With metro Toronto split between the Liberals, likely to win another term come tomorrow, and the NDP, who is certain to remain an also-ran, exactly what incentive did anyone have to woo Toronto voters? The Liberals have most of the city locked up no matter what; the NDP doesn’t have the resources to make a whole lot of aggressive moves outside their home ridings; and the Tories will never, ever win many votes inside the downtown core. That means the Liberals don’t have to do much to win our loyalty, the NDP can promise the moon because they’ll never have to deliver, and the Tories can tell us to fuck off because we always tell them the same. No wonder we don’t have any bargaining power in the provincial government. Oh, and consider that the federal electoral situation is pretty much the same, with the Tories shut out of the major cities—including Toronto. We don’t seem to be having a whole lot of luck with the Harper government either.

Seriously, anyone who couldn’t see this coming—like the city councillors that voted to postpone a decision on tax hikes in order to see what the provincial parties would promise us—must be willfully blind.

The Royal Canadian Mint, a corporation of the federal government, has now demanded that the City of Toronto pay $47,680 for the public education campaign. Included in this amount is a request for $10,000 for the use of the words “one cent” in the campaign website address (www.onecentnow.ca) and the campaign email address (onecentnow@toronto.ca), and an additional $10,000 for the use of the words “one cent” in the campaign phone number (416-ONECENT). The remaining $27,680 has been assessed against the City for the use of the image of the Canadian penny in printed materials such as pins and posters.

So the word is Nuit Blanche 2007 was a bit of a disappointment. And as a first-time night wanderer, I can sympathize with many of the criticisms. The crowds were fierce, both in number—greatly expanded beyond last year’s attendance—and in attitude—lots of angry people, including one fellow who just kept swearing and going “LOOK AT YOUR FUCKING ART, YOU FUCKING PRETENTIOUS FUCKS! ARE YOU FUCKING PLEASED?” The descriptions in the guide were vague at best and downright misleading at worst. Things wrapped up too early in some cases, leaving the 6am crowd disappointed. And the transit situation was far less rosy than the initial description—all-night subways! shuttle buses! additional blue light service! Exactly one of those promises worked out as expected; meanwhile we walked from Trinity-Bellwoods all the way back to OCAD and then the Eaton Centre without seeing a single streetcar going our way.

Also, I’m still dealing with the strange guilt I feel about taking my shiny new camera to events. Usually I think of cameras as a great way to remove yourself from the moment and create distance between yourself and whatever fun thing is going on at the moment, but that wasn’t really the problem this time—instead, it’s the creeping feeling that I’m some mercenary contract killer, but instead of taking lives I’m stealing souls and experiences. I’m like that kid who collects Star Wars action figures not because he wants to reenact light saber battles, but because those figures will be worth thousands of dollars someday. Instead of just picking Nuit Blanche events based on what would be a fun or intriguing experience, I was often reframing the festival in terms of “can I get a good shot out of this?” Though I did get some great shots, I’m not sure how I feel yet about taking out the camera so much. It’s a lot easier to see that mercenary side of yourself as photographer when you see all the other people with cameras, themselves coldly examining scenes to figure out the best angles and where the light is best. Toronto was full of soul stealers that night.

But that’s not to say the whole thing was a devastating failure; rather, it was a tantalizing glimpse of what could be Nuit Blanche a couple of years down the line (maybe next year?), when the festival matures and everyone gets their departments sorted. And another example of why I need to chill out with the overthinking photography thing. A quick rundown of events:

Hits
Play by Hear. Easily the exhibit to elicit the most giggles and genuine amusement that night, thanks to a couple of fellows who realized the audio installation, designed to amplify the earbuds of people’s MP3 players, could also be used to amplify their voices when piped through a tube—say, a rolled up Nuit Blanche guide—and proceeded to fart, moan and squeal their way through an impromptu experimental performance. You could hear the sounds all the way from the next thing we saw…

Secret of the Syncope II. When we arrived we were slightly disappointed to find the carpeted asphalt was a section of bike path, not road. It didn’t take long, though, before the shoes came off. And then other people began to treat the whole thing like a communal rec room—a couple of people playing multiplayer DS, a bunch of people in bare feet, and one awesome girl who danced under the pale streetlights for her two companions. Plus, free carpet pieces! (The photo of which I’ll post to the project website at some point.)

