Rocco Rossi - "If I'm elected I will Kill Transit City and eliminate Bike Lanes"

[fuji]

Could you produce the article?

Sure, it was a front page story on the star. I tried finding it through their search, but their search sucks. Presumably it will take a bit of time paging through the not well sorted results.

If I spend the time to find it, how much crow are you proposing to eat?

No, but they are expecting the new tenants to leave existing spaces. It’s not like there was an influx of new employment that necessitated new construction of office spaces.

The recession has been unkind to landlords everywhere but Toronto's downtown core is doing better than a lot of places are. Really, at the end of the day, developers wouldn't be putting up so many big new office towers if they thought there was a long term problem with vacancies, as opposed to a cyclical one.

In some cases, its so the developer can tear down an older office building/employment centre.

No office towers in the downtown core have been torn down... looking out my window, they're all still there.

At the end of the day there are many times as many jobs in the downtown core as there are people living here. No doubt that will continue forever, or at least for decades. However in terms of total traffic volumes it makes sense to do two things:

1. Encourage new job sites to largely locate in the suburbs, so that the peole in the suburbs can find work closer to home

2. Encourage new residential building in the core, so the jobs downtown can be sourced from people living closer by

That isn't going to be some radical shift, but a gradual one, that will in the end take some small percentage of the cars off the road. That small percentage will show up in city planning as lane reductions--one less lane on Jarvis, for example, equals a certain number of people who no longer commute.

 

[fuji]

No it’s what the TTC is saying in its own reports and by third parties, that the costs overran (due to bad planning) much more that 13%

Sort of. The TTC in its own report said that scope creep accounted for the cost overrun: They did more than they had originally planned to, and doing more cost more. Every time they did work in a certain area, they would get demands to fix this that and the other thing while they were there, and did so, for additional cost.

You can call that bad planning and perhaps they wound up doing some work that wasn't a priority but the work they set out to do originally came in more or less for the cost they projected, within a reasonable tolerance anyway.

In terms of criticizing the city manager that is a big fuckup, but in terms of looking at the long term costs of transit systems those cost overruns really weren't related to the cost of the transit system per se, which delivered more or less on budget other than the scope creep.

An example of scope creep would be "Hey while you are putting that new streetcar track in, why not replace the sidewalk and repair a few aging manholes, and repave that other stretch of road, and upgrade the traffic light--you've got the street closed off for a few weeks anyway right? Oh and it would be great if you could put in better parking meters too."

The city or project manager should have said "no" more is all that means.

 

[masterchief]

Sure, it was a front page story on the star. I tried finding it through their search, but their search sucks. Presumably it will take a bit of time paging through the not well sorted results.
If I spend the time to find it, how much crow are you proposing to eat? .

None, I’m just genuinely interested in reading the article, so if you an post a link to it (when you find it) that’d be great.

No office towers in the downtown core have been torn down... looking out my window, they're all still there. .

That’s not what I said or meant. I’m specifically looking at the new RBC tower on Simcoe, where RBC will be moving from other buildings in the area into this complex (and used the adjoining condo projects to offset some construction costs), or the Telus building on Bremner and Front Street which is not an increase of jobs at Telus but moving from other buildings to a newer facility.

The Bay Adelaide Centre, is also a project that Brookfield has been waiting to accomplish and now the time was right to do so.

Nnoe of these projects were predicated by some need for office space

I agree it’s nice to see them going up instead of another cheaply built condo, and it’s about time for the commercial sector to put some effort into growing this city…but it’s no major indicator of some employment shift…not while this city is being run the way it is.

 

[fuji]

That’s not what I said or meant. I’m specifically looking at the new RBC tower on Simcoe, where RBC will be moving from other buildings in the area into this complex (and used the adjoining condo projects to offset some construction costs), or the Telus building on Bremner and Front Street which is not an increase of jobs at Telus but moving from other buildings to a newer facility.

Sure, but sooner or later the space they vacate will be filled by others. Maybe not right now, recession trailing off and all, but eventually, it will be. By the way, that new building isn't RBC, it is RBC Dexia, which is a joint venture between RBC and Dexia and those are new jobs for the most part that are moving into that building, not just other RBC jobs relocating. The people working there are RBC Dexia employees, different than RBC employees (although many of them are ex-RBC employees who quit RBC to join RBC Dexia).

The Bay Adelaide Centre, is also a project that Brookfield has been waiting to accomplish and now the time was right to do so.

Yup. I think the reason why it is the right time to do so is all the condo building downtown, that has produced in the end a new supply of workers who would prefer a downtown job. Thus after decades of no-one building office space downtown there have been multiple new buildings in the last few years, forecasting this rise in demand for downtown offices.

Nnoe of these projects were predicated by some need for office space

I guarantee you they were all predicated on profit projections. No-one builds new office towers if they are forecasting a decline in rents.