GTA live far enough from downtown for it to be difficult at best..

 

I have been watching Weeds religiously the past couple of weeks..Whenever you bring up suburbs, I think of Weeds...

 

Great show btw, except for the fact they portray Armenians to be drug dealing murderers.

 

Parking is a huge issue for me...One of the major deciding factors of me going to store, restaurant is if there is parking nearby..

 

Imagine if half the people who wanted to go to those places could walk, take the subway or ride their bikes because public transit was easier or riding your bike wasn't a death wish...that'd just make more parking available for you!

[Dubey 1,035]

Serge, have you considered that they are doing a job for which everybody hates them? 90% of their personal interactions while at work are dealing with people that are unfairly upset at them for doing what they are paid to do. put yourself in their shoes, and consider how excited you would be to talk to a random stranger while on the job.

[iBeaver 409]

Reading this reminder me of my run in with my cities parking officer. We were visiting a preschool and there was a park in the same nlock so we let him play. I knew the meter expired but I had no change and took a chance. Walked back to the meter lady writing the ticket. She asked me if it was my car. I said yes, sorry, he played longer than expected and liz started putting him in the car. I leaned up against my car and waited patiently for my ticket. She walked by me and said you're good, have a nice day.

 

Maybe there is a way to make them not give you a ticket. But she had every single right to ticket me and if she did I would have taken it and told get to have a nice day. And I'm angry Steve! Lol

[Zach6668 513]

Good points Zach...But its very utopian and not realistic in Toronto..Huge percentage of the population in the GTA live far enough from downtown for it to be difficult at best..

 

I have been watching Weeds religiously the past couple of weeks..Whenever you bring up suburbs, I think of Weeds...

 

Great show btw, except for the fact they portray Armenians to be drug dealing murderers.

 

Parking is a huge issue for me...One of the major deciding factors of me going to store, restaurant is if there is parking nearby..

 

Likes I said, Serge, there's a huge amount of people who would prefer to leave their car at home. They're forced to drive because of odour awful job of building a multi modal city in the first place. They may not even know that they'd prefer it. Why day you think transit and bike lanes are such hot button issues. People want them.

 

It's not utopia, it's been done in cities as big as Toronto. Even if it was, why should that stop us. Why can't we'd strive for better?

 

Again, your suburban lifestyle won't change if you don't want it to. Congestion won't change. It can't get more congested, and honestly, it probably won't get much less congested, at least in the long run with our expected population growth and the fact that people have grown a tolerance for it. What will happen though, is people who don't want to drive will be given more opportunities, more options.

 

Everybody wins.

[FCP Bob 1,312]

CP24 ‏@CP24 · 50m

Minnan-Wong said fines that are being hiked will only affect about 0.33 per cent of revenue city receives from parking violations.

 

 

CP24 ‏@CP24 · 49m

Minnan-Wong said increased fines are partially aimed at couriers, saying practice of pulling over illegally for deliveries “has to end”

[mrdannyg 274]

CP24 ‏@CP24 · 50m

Minnan-Wong said fines that are being hiked will only affect about 0.33 per cent of revenue city receives from parking violations.

 

 

CP24 ‏@CP24 · 49m

Minnan-Wong said increased fines are partially aimed at couriers, saying practice of pulling over illegally for deliveries “has to end”

 

I think couriers should get permits from the city, and the permits would allow stopping in certain areas that others can't park in, for no longer than 5 minutes. So long as those areas were designated so as not to grind traffic to a stop, I think that benefits everyone.

[Babying 613]

Couriers get permits? Are you crazy? These freaks think they own the city streets already especially the ones on bikes.

[Zach6668 513]

All motorists think they own the streets.

 

That's part of the problem.

[serge 904]

All motorists think they own the streets.

 

That's part of the problem.

 

I disagree..All pedestrians, bikes have no sense of common knowledge and think THEY own the street...Trying making a right turn on a busy street..All the subway riders ( added for effect) always want to cross on yellow and beat the light...

[serge 904]

CP24 ‏@CP24 · 50m

Minnan-Wong said fines that are being hiked will only affect about 0.33 per cent of revenue city receives from parking violations.

 

 

CP24 ‏@CP24 · 49m

Minnan-Wong said increased fines are partially aimed at couriers, saying practice of pulling over illegally for deliveries “has to end”

 

Minnan Wong is one of those people that i lump in with Parking ticket officers...Just want to smash his face in...

[mrdannyg 274]

Couriers get permits? Are you crazy? These freaks think they own the city streets already especially the ones on bikes.

 

Heh, I agree, and I think they get too much leeway now! That's why I want to restrict their behaviour. Most are jerks or fake.

[serge 904]

Heh, I agree, and I think they get too much leeway now! That's why I want to restrict their behaviour. Most are jerks or fake.

 

Why are couriers jerks and fake? They are just trying to earn a living like the idiot parking enforcers

[Zach6668 513]

 

 

I disagree..All pedestrians, bikes have no sense of common knowledge and think THEY own the street...Trying making a right turn on a busy street..All the subway riders ( added for effect) always want to cross on yellow and beat the light...

The street is in a public right of way. It's no more yours in your car than it's mine trying to cross it. Roads have been around for millennia, only in the last century have we surrendered them to the speeding car. It's proven to be anything but ideal.