Made in Toronto. aka the Graffiti Research Lab mobile laser graffiti unit. If you saw the description for this and wondered where the hell it was all night, you have some reason to be miffed; the “roving” installation stopped in a parking lot just north of the tracks above Lamport Stadium, and never moved from that spot. The only way you’d have noticed it is if you knew about the fence opening leading to Lamport or if you happened to be strolling down Sudbury Street like we were. But once we got there, we got to play with laser graffiti—something I never really thought I’d ever get to do after seeing photos of other laser graffiti rigs. Plus, the secluded spot gave one the sense of discovering a hidden part of the festival—a theme that would repeat itself throughout the night.

City Glow, Starry Night and Wish Swing. Like these installations on King, discovered around 4 in the morning and sparsely populated by hardcore festivalgoers. City Glow is a wide-widescreen animated short that played on a loop all night; if only stuff like this could play in all the city parks every night. Wish Swing we didn’t try, but maybe we should have because it sounds like the full experience is really cool. And Starry Night looked a bit underwhelming when we approached it, but its humble charms were soon apparent once you lay underneath the starry canopy covering home plate at the Stanley Park baseball field. Build it and they will come, indeed.

Abomasum. aka the Chocolate Deer. When I read the Now interview with the artist, she mentioned her worst-case scenario was that no one would show up to take part in the confectionery slaughter. She needn’t have worried, as by the time we got there at the appointed 2am hour, a huge crowd had formed around the unassuming blue tent. The thing that made this particular show so interesting is the weird atmosphere. At one point, several people began chanting lustily for chocolate; at another, an enterprising crowdsurfer almost made it past the security guard but was eventually sent packing—with a hard-won plastic cup of chocolate deer his reward. Try to imagine such a response to the slaughter of a real deer in Trinity-Bellwoods and you might get where I’m coming from.

Angel Night/Dark Night. Of all the events in Zone A this was my favourite, not because it was particularly compelling (the installations left much to be desired) but because the soothing music performances in the church setting was a great breather and stood in stark contrast to the rest of the festival. Nuit Blanche would benefit from more good old-fashioned string quartets playing at 3 in the morning.

Misses
Crowd. I’m willing to concede that maybe I missed the point, but the dazed and confused looks I got from everyone else at the site told me I probably won’t be the only one.

Metropolis. Frankly, the two installations wouldn’t look out of place at the Toronto Home Show.

String of Diamonds. At the end of the day it was just a string of lights anchored by a group of balloons. Newmindspace is saying part of the problem is that people kept stealing the lights and screwing with the main thread (hence the rescinded invitation to direct the main string by tugging on it, which got you some nasty looks at the actual event). As an unofficial follow-up to the fog that filled Philosopher’s Walk last year, it couldn’t hope to put up a good show.

DSM5. Don’t get me wrong; the concept of an outdoor rave outside the ROM crystal on such a busy night was actually a good one. But the projections on the crystal’s walls were barely visible and the crowd felt oddly stilted, like there wasn’t truly enough room for people to dance and to watch at the same time. With the visual component non-existent and the participatory component muted, it didn’t seem to have much of a chance. Also, if you’re going to have a DJ play sets, why schedule them for early in the night? Seems like a party atmosphere outside the ROM at 3am would’ve been a lot more interesting than at 10pm.

Aurora Readiness Centre. I had high hopes for this one, as anyone who knows me knows about my fetish for all things post-apocalyptic. I guess I had in my head the photos of the bomb shelter underneath the Brooklyn Bridge when I thought of this exhibit. In the end it turned out to be one room of the shelter (or maybe the shelter itself is just one room, but who could possibly survive in it for long?) and the walls were covered with simple paintings done by prior visitors to the shelter, which kind of undermined the whole oppressive, claustrophobic feeling I was going for. Plus there was a band setting up in the space, which probably would’ve been cooler had I actually seen them play. All in all, though, bomb shelters didn’t do so well this year.

