Sean Marshall

Category: Maps

  • Mapping the 2014 Toronto Election: Wards 39 and 40

    I almost called this post “Everybody loves @norm” after the popular former Deputy Mayor, Norm Kelly, who represents Ward 40 on  Toronto City Council.

    In this latest installment of my (nearly complete) series of posts on the results of the 2014 municipal election, I come to Wards 39 and 40, Scarborough-Agincourt. The provincial/federal riding of Scarborough-Agincourt is a nice rectangular shape, bounded by Steeles Avenue to the north, Ellesmere Road to the south, Victoria Park to the west, and the GO Transit Stouffville corridor (formerly the CN Uxbridge Subdivision) railway to the east. This rail corridor is proposed as the route of Mayor John Tory’s “SmartTrack” transit plan. However, the boundary between Wards 39 and 40 is a bit jagged, with Finch and Birchmount Avenues and West Highland Creek forming the boundary. This results in an odd panhandle in Ward 39, as it includes only two apartment towers south of Sheppard Avenue.

    Mayoral race

    In the mayoral race, Doug Ford came in first place in both wards, netting 50.1% of the vote in Ward 39 and 48.4% in Ward 40. John Tory came in a distant second place in both wards, with 26.9% of the vote in Ward 39 and 30.7% in Ward 30. Third-place Olivia Chow got between 17 and 18% in both wards.

    2014 Election - WARD 39 MayorPoll results of the mayoral race in Ward 39

    In Ward 39, Doug Ford came in first place in all but 4 polls. John Tory came first in three, all representing condominium towers on Bridletowne Circle (in the Finch/Warden area). Olivia Chow one one poll, 028, a condo tower on Kennedy Road near McNicoll Avenue. Doug Ford came in first place in all seniors’ homes in the ward, including the large Yee Hong Centre. While I am not terribly surprised, it is worth noting how a prominent Chinese-Canadian immigrant could not obtain much support in a ward with a large Chinese-Canadian community.*

    2014 Election - WARD 40 Mayor Poll results of the mayoral race in Ward 40

    Like Ward 39, Doug Ford came in first place in all but four polls in Ward 40, with Tory taking three, and Chow one. Tory did the best in Polls 020 and 021, the Shepherd Village retirement and assisted living community on Sheppard Avenue; he also came first in Poll 015, which doesn’t seem much different than its neighbouring Ford-voting subdivisions. Doug Ford did the best in Polls 014, a rental tower on Chichester Place and 030, an older condominum tower on Palmdale Place.

    Council races

    Ward 39, represented since 2003 by accountant and former Catholic school board trustee Mike Del Grande, was an open race in 2014 with Del Grande’s announcement in February that he was not seeking re-election. On April Fool’s Day, April 1, Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis announced his resignation from federal politics to run for the council seat.

    Karygiannis’s announcement was a bit unusual. while it’s not rare for a sitting federal or provincial politician to run for municipal office, usually it’s to run for mayor (the newly elected mayor of Brampton, Linda Jeffrey, was a Liberal MPP and prominent cabinet minister when she resigned to run there; George Smitherman was another powerful provincial cabinet minister who ran for mayor of Toronto, but lost to Rob Ford in 2010). His claim was it was spend more time with family; speculation was that Liberal leader Justin Trudeau didn’t care for the veteran controversial and socially conservative MPP; the feeling was likely mutual.

    But with name recognition and a local political machine, Karygiannis pretty much had the advantage of any council incumbent, especially against relative unknowns Franco Ng and Cozette Giannini. While the Toronto Star endorsed Ng, NOW magazine endorsed Giannini, Karygiannis won in a landslide; taking 58.9% of the vote and all but three polls. Second-place Franco Ng netted only 18.1% of the vote (and came first in two polls), Giannini came in third with 9.8%. Fourth-place Derek Li came first in one poll, though this was a long-term medical institution with a small voting population.

    2014 Election - WARD 39 Cllr Poll results of the council race in Ward 39

    There was no contest in Ward 40, represented by councillor Norm Kelly, who won with an astounding 86% of the vote. But I’m certainly not complaining.