[FCP Bob 1,312]

The street is in a public right of way. It's no more yours in your car than it's mine trying to cross it. Roads have been around for millennia, only in the last century have we surrendered them to the speeding car. It's proven to be anything but ideal.

 

True story. One of the big selling points for cars in the early days was that they were far far less polluting than horses.

 

The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894

 

 

Nineteenth-century cities depended on thousands of horses for their daily functioning. All transport, whether of goods or people, was drawn by horses. London in 1900 had 11,000 cabs, all horse-powered. There were also several thousand buses, each of which required 12 horses per day, a total of more than 50,000 horses. In addition, there were countless carts, drays, and wains, all working constantly to deliver the goods needed by the rapidly growing population of what was then the largest city in the world. Similar figures could be produced for any great city of the time.*

 

The problem of course was that all these horses produced huge amounts of manure. A horse will on average produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day. Consequently, the streets of nineteenth-century cities were covered by horse manure. This in turn attracted huge numbers of flies, and the dried and ground-up manure was blown everywhere. In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day, which all had to be swept up and disposed of. (See Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]).

 

In 1898 the first international urban-planning conference convened in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.

The problem did indeed seem intractable. The larger and richer that cities became, the more horses they needed to function. The more horses, the more manure. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure. Moreover, all these horses had to be stabled, which used up ever-larger areas of increasingly valuable land. And as the number of horses grew, ever-more land had to be devoted to producing hay to feed them (rather than producing food for people), and this had to be brought into cities and distributed—by horse-drawn vehicles. It seemed that urban civilization was doomed.

 

 

Read more: http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894#ixzz2r44peQkr

[serge 904]

The street is in a public right of way. It's no more yours in your car than it's mine trying to cross it. Roads have been around for millennia, only in the last century have we surrendered them to the speeding car. It's proven to be anything but ideal.

 

Did the Romans around 100 AD have traffic lights?

 

From my experience here is the order of people obeying rules and laws of the road

 

CARS

 

 

Pedestrians

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CYCLISTS

[serge 904]

The one reason people in cars are more careful of pedestrians is we are also pedestrians..But certain pedestrians dont drive..

 

 

As an aside..

 

I found myself agreeing with Mayor Ford more and more...I didnt even realize he said the parking tickets were a cash grab...

 

Mayor Ford is a good man.

 

He has also lost 40 lbs since his international 15 minutes of fame...And we are all hoping he is clean and sober..

 

Thank you Mayor Ford..Good luck in the election.

[Zach6668 513]

The problem with that, Serge, is that pedestrians and cyclists are very often ignored by traffic engineers. The space is not allocated equitably. Why should a car, with 1.2 people in it be allowed to monopolize so much road space while pedestrians care crammed onto a narrow sidewalk (think Yonge St south of Bloor) and cyclists left to fend for themselves in mixed traffic among people in one ton killing machines who have no regard for them?

 

The intersection of Yonge and Dundas is used more by pedestrians than it is by people in cars, but much more space and time is allocated to vehicular traffic, even with the hugely successful and necessary scramble in light cycle.

[serge 904]

The problem with that, Serge, is that pedestrians and cyclists are very often ignored by traffic engineers. The space is not allocated equitably. Why should a car, with 1.2 people in it be allowed to monopolize so much road space while pedestrians care crammed onto a narrow sidewalk (think Yonge St south of Bloor) and cyclists left to fend for themselves in mixed traffic among people in one ton killing machines who have no regard for them?

 

The intersection of Yonge and Dundas is used more by pedestrians than it is by people in cars, but much more space and time is allocated to vehicular traffic, even with the hugely successful and necessary scramble in light cycle.

 

There is a lot more to Toronto than the ridicolously crowded Yonge and Dundas intersection....I dont know, maybe its just me, but I notice way more "violations " from pedestrians...Jaywalking, crossing on red, not giving the right of way to a car turning left, when your signal is showing red...So many examples..Of course we need to be safer and make sure no one gets hurt..But its not just cars, pedestrians have to obey the laws too...What percentage of tickets are given to pedestrians jaywalking, not obeying traffic signals...

 

I would argue the number is so miniscule , it equals the chance that me and Sidney Crosby will meet for a drink on Friday night in Pickering.

[Zach6668 513]

My guess is that you are experiencing a case of confirmation bias. I don't see pedestrians doing illegal things very often, certainly not stuff that gets in the way of motorists. However, I think motorists should be more empathetic to pedestrians. If it's cold out, you bet I'm going to dash across the crosswalk even if my timer is down to 1. I'm not waiting an entire light cycle so someone in his warm car can save 4 seconds.

[Zach6668 513]

I'm running across though, it's not like I'm strolling and flaunting that I'm blocking traffic. 99% of the time I make it before they get the their green.

 

Maybe I'm an exception though, because. I understand traffic light cycles, and know I have a few seconds between the red and the green, and I know when I can cross against a light that won't even encounter traffic, like a light where there's an advanced turn light, but nobody turning.

[Zach6668 513]

The reality is, though, if they designed a city in a more hospitable manner for pedestrians, they wouldn't have to cross mid block, or against a light because the light cycle is too long, etc.

[serge 904]

The reality is, though, if they designed a city in a more hospitable manner for pedestrians, they wouldn't have to cross mid block, or against a light because the light cycle is too long, etc.

 

Your points are well thought out and make sense..Except for the underlying theme to a lot of your posts..You are carist( like racist but towards cars)...Its ok to admit...