No longer merely follies, the situation with the “Hoile Loop” on 222 Audley South has hit the mainstream media with a Toronto Star report this morning, which includes some rather juicy comments from the proponent of eliminating service on the loop, Sandy Cassidy, a resident of a custom house (if you know the neighbourhood you will know exactly which house I refer to) on the corner of Audley South and Hoile.
Rather than putting words in Ms. Cassidy’s mouth, I encourage you to read the Star article and then come back. I promise I will wait. It’s worth the read.
Now, obviously the Star reporter has chosen Cassidy’s juiciest comments for the article, but even still, those comments display an appalling lack of interest in the needs of other people in the neighbourhood and the larger area. In particular, the statement that residents all have two cars and should just drive is amazingly ignorant considering current concerns on climate change, gasoline prices, and congestion on our roads. Yes, the Lakeside neighbourhood is an upscale neighbourhood, at least from an Durham perspective, but we need to encourage better transit use in all of our neighbourhoods. Lakeside at least has the advantage of a layout that is not unfriendly to transit, unlike all too many subdivisions, and this should be taken advantage of.
And yes, there are legitimate concerns with service on Hoile – as my wife will attest given that her bus got stuck there for ten minutes a few weeks ago as the bus could not complete its turn onto Hoile due to the presence of a moving van. It is a narrow street and sometimes problematic. There are advantages to the removal of the loop, along with the obvious disadvantages of moving service farther from residents of that portion of the neighbourhood.
But the question of whether the “Hoile loop” is an efficient and effective routing for the route is not what Cassidy seems concerned about. Her concerns are pure NIMBY – the bus is noisy and interferes with TV watching, and disturbs the enjoyment of her house. But these are not valid concerns given that the route services a useful purpose in the neighbourhood. When we choose to live in built-up areas rather than rural areas, we all have to make compromises. Those Star Trek fans reading this will remember Spock once saying “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”. That statement is very applicable here.
This comes before the DRT Executive committee on September 3, with a revised staff report that should include the results of the survey conducted by DRT along with some numbers on the distances involved should the route be changed. I hope that the committee will discount the political posturing of Ms. Cassidy and focus on the service needs of the neighbourhood. Will the elimination of the loop improve service for more than it hurts? If so, remove the loop. If not, go with the original staff recommendation and keep the loop. But under no circumstances should “I don’t want a bus route on my street” be a valid argument in Durham Region, ever.
One more comment – our politicians need to realize that while Ms. Cassidy is entitled to her opinion and her vote in municipal elections, her position that transit service is only for those who cannot afford cars is no longer a tenable one. Improved transit service is needed throughout Durham Region, and that will cost money. Instead of waiting for provincial or federal funding, Regional Council needs to continue to improve DRT funding from property taxes so that DRT can be as viable a service as York Region Transit has become from a similar start.
Filed under: Routes
I read it also, that woman really irks me.
It is embarassing to be from the same town as her!
So that is people give to charity and such– so they have influence with council members ??????
I got got a really chuckle from the comments. People are not to happy with Sandra Cassidy’s remarks.
I am pleased to read that Phil Meagher, DRT’s deputy general manager of operations, has taken a stand in favour of the route. He points out the 222 Audley South is one of the better performing routes. I can vouch personally for the performance. In fact it is one of the few routes that has people boarding in the Shoal Point area and not riding to the Go Station. They are are getting off en route on their way to work or students going to Ajax High School.
There is also another article on newsdurhamregion.com by a different reporter. http://newsdurhamregion.com/news/Breaking%20News/article/105376
I think it’s time a complaint is filed against ‘Sandy’ to clean up the weathered facade of her so-called custom home. The paint peeling away from the front of that place is driving the realestate prices down in the entire neighbourhood.
I am not here to defend Ms. Cassidy’s comments. However, I find it interesting how a Carola Vyhnak the Urban Affairs Reporter manages to distort something this badly. And it is equally interesting how almost all readers fall for it without ever bothering to check facts. But of course, this is the intention. One cannot bore the reader!
The fact that out of the few dozen houses making up the Community affected by the proposed route change (remember, not cancellation as promoted by the editorial in the Ajax News Advertiser generating even more uninformed furor!) 75 residents signed the petition should mean something. For the journalist, this has no bearing because that would establish a truer point of reference from what she wants to present. That Mrs. Cassidy does not stand alone, and the majority of the households supports her, is completely hidden in the article. The simple fact is that the majority of the households opposes the bus coming into the Hoile loop . Why is this not mentioned?
That this Route 222 was actually NOT supposed to be running into the narrow loop that it runs on now is clearly omitted. It was supposed to avoid this loop exactly because of the narrow streets and the close proximity of the houses to the curb. Also, there is no mention of the fact that in this particular (shallow-wide) subdivision the houses are set back much less from the street than normal bringing, who cares? The proposed new route (which was the originally planned one) would make those few people who actually use the service to walk at most 400 metres (a 5-minute walk as I tested it with such leisurely pace that walking slower would mean I am standing still). The inconvenience would be that the riders would not be able to sit on their front porches or stand behind their front doors waiting for the bus to stop right in front of their houses but they would have to walk to the bus stop and wait a little, just like millions of other commuters do even in the great Canadian winter – including me when needed. I am certain Mrs. Cassidy mentioned these to the reporter who carefully avoided mentioning them in the article. But there is plenty else.
Between 5:30 and 8:00 in the morning nobody ever gets on or off the bus but the empty buses keep roaring down the narrow back street of the subdivision generating a noise level way above the allowable noise level set by municipal bylaw (measured and acknowledged as an issue by Durham Transit). The average 34 riders per hour – meaning around 10 people on one bus – that Phil Meagher is quoted as saying are not from this community. The bus actually stops on average 6 times a day loading and unloading the impressive amount of 1 passenger per stop (less in the Summer as the 2 students of the loop actually using the bus are not going to school) in the loop that the petition proposes to cut from the bus route. These again were completely missed by the careful journalist. Why bother about such trivial things as accuracy or reflection of truth?
That the bus has barely missed two residents and a number of cars over the past couple of weeks, again, must be ignored according to the standards set by Carola Vyhnak. Newspapers are not supposed to be about informing people any longer according to this standard. They are about advertisements and anything reporters are willing to write and publish to make people buy and read the paper so the corporations keep paying for the ads. Simple as that.
Public transit should serve as much of the community as possible. As there are only a handful using the extension of Route 222, and at most they/we would have to walk 400 metres to the nearest stop, I strongly believe there is better use of taxpayers’ money. There are areas of Durham region where the buses do not come even within a kilometre of houses. I find my tax dollars better spent on bringing public transit to those less fortunate areas. Or perhaps add frequency to service to more populated areas of the region. At least use smaller, upgraded buses that run quietly. None of us wants to stop bus service. We would want to promote more sense in the routing of the service.
This situation is not about a minority trying to take something away from a needy majority. Quite the opposite. It is the vast majority of the affected household who would like to have the route altered so everyone still has access to it while the original characteristic of the community (quite, peaceful, safe and clean) would not have to be damaged.
How fantastic it would be if journalists who have the responsibility to inform the public did what they are supposed to be doing: not bring half truths, manipulated half quotations, and misrepresentations to their readers. And how fantastic it would be if the readers were not so eager to condemn someone who is willing to stand up to represent her community opposite a transit authority that shattered the piece and quiet of a community without any consultation whatsoever. How fantastic it would be…
The committee has spoken, the bus route remains as it is and if the Cassidy’s have any ounce of self respect, they should move from this neighbourhood, on whom they have tried to impose their will by putting their petty needs over the basic services that so many in the neighbourhood rely on.