    Kelly is a long-term city councillor, but is also a historian, and taught history at Upper Canada College. He was first elected to municipal politics in 1974 as an alderman on Scarborough council. He was a Liberal MP between 1980 and 1984, losing to the Progressive Conservatives in the Mulroney landslide of 1984. After making an unsuccessful run for mayor of Scarborough in 1985, Kelly turned to real estate before returning to Scarborough council in 1994; he has been a Toronto councillor since the 1997 amalgamation.

    Kelly, a centre-right ally of mayors Lastman and Ford (between 2011 and 2014, Kelly voted with the mayor over 80% of the time), was named deputy mayor in August 2013. This was after Rob Ford’s first pick for deputy mayor, Doug Holyday, resigned after a by-election win in Etobicoke-Lakeshore for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. (The losing Liberal candidate in that by-election, fellow Etobicoke councillor Peter Milczyn, won in the general election in the June 2014 general election). As Rob Ford’s personal scandals involving drug use and lewd behaviour deepened in 2013; council stripped Ford of most of his powers, transferring them to Kelly in November 2013. Kelly quickly re-established order and decorum to City Hall with humour and grace, and for that, politicians and observers of all political stripes were grateful. Even the lefty NOW magazine endorsed Kelly for re-election in 2014.

    Unfortunately, John Tory picked Denzil Minnan-Wong (who, to put it nicely, is not nearly as well-liked as Norm Kelly) as his lead Deputy Mayor. (Vince Crisanti, Glenn De Baeremaeker, and Pam McConnell were chosen as Tory’s secondary deputy mayors.)

    Given Kelly’s sweep of all polls in Ward 40, there was no need to create a map of the council race here.

    Post script: It’s also worth noting that Wards 39 and 40 were represented at the Toronto District School Board by Sam Sotiropoulos, a homophobic and transphobic individual, whose offenses are nicely summed up by Torontoist in its annual Heroes and Villains feature. Sotiropoulos lost to Manna Wong by 2067 votes. Still Sotiropoulos came in second place, and got 9,621 votes. I hope this can be chalked up to the incumbency factor and that many voters simply do not pay attention to school board politics.

    (Hat tip to Paula Cheung reminding me to include this post script, one of the bright spots of the 2014 election.)

    *It should be noted that Olivia Chow immigrated from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese, many in Ward 39’s Chinese-Canadian community are immigrants from Mainland China and speak Mandarin. And of course, there are many considerations one makes when deciding who to vote for; as I mentioned earlier, I am not surprised to see Chow do so poorly in Agincourt.

  • Mapping the 2014 Toronto Election: Wards 37 and 38

    In this short post, I look at the election results in Ward 37 and Ward 38, Scarborough Centre. Ward 37, west of Brimley Avenue, is represented by Councillor Michael Thompson, while Ward 38, to the east, is represented by Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker. The results of the mayoral race were nearly the same in Ward 37 and Ward 38. Doug Ford came in first place in both wards with about 51% of the vote, and won all but three polls in Scarborough Centre. John Tory came in a distant second place with less than 30% of the vote (and came in first place in the remaining polls), while Olivia Chow took just over 15% of the vote. Both incumbent councillors were easily re-elected.

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  • Mapping the 2014 Toronto Election: Wards 35 and 36

    After many weeks of presenting poll-by-poll maps of the council and mayoral races in the 2014 municipal election, I finally reach the home stretch: the final ten wards located in the former municipality of Scarborough. Of all the six municipalities that were amalgamated into the City of Toronto, Doug Ford did the best here. (Even in the Fords’ home turf of Etobicoke, John Tory came in first place in three of that suburban area’s six wards.)

    In this post, I look at the two wards that make up Scarborough Southwest, Ward 35 and Ward 36.