Regrets
Balloonscape. I was hoping for a balloon maze—like a giant maze in the Eaton Centre made entirely of balloons. What we got instead was more like a big balloon pup tent, which isn’t bad on its own but didn’t have quite the same appeal. Even so, we probably would’ve jumped into the balloon tent happily if not for our worries about the line outside Ghost Station at 6am.

Event Horizon. I was hoping for a crazy emergency scene out of a great disaster movie: flashing lights, smoke, mystery and intrigue. And we got all that, but it came off a bit low-budget, a bit shallow, and very camp. The punchline did save it, though, mainly by neatly undercutting the very expectations I’d had for it.

End of the Party Party. We got to the AGO around 5:30am, and by that point it was obvious the party was on its last legs. Looked like it could’ve been a lot of fun before, though.

Incursion. Maybe it would’ve been more interesting had we actually been able to cut through the massive crowd in front of it. Or maybe the parts we couldn’t see would’ve been about as interesting as the parts we could see, which was to say not very.

Hub A. Of all the hubs, this one was the most crowded and the least compelling. Hub B, by contrast, was awesome—the outdoor drive-in motif wasn’t very strong, but the great short films and the comfortable seating (either in the chairs or on the grassy knoll) more than made up for it.

The stuff I missed. I’m still a bit disappointed we didn’t make it to the moving installation between the house on Baldwin and the Polish Exchange; we never got to see anyone play the Metro Works maintenance garage (we’d arrived between shows and didn’t think we had enough time to see Ghost Station); we didn’t make pom-poms or see the parkour or catch the roving dance party or take part in the shindig outside the service garage near Queen and Dovercourt. And I’m particularly disappointed that we’d written off Non-Specific Threat as too far out of our way, when in fact it appeared to serve up all the urban paranoia and disorientation I’d been hoping for from the various bomb shelter installations.

Postscript: 6:45am. As we waited at Yonge and Bloor for a Blue Light that was headed to Finch, instead of short-turning at Eglinton or York Mills (who at the TTC thought that was a brilliant idea?), my friend pointed out a dark mass floating high in the sky. We’re not entirely sure what it was, but through the long 300mm equivalent lens of my camera at full zoom, it sure looked like the mass of balloons from String of Diamonds.

Police fielded a call just before 5 p.m. that someone was sprinkling powder on the ground. The store was evacuated and remained closed the rest of the night. The incident prompted a massive response from police in New Haven and surrounding towns.

(…)

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.

“You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know,” she said. “It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We’re thankful it wasn’t, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out.”

If you’re one of those people who’ve been avoiding and shit-talking Boston for their incredible lack of common sense regarding the Mooninite sign idiocy, you can now add New Haven to the list of places to avoid at all costs, lest you inherit their particular brand of lunacy.

The Yonge Subway North campaign is riding the coattails of the Ontario Liberal government’s MoveOntario 2020 transit proposal, intended to provide funding to a number of transit projects across the province. One of those projects is a heretofore unannounced plan to extend the current Yonge-University-Spadina subway up past Finch station, all the way to Highway 7/407. Not that such a extension hasn’t been considered before—in fact York Region Transit has always figured a subway extension would be required to handle the massive amount of traffic already flowing down Yonge Street into Toronto. But up until McGuinty’s announcement a couple of months ago, that subway was always seen as a possible “third phase” of YRT’s current Viva rapid transit project, the fruits of which are already visible on Yonge and Highway 7 today in the form of large, shiny blue buses. MoveOntario 2020 turned the extension into a near-future possibility, and as such YRT put their plans to build a dedicated bus right-of-way on hold in July.

Putting the busway on hold is prudent—if McGuinty is truly serious about the subway, then it makes no sense to put the busway in as currently planned (you can read the Environmental Assessment for details—if you want to cut to the chase, take a gander at Chapter 9 of the Final EA Report (PDF)). And there’s little doubt that given the choice between rapid bus transit and a subway extension, most people would choose the latter. Furthermore, unlike the Spadina extension to the Vaughan City Centre at 400 and 7, an extension up Yonge to Highway 7 actually makes sense—there’s already plenty of traffic, ensuring the extension will have sufficient ridership to justify its construction.

