The Mike Haddad Show: This is relevant to my interests.

I need to get this off of my chest now before I forget about it, or it kills me. Those of you who know me know that I have been very excited for a very long time now about the fact that the TTC plans on building a streetcar right-of-way along St. Clair Ave. The other day at work I got a text message from a friend stating that the court had decided to block the project on a technicality because Save Our St Clair (SOS) bitched and moaned until they didn’t want to hear it anymore. Right. I’m not sure how to start commenting on this one.

First of all, I'd like to state and clarify that yes, the court did block this project ON A TECHNICALITY. The court decided that the environmental assessment that the TTC had done for the St. Clair "Surface Transit Improvements" did not qualify for the streetcar right-of-way. Why? Simple: Previous ROW improvements along Spadina and Harbourfront were listed as "Rapid Transit" and not "Street Transit Improvements." That my confused, anti-ROW friends is what we would call a technicality. As much as I love streetcars and their orgasm-inspiring transit abilities, they're not rapid transit. The subway is rapid transit. The Scarborough RT is rapid transit – it's shitty, but it's still rapid transit. If you want to get down to it York Region's Viva isn't even rapid transit, that's why they call it bus-rapid transit right now. But this isn't about York Region Transit or it's incredibly sexy Viva buses. This is about St. Clair, and the fact that a bunch of car-loving whiners got a great public transit project temporarily blocked.

SOS has a website set up that I refuse to link, and discourage you from googling because they don't deserve the traffic. The main concern of the group is that the streetcar ROW will hurt the neighbourhood. They feel that the loss of a lane will cause traffic to move to other streets, making it more dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists. Please don't ask me how traffic moving from one place to another will endanger pedestrians or bicyclists, my mind works on logic and this does not fit into logic. Unless SOS is implying that a streetcar ROW will cause pedestrians to run out onto the streets and party like it's 1999 all over again, and cause drivers to suddenly all become angry British motorists playing a ravishing game of "Hit the pedestrian." 100 bonus points for the lady with the walker.

SOS also stated that a streetcar ROW will make the area less appealing to customers from outside of Toronto. I don't know about anyone else, but I NEVER went anywhere near Spadina until they finished the ROW there. Spadina was a mess. I'd like to see them say that Spadina is not busy either. Every streetcar I see when I'm down there is packed, never mind the sidewalks. Good luck walking through Chinatown during the day. It's always packed. I still see bicyclists there too, so I don't know what the big fear is. As for the fear that cultural festivals will no longer go to St. Clair because of lost sidewalk space: I don’t ever remember there being a big loss of sidewalk space in the plan, not that it would matter. Whenever there's a festival on Spadina they close down one direction of traffic and reroute the cars onto the ROW. That actually opens up more space for festivals, not that the SOS wants to think about that. Sometimes I wonder if they think about it at all.

The very same day the court made its decision, a pro-ROW site opened up dispelling the lies that have been spread by SOS and it's supporters. Boycott St. Clair has garnered a lot of support in the GTA blogosphere. I'm sure the fact that it actually provides an educated point of view on the subject has nothing to do with that. Hopefully its pro-ROW campaign will generate enough support to reverse the anti-ROW stigma that has been established. All it needs now is a Site Meter account to show SOS and the haters just how popular it is and a Paypal account so that people can donate to the cause. I probably would. But that's because I'm Mike Haddad, and Mike Haddad is ProROW.