    Ward 35, the north half of Scarborough Southwest, is a triangular ward bordered by Victoria Park and Eglinton Avenues and Metrolinx’s Lakeshore railway line. Ward 35 is represented by Michelle Berardinetti, who was first elected to city council in 2010, the spouse of Liberal MPP Lorenzo Berardinetti (who represents Scarborough Southwest at the provincial level). Ward 36, south of the railway corridor, straddling Lake Ontario, is represented by Gary Crawford. Unlike Ward 35, ward 36 includes relatively affluent neighbourhoods such as Fallingbrook (which neighbours the prestigious Beaches neighbourhood) and those abutting the Scarborough Bluffs.

    Ward 36 was the only ward in Scarborough where John Tory came in first place; Doug Ford was the first choice in all nine other wards east of Victoria Park Avenue.

    Interestingly, even though the dubious extension of the Bloor-Danforth Subway wouldn’t serve Wards 35 or 36 by any means, both incumbent councillors were strong supporters of the expensive project that replaced plans for the replacement of the existing SRT with an extended light rail corridor.

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  • Mapping the election: Toronto’s East End (Wards 29, 30, 31, and 32)

    2014 Election - East End Mayor

    In this post, I examine the results in four east-end wards, Wards 29 and 30, Toronto-Danforth, and Wards 31 and 32, Beaches-East York. All four wards selected John Tory as their first choice as mayor (though by differing margins), and all four returned their incumbent councillors. Only in Ward 30 was there an interesting council race.

    I’m about to go on a short vacation, so this will be the last of my posts looking at the poll-level results of the last Toronto municipal election for about two weeks. I still have to get to Wards 33 and 34, Don Valley East, and the 10 wards in Scarborough.

    Ward 29

    2014 Election - WARD 29 Mayor
    Poll results of the mayoral race in Ward 29

    Ward 29, the part of Toronto-Danforth north of Danforth Avenue, stuck with first-term left-leaning councillor Mary Fragedakis, who won every poll. Fragedakis won in 2010, beating right-leaning candidate Jane Pitfield with 41.8% of the vote to Pitfield’s 27.9%. Pitfield, previously the councillor for Ward 26, was backed by the retiring councillor Case Ootes. In 2014, Fragedakis won 59.3% of the vote; second-place Dave Andrae took 24.7% of the vote. I did not create a map for the ward race.

    John Tory came in first place in Ward 29, netting 42.1% of the vote and taking 17 of 23 polls. Olivia Chow came in second place, with 32.1% of the vote, but was the second-place candidate in nearly every poll. Doug Ford came in a distant third place, but won in four polls – all near the Pape/Cosburn intersection, where there are many mid-rise rental apartment buildings. Tory did best in Poll 001, which is isolated from the rest of the ward, separated by the Don River, Don Valley Parkway and the GO Richmond Hill corridor railway line, and really part of the Rosedale neighbourhood otherwise covered by Ward 27 (where Tory did exceedingly well).

    Ward 30

    2014 Election - WARD 30 Mayor
    Poll results of the mayoral race in Ward 30

    John Tory came in first place in Ward 30, but Olivia Chow came in a close second place; less than 300 votes separated the two mayoral candidates. Doug Ford came in a very distant third place, taking less than 15% of the vote and no polls. Interestingly, John Tory came in first place in the Withrow Park neighbourhood closest to Danforth Avenue, while Chow came in first place in nearly all polls east of Pape/Carlaw in Leslieville.

    But more interesting was the council race. In 2010, centrist Liz West, a news broadcaster, narrowly lost to long-time incumbent Paula Fletcher. Fletcher won with only 45.4% of the vote, 259 votes ahead of West.

    When author, broadcaster, and community organizer Jane Farrow, a founder of Jane’s Walk and executive assistant to Ward 33 councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, put her name forward as a candidate, there was some backlash against her bid: why run against a strong progressive councillor? Would the vote be split, allowing the relatively right-leaning Liz West to take the seat? Though Farrow’s candidacy was supported by others on the centre and left; some residents were encouraged by her community advocacy and were looking for a fresh face on city council. (I would have been pleased with either Fletcher or Farrow representing Ward 30.)

    As it turns out, Paula Fletcher, backed by the endorsements of Torontoist, NOW Magazine, the Toronto Star and the Labour Council, increased her vote share in 2014, taking 49.6% of the vote. Liz West lost votes, taking only 27.7% of the vote; Farrow came in third place with 20.0%.