But the way the subwaynow.ca flyer frames the debate on buses versus subways is vague at best and disingenuous at worst. It makes it that much harder to support the Yonge Subway North campaign when there’s so much questionable material being thrown around as fact. The flyer essentially reprints the FAQs on the website regarding the proposed extension, so you can read along even if you didn’t get the flyer.

Do we need a dedicated bus lane in the middle of Yonge? The subwaynow.ca people argue the answer is no. Their reasons include left turn restrictions, reduced parking spaces, and the lack of effectiveness in combating congestion. My personal favourite quote: left turn restrictions will affect “not only local residents and businesses, but also Emergency Response Vehicles.”

The ludicracy of an ambulance waiting on a traffic priority signal is hilarious for two reasons: one, traffic priority signals as currently implemented, at least on the Spadina dedicated streetcar line, favour left-turn vehicles first, and streetcars/buses second; two, it’s an AMBULANCE, and they immediately have priority over transit vehicles. If the left-turn issue has to do with the possibility of a raised right-of-way blocking left-turn access to side streets where previously there was just an intersection: Toronto’s experience with dedicated ROWs is currently very small, but it’s worth noting that emergency vehicles seem to have no trouble getting around on Spadina, and in fact the right-of-way can serve as an asset because emergency vehicles can use the much clearer center lanes instead of getting stuck in rush-hour traffic. Compared to that, the time an ambulance or fire truck loses in hopping the curb (a solution Toronto councillor Joe Mihevc put forth when answering concerns about the St. Clair ROW) is marginal.

Another concern subwaynow.ca raises is that of street widening eliminating valuable parking spaces outside local businesses. The flyer doesn’t go into any detail about where this street widening will occur or how many parking spots will be lost where, and the website doesn’t appear to elaborate on the losses either. We do have the transitway EA showing the final layout options for the transitway, though it’s a low-resolution map with vector-drawn lines so it’s hard to gauge what’s actually a widening and what’s just a mismatch between the satellite imagery and the vector lines. Nevertheless, here’s where the major street widenings are between Steeles and Highway 7:

• Steeles Avenue north (and presumably south), for left-turn lanes and a bus shelter island. Cuts into a gas station lot and the grass outside the parking lot outside a small plaza. Not shown, but a similar cut would affect the grass area outside Centerpoint Mall and parking outside the City Optical plaza.
• Meadowvale Avenue, for left-turn lanes in both directions. Cuts slightly into the parking lot outside the burger joint to the east. No apparent impact north of Meadowvale and the grass area outside the Cadillac dealership lot.
• East side of Yonge between Morgan and Clark for a bus shelter island. Cuts into the sidewalk/grass area outside the parking lot of a small plaza containing the Britannia Pub.
• Elgin/Arnold Avenues for left-turn lanes in both directions. Cuts into the grass/parking area of the Octagon Restaurant and what used to be a car dealership, but may now be a car wash (I don’t remember).
• Yonge between Center and Jane to the west, and Colbourne and Thornhill Summit to the east for a left-turn lane northbound. Cuts into the buffer zone between the sidewalk and the street on both sides. (This is one of the more costly cuts because both sides of the street have old plazas with storefronts that come up right to the sidewalk.)
• North of Thornhill Summit Way on the east side, for a bus shelter island. Cuts into the sidewalk/grass area parking lot outside the plaza with the Starbucks.
• Yonge between Baythorne and Royal Orchard on the east side, for a bus shelter island and northbound left-turn lane. Cuts into the parking lots of the Caldwell Banker and a small plaza, as well as the Yonge frontage of an apartment complex.
• Yonge between Bunker and Uplands on the west side, for a southbound left-turn lane. Cuts into the grass buffer outside a plaza and a car dealer lot.
• Langstaff Road between Yonge and the CN tracks. This will likely swallow up some frontage outside a bunch of industrial buildings, but more likely much of the industrial land will be expropriated for a new bus maintenance facility.

