Better TTC

Toronto police have charged a 23-year-old man in connection with a firearm investigation after receiving numerous of reports of a man armed with a gun on the city’s subway system last week.
During a roughly two-hour period late Thursday night and early Friday morning, a man was seen with a gun tucked into his waistband aboard a subway train at St. George Station and as he exited the station on Bedford Street, police said in a news release Monday.
He was later seen loading a magazine into the handgun on the subway at St. George Station, police say.

Among the tools are taxes on fuel, tolls to drive and levies on parking. But Metrolinx is also looking beyond straight user-pay models. The shortlist will include as well land value capture, in which governments take a slice when property becomes more valuable because of transit, and development charges. The other options includes payroll, property and sales taxes, charging solo drivers to use high-occupancy lanes and increased transit fares.

The TTC has unveiled its customer charter — a series of promises to improve service, such as new equipment and better information systems, within the year — as an attempt to improve customer relations.

Andy Byford, the TTC's chief executive officer, said in a statement Thursday the new customer charter commits the TTC to more reliable, punctual service.

While western countries are proud of their democratic systems, their big cities still worry about finding the money to fund their transit systems. Infrastructure is often seriously underfunded because of competing social and political structures. Federal- and provincial-level governments levy the most of the taxes, but leave municipal government the task of figuring out how to build the city. Large cities like Toronto and Vancouver tend to feel the most pain, dealing with gridlock on crumbling roads, as well as overcrowding on aging public transit systems.