    The feared vote-split did not happen. Fletcher came in first place in all but one poll, where Fletcher and West tied. West came in second place in every other poll, except one, Poll 034, where Farrow came in second place.

    This was the most surprising of the maps that I created so far.

    2014 Election - WARD 30 Cllr
    Poll results of the council race in Ward 30

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  • The over-simplification of the TTC’s maps

    IMG_7647[1] The 192 Airport Rocket on the new TTC subway map posted in its trains

    The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) introduced a new subway map on “T-1” subway trains, the older 6-car trains used on the Sheppard Line (known as Line 4), and the Bloor-Danforth Line, now known as Line 2. I first spotted the new map a few days ago and I have a few thoughts about it.

    In the latest edition of the map, found over every second set of doors, a red line representing the 192 Airport Rocket bus route was added, the first time a bus route was included on a TTC subway map. It’s a helpful reminder to passengers that a fast, frequent, affordable, and usually reliable airport transit link exists. I could quibble about the details (which makes little sense; I’d simply terminate the line at the airport icon), but it’s a great addition to the map. Now that the premium Union-Pearson Express train is about to launch, it’s an excellent time to remind customers about the TTC’s affordable airport link. (It’s worth noting that the MTA in New York City includes bus routes to LaGuardia and JFK airports on its subway maps as well.)

    Another little change that I like is the removal of the word “Spadina” from the name of the Yonge-University-Spadina Line, now known as Line 1. With the subway extension to Vaughan [ugh] Metropolitan Centre due to open in 2016 (though it may end up being 2017), Line 1 will now serve all four of Toronto’s universities (not counting secondary campuses): Ryerson, OCAD University, the University of Toronto, and York University. Since the line only operates under Spadina Road for less than 2 kilometres, and will extend beyond the old Spadina Expressway alignment (now Allen Road), the shortened name makes a lot of sense.

    And there’s one more great little addition to the new map: information on how to purchase your own subway map via the TTC’s website. The TTC’s slowly starting to realize the demand for transit-related merchandise; it recently began selling re-prints of old promotional posters and maps to the public via a new Shop TTC page on its website and through the new Spacing Store. An authentic subway map can be yours for $10. The new maps also emphasize the subway lines’ numbers over their names, part of a larger TTC wayfinding strategy. Numbered bullets, similar to those used in New York City, are used on new signage and maps for each subway and RT route.

    IMG_7644[1] Spadina is dropped; information on how to buy your own map

    Despite these changes, I feel the new map edition is still two steps forward, two steps back. For one thing, there are too many details removed. Compare it to the 2005 subway map [PDF, archived at Transit Toronto]. The 2005 map includes the station’s address (which is quite useful on Yonge, Bloor, and Danforth if looking for the closest station to a specific address), whether a paper transfer is required to connect with surface transit routes, and the locations of commuter parking lots. On the 2005 map, the international symbol of access (the blue wheelchair icon) indicates which stations in the system are fully accessible. In 2005, 22 1/2 of 69 subway and RT stations were accessible. (The 1/2 refers to Spadina Station, where the University-Spadina Line platforms are not accessible to persons using wheeled mobility devices, but the platforms for the Bloor-Danforth Subway Line 2, buses, and now, streetcars, are.)

    Ten years later, in 2015, 11 additional stations were fitted with elevators, bringing the total up to 33 1/2, nearly half of the TTC’s 69 stations. The 2015 map still includes the ISA icons, but they are now smaller, located within the white dots indicating the location of each station. In the photo below (taken with an iPhone), Scarborough Centre, Kennedy, Victoria Park, and Main Street, all accessible stations, are nearly indistinguishable from other, nearby stations that are not. The ISA icons are practically illegible from any distance or to anyone with impaired vision. This is the greatest failure of the new subway map; I believe that the TTC should re-issue these subway route maps for this reason alone.