Let’s be perfectly clear here: this is no St. Clair. Where that project dealt with narrowing sidewalks because of a sheer lack of available real estate and the elimination of street parking, the Yonge ROW will have few such issues because of the generous buffer spaces between the street and the sidewalk, and then again between the sidewalk and parking lots. The only situation where we get into a St. Clair-esque crunch is near Thornhill Summit Way, where the old plazas come right up to the sidewalks. The amount of lost parking appears to be minimal to none, unless we assume that the old buffer zones between sidewalks and parking lots are kept intact at the cost of parking lot space. I wonder what developer would make that choice, given the apparent value of parking spaces. Even then, St. Clair businesses complained because street parking was the only parking available to customers; by contrast, there are huge swaths of parking spaces in parking lots just off the street.

Having dealt with that thorny issue, let’s talk about some of the other problems with the campaign. Are subways less disruptive to build than bus lanes? Amazingly, subwaynow.ca says yes, citing “new subway building techniques” versus the chaos caused by street widening. Anyone who lived through the Sheppard subway construction will probably have something to say at this point, but let’s indulge the Yonge Subway North people and look at their examples of low-impact subway construction. All their example documents cite the Canada Line construction in Vancouver, including this PDF from Translink regarding construction in March 2007. Note the pictures of giant pits being dug for new stations, as well as the huge pits in the middle of Cambie Street. So much for “underground and out of sight.” It’s almost as if the Yonge Subway North people didn’t even bother to read their own evidence before posting it to the site.

Will the subway serve local residents and pedestrians better than a bus? Yes, says subwaynow.ca. Two problems: first, buses aren’t going to disappear from Yonge Street the second subways arrive, just as local bus services on Yonge south of Steeles and Sheppard between Yonge and Don Mills haven’t stopped either. In suburban areas, the distance between subway stops can be huge, and your only alternative to local bus service would be to walk. There’s a reason why YRT hasn’t stopped their Highway 7 and Yonge Street local lines despite the presence of Viva; try counting the number of bus stops you pass between Steeles and 7 while on the Viva Blue line. Why does the YRT 1 line drive through High Tech Road between Bayview and Yonge? Because people actually live and work there, and without that local service you’d force all those people to walk to either Yonge/7 or Bayview/7.

Which leads to the second problem: how can a subway, which by its very nature only stops at the highest-density intersections, serve local pedestrian’s needs better than a bus? Let’s say I wanted to go to the Licks restaurant south of Kirk Drive. If I wanted to get there by transit, I’d have two options assuming the subway uses the same station placement as Viva Blue: take the YRT bus straight to the stop outside that plaza, or else take the subway to Royal Orchard and walk a couple of blocks. And though you can argue that maybe your fat ass needs to walk a little more if you’re going to eat at Licks, I don’t think that’s the argument subwaynow.ca is trying to make.

But what about the concerns regarding walking across bus lanes to get where you’re going? Clearly those concerns were brought up by someone who’s never seen people walking across the Spadina streetcar lanes with abandon. Not to mention that seven lanes of traffic is seven lanes of traffic, regardless of whether two of those lanes hold buses or not—a subway will do nothing to narrow Yonge Street magically for pedestrians.

Does the subway serve local businesses better? subwaynow.ca says yes, because “the subway is both good for business and the community.” This is what we call a circular argument. Oh, but wait, the subway “makes it easy to stop and shop.” Good justification there. Meanwhile, the bus lane will make it “more difficult for shoppers to frequent their favourite shops and restaurants.”

Aside from the argument I just presented above about why local bus service is crucial even in the presence of a subway (which applies equally well to businesses who don’t want a lengthy five-block walk to keep customers from coming to their store), there’s also the question of whether a dedicated bus lane would reduce traffic to businesses in the area. The impact on parking will be minimal, but the impact on drivers may not be; here, at least, the left-turn phobia is somewhat valid. But this is a problem dedicated ROWs everywhere have to face, and history suggests the impact on local businesses isn’t so clear-cut as “dedicated ROW = bad.” The Spadina ROW brought up similar concerns from its local businesses, that foot traffic would be reduced and more efficient transit would mean fewer people in the store as people were whisked from point A to point B without so much as glancing at local storefronts. But the jury’s still out on whether Chinatown is dying, or what the ultimate causes might be. And one thing is certainly true: go to Spadina on any given weekday and it’s still busy.