    IMG_7645[1]

    The new subway maps available on the internet and on the Ride Guide paper system map have white backgrounds (perhaps to save printer toner if one wishes to print the PDF?), but it the same flaws as the version used in the subway trains.

    Subway_Map_2015
    Click image for full-resolution version on the TTC’s website

    The new, over-simplified subway route map reminds me of complaints that I had about the new TTC system map, released in mid-2014. The old system map was too large and cluttered (see the 2013 version archived at Transit-Toronto [PDF]) and was in need of a re-fresh. In the new map, the street grid is removed; as are bus routes operated by adjoining systems, such as GO Transit, Miway and York Region Transit. Landmarks are removed as well, but the addition of thick lines representing frequent-service surface routes was a nice addition. Green lines indicating express bus routes was also a great feature, though I don’t understand why frequent express routes, like the 196 York University Rocket, weren’t represented by thick lines either.

    Hopefully the TTC will re-think and revise both maps in the very new feature.

  • Mapping the 2014 Toronto election: Wards 23 and 24

    2014 Election - WARD 23 MayorPoll results of the mayoral race in Ward 23

    2014 Election - WARD 24 MayorPoll results of the mayoral race in Ward 24

    There’s not a lot to say about the mayoral race in Wards 23 and 24, Willowdale. Ward 23 is Toronto’s most populated ward, with over 88,000 residents; the ward’s population grew by 11.2% in the last 5 years. The condo boom along Yonge Street between Highway 401 and north of Finch Avenue explains most of this growth. Ward 24’s population is more stable, ranging from affluent neighbourhoods near Bayview Village to low-income apartment neighbourhoods in the ward’s eastern side.

    John Tory came in first place in both wards, netting 49.0% of the vote in Ward 23, and 47.6% in Ward 24. Doug Ford came in second place in both wards, Olivia Chow coming in  third, with approximately 20% of the vote in both wards. Ford’s best result was in Poll 050 in Ward 23, a TCHC building. In Ward 24, Ford did the best in the Finch Avenue/Don Mills Road area.

    The council races were at least more interesting, if not disappointing.

    Council races

    2014 Election - WARD 23 CllrPoll results of the council race in Ward 23

    In Ward 23, David Mousavi ran against long-time incumbent John Filion, a centre-left councillor who served on North York City Council before amalgamation. Mousavi ran on Filion’s right, with a platform of low tax increases, road improvements, and the extension of the Sheppard Subway to Downsview, as well as a “fresh start” for the ward.

    John Filion, who was the Chair of the Toronto Board of Health (and champion of the disastrous “A La Cart” food vending program), was the first councillor to back John Tory’s campaign, surprising some election observers who expected that Filion might have backed Olivia Chow.

    Filion and Mousavi found themselves in a nasty race, with both campaigns accusing each other of dirty politics. In the end, though, the incumbent won; Filion took 55.5% of the vote to Mousavi’s 31.2%. David Mousavi won 8 of 64 polls, all along the Yonge Street corridor.

    2014 Election - WARD 24 CllrPoll results of the council race in Ward 24

    Ward 24 was, in my opinion, terribly disappointing, one of the biggest in the 2014 election.

    First-time candidate Dan Fox registered in February, putting together a strong team in a bid to oust David Shiner. Fox, a community activist and federal civil servant, ran to the left of Shiner, a failed Ontario PC candidate. (I got to meet Dan Fox during the campaign, I was supportive of his run, and I hope to see him run again in 2018.)

    Like Filion, Shiner first served on North York City Council; he was first elected in 1991. During Rob Ford’s term as mayor, Shiner voted with the mayor over 80% of the time, and found himself in hot water for two mini-scandals. In 2013, the Toronto Star reported that Shiner was moonlighting as a federal lobbyist for five years, on behalf of a company that dealt with the city. Also in 2013, the CBC revealed that Shiner (along with Giorgio Mammoliti, Toronto’s worst city councillor) was paying exceptionally cheap rents for an apartment in a building owned by the Greenwin-Verdiroc Group, a major city contractor.

    As his custom, Shiner didn’t even bother to campaign until very late; he officially registered as a candidate on September 5.