That’s just responding to the criticisms of the dedicated busway the Yonge Subway North campaign makes. There are plenty of other problems with putting in a subway versus a dedicated busway. For example, what about Yonge Street north of Highway 7? The traffic doesn’t just end once you pass the highway, but there’s no plan for a subway extension to Elgin Mills, either now or in the distant future. The busway was designed to handle this traffic as well, and without an alternative solution you’re basically sacrificing North Yonge’s transit needs for South Yonge’s needs. Also, the Yonge subway line is already overcrowded during rush hour, so how will it deal with the additional traffic from the extension? And will York Region be able to pay for the operating costs of a subway? It will cost $14 million a year to run the Vaughan subway extension; by comparison, the entire YRT/Viva combined bus system was given a 2007 operating budget of $24.5 million. York Region can afford the Vaughan extension because by and large, it’s the City of Toronto that’s paying for it. Don’t expect Toronto to make that mistake twice.

And speaking of Toronto, it’s the TTC that’ll be operating the subway extension, yes? The TTC that’s so severely underfunded that it just had to raise fares again in order to lose only $35 million next year while city council sits on their hands about levying new taxes to pay for city services? Figure out a way to get all three levels of government to sort out transit funding properly, and then perhaps we can talk about making the subway extension a reality. Because despite all my criticisms above, I still think the subway would be a very good idea—if I actually thought it would happen within my lifetime. While everyone’s busy holding out for that subway, though, what happens to the Yonge corridor in the meantime? The reason why the busway plan was made was because it’s a solution that is needed now. Saying we shouldn’t build it at all because a subway might be in the offing is begging for trouble.

I suppose it could be worse, though. Translink should be thankful they’re not the TTC these days.

I suppose the mix of businesses you’d want to attract plays a role as well, but to watch the video Monocle put together you’d think all you needed to put together a great urban village was a nice Australian bookshop, an Apple store, and a fancy Italian laundromat. The feature is, in essence, a giant advertisement for a bunch of boutiques around the world. Urban planning this ain’t, unless your urban plans look suspiciously like shopping mall directories. I’ve been told that there are other features about great cities in the issue, but as it’s all locked behind a pay wall and I don’t have a copy of the print magazine, it’s hard for me to say whether the rest of the magazine is as useless as this feature is.

Multiculturalism may be the furthest thing from the minds of legislators in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. You may remember the parish as one of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Since then, the Hispanic population of New Orleans has swelled as workers come to the city for reconstruction work. One of the side effects of the influx—from 15,000 Hispanic people before the storm to an estimated 50,000 today—is the taco truck, rapidly becoming a common fixture on the streets of New Orleans. For some bizarre reason, however, Jefferson Parish officials have decided the taco trucks have to go, despite being embraced by both the nascent Hispanic community and the local Southerners who have come to appreciate the authentic Mexican fare. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin says the trucks will still be welcome on his streets, though city council president Oliver Thomas isn’t too pleased with the trucks overrunning what’s left of the traditional New Orleans culture. “How do the tacos help gumbo?” Thomas told the Times-Picayune.

If it’s not too far or too cold, I imagine those taco trucks will find a welcome home up here and a chorus of thanks from Torontonians tired of two-dollar hot dogs.

The Globe and Mail edition coming out in a couple of hours has the best guess on what the TTC has in store for us when it unveils its new LRT network plan at 10:30am:

…the centrepiece is a $2.2-billion, partly underground line along Eglinton Avenue, from Kingston Road in the east to Pearson Airport in the west….

—An $835-million line along Finch Avenue West, from Highway 427 in Etobicoke to Finch subway station on the Yonge line;
—A $675-million line on Don Mills Road, from Steeles Avenue East to the Bloor subway line;
—A $630-million line on Jane Street;
—A $555-million line from Don Mills Station that runs along Sheppard Avenue East to Morningside;
—A $630-million line on Morningside Avenue that continues onto Kingston Road;
—A $540-million waterfront west line.

Stay tuned.