    Ward 24 was ripe for a change. Fox won the endorsement of the Toronto Star, NOW magazine and others. But like Ward 7, the people of ward 24 stuck with the incumbent, no matter how awful their councillor might be. Fox only won 2 polls, Shiner coasted to victory with 55.2% of the vote to Fox’s 29.1%.

  • A ward divided: mapping the election results in Ward 26

    2014 Election - WARD 26 Mayor
    Poll results of the mayoral race in Ward 26

    In my last post, published on Christmas Eve, I looked at Wards 21, 22, and 25, three Midtown wards that all voted for Tory and backed their popular incumbent councillors. Unlike those three wards, Ward 26 was rather interesting.

    Ward 26, half of Don Valley West (Ward 25 being the other half), was the only ward that booted out an incumbent councillor, John Parker. In retrospect, this should not have been unexpected. Parker was the only defeated sitting councillor in the last election. While Parker was a conservative-leaning councillor, I found him to be a pleasant, friendly and humourous politician in person; and a very effective deputy speaker, a welcome change from Frances Nunziata’s conduct as speaker.

    (It’s a shame that of all the incumbents, some that really should have been booted out — looking at you, Wards 6, 7, and 24 — Parker was the only one to be defeated.)

    Ward 26 is among the most socioeconomically and racially divided wards in Toronto. North and west of the Canadian Pacific tracks that divide the area is the affluent neighbourhood of Leaside. East of Leaside is Thorncliffe Park, a low-income, high-density apartment neighbourhood, with a very high immigrant population. Yet Thorncliffe Park has proven to be a very successful model for community engagement; it had one of the highest voter turnout rates in Toronto in the 2010 election. East of Don Mills is the similarly low-income, high-immigrant neighbourhood of Flemington Park, and to the far north-east, is the Wynford Heights-Concorde Place neighbourhood of high-rise condo and rental towers.

    The socioeconomic divide is immediately apparent in the above map of the mayoral election results in Ward 26. Most Leaside polls voted for John Tory by margins of over 50%. Most polls in Flemingdon Park and Thorncliffe Park voted for Ford, but not by very high margins. In the Wynford/Concorde area, the rental towers voted for Ford, the condos for Tory. Olivia Chow won only one poll, a co-operative housing poll in Thorncliffe Park. John Tory won a majority of votes in Ward 26 (53.1%), thanks largely to his very high popularity in Leaside and Concorde Place condos, but also because Ford was not especially popular in the low-income, high-immigrant parts of the ward.

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  • Mapping the 2014 Toronto election: Wards 21, 22, and 25

    2014 Election - WARD 21-22 MayorPoll results of the mayoral race in Wards 21 and 22, St. Paul’s

    The Christmas Eve edition in my series of posts illustrating the results of the 2014 Toronto municipal election results is definitely not the most exciting. (If you want excitement on Christmas Eve, head to Yorkdale or the Eaton Centre before they close, or go watch Die Hard.) Newly elected mayor John Tory came in first place by over 50% in each of the three wards, and three popular incumbent councillors were returned to office by landslides.

    In one of my earlier posts, I looked at Ward 16, the other Midtown ward. It at least had a very interesting race for councillor; the seat was up for grabs when Karen Stintz ran for mayor.

    Mayoral race

    2014 Election - WARD 25 MayorPoll results of the mayoral race in Wards 25, Don Valley West

    John Tory won all three wards by wide margins, but he was most popular in Ward 25  – Toronto’s wealthiest – winning with 69.4% of the vote there.

    Olivia Chow came in first place in 11 polls in Ward 21, located mostly in Hillcrest Village and along Vaughan Road (where there are many older rental apartment buildings). Chow won one poll in Ward 22, a rental apartment building in the Davisville-Merton neighbourhood; she came in a close second place in neighbouring polls. In the affluent Forest Hill and Cedarvale neighbourhoods, Tory won polls by margins of over 50%.

    Doug Ford came in first place just one poll – Poll 031 in Ward 25, a TCHC property on Yonge Street. Otherwise, Tory won by comfortable margins in most other polls in Ward 25, with the exception of the southwest corner, closest to Yonge and Eglinton, where Chow came in a close second place in several polls.

    No surprises.

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  • Does Scarborough need a subway extension? (No, it doesn’t.)

    Scarborough - 2014Rail transit routes in Scarborough, 2014

    The Scarborough Rapid Transit (SRT) line, opened in 1985, is in dire need of replacement. The SRT was planned as a grade-separated LRT route (here what it would have looked like), but the province pushed a new automated light metro ICTS technology. ICTS was developed by the Urban Transportation Development Corporation, then owned by the provincial government (UTDC’s technologies are now owned by Bombardier). ICTS has proven to be successful elsewhere, particularly for Vancouver’s SkyTrain, but not so much in Toronto.

    The city and province originally agreed to replace the ageing SRT with an extended LRT line, which would have been fully grade-separated. It would provide a rapid, high-quality transit route similar to LRT networks in Calgary or San Diego. Repairs to the existing line and new ICTS rail cars would have been expensive and difficult. For example, a tight tunnel between Ellesmere and Midland Stations would require complete reconstruction to fit the larger cars Bombardier still produces for Vancouver.

    In 2010 Rob Ford got elected on a promise of building “subways, subways, subways,” and with the province, had the fully funded, shovel-ready LRT conversion and expansion put on hold. Queen’s Park was wary of Ford’s support in those early years, and the Liberal government afraid of losing seats in Scarborough to the Conservatives. Interestingly, left-leaning councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker was one of the most vocal champions of the subway.

    The alignment for the Bloor-Danforth subway extension from Kennedy Station, which has not yet been decided, would probably be routed via Eglinton Avenue, Danforth Road, and McCowan Road, with stops at McCowan and Lawrence, McCowan and Ellesmere (or closer to the Scarborough Town Centre Mall) alignment to Sheppard Avenue, and McCowan and Sheppard.

    Council had the opportunity in 2013 to reverse its stance, but it unfortunately voted 26-18 to pursue the subway. Paul Ainslie (my favourite councillor in Scarborough), voted for the LRT, the only councillor from that part of Toronto to do so. In return, Mayor Rob Ford robo-called Ward 43 residents, falsely accusing the Ainslie of not consulting with his constituents when he decided to back the LRT. Ford was later forced to apologize by order of the integrity commissioner.

    Ainslie has it right. Support for the subway extension, even in Scarborough, isn’t as strong as many of its politicians’ rhetoric makes it sound. Some polls even suggest that residents in Scarborough support LRT. Mayoral candidates David Soknacki (who dropped out in September) and Olivia Chow supported going back to the LRT plans, but Doug Ford and John Tory backed the subway.

    So here we are. John Tory, elected mayor of Toronto, promised to continue with plans to build the Scarborough subway extension, despite its higher cost and his commitment to SmartTrack. On the campaign trail, Tory has not come out fully supporting LRT construction on Finch West or Sheppard East, two of the three pieces of the Transit City plan that are still funded. (The Eglinton-Crosstown LRT, the only Transit City route so far underway, is being built by the province through Metrolinx.)

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  • Mapping the election: Toronto’s West End (Wards 13, 14, and 18)

    2014 Election - West End

    In this post, I examine the results in three west-end wards – Wards 13 and 14, Parkdale-High Park, and Ward 18 Davenport. (I previously mapped and commented on Ward 17 Davenport.)

    Ward 13, includes part of the Junction as well as the relatively affluent Baby Point, Swansea, and Bloor West Village neighbourhoods. John Tory won this ward by a comfortable margin. Wards 14 and 18 selected Olivia Chow. Doug Ford came in a very distant third place, winning only a few polls. With a few exceptions, the polls east of Parkside/Keele voted for Chow; west of there, mainly for Tory.

    All three incumbent councillors were re-elected: Sarah Doucette in Ward 13, Gord Perks in Ward 14, and Ana Bailão in Ward 18. Of the three council races, only Ward 18 was competitive. New challenger Alex Mazer ran against Bailão and lost by only 800 votes.

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