Members of the ATU Local 113 all-star team managed to spread some love in a fundraising face-off with NHL Alumni at a fairly crowded Ted Reeve Arena for Multiple Sclerosis .

TTC general manager Gary Webster says he would rather see press about feel-good happenings like Saturday night’s game instead of media stinkers like napping ticket takers, scandal-plagued officials and an ill-tempered email from Webster, himself, berating transit workers in February.

“I’d like to see the media cover the good (things) like this,”  Webster said. “The city should be proud and the people should be proud.”

His remarks depart from the scathing tone of a letter he recently penned, which a Toronto blogger posted on the Examiner news site.

Webster claimed he was “becoming increasingly tired of defending the reputation of the TTC,” in the wake of news reports that described uncaring behaviour toward riders, behind-schedule routes and other problems.

Webster’s message went on to state employees “need to be held accountable for their poor performance.”

Webster seems to once again be back in the TTC’s corner, however, defending staff against excitable journalists.

“It’s very frustrating for the union guys… when the media is reporting the kind of stories they’ve been reporting,” he said.

Meanwhile, on ice, TTC staff were scoring points against MS, which counts Canadians among its top sufferers.

Ex-Toronto Maple Leaf and Scarborough-born Mike Johnson, 36, was one of many retired Leafs to play Saturday.

“It’s fun to go out skating with some of the guys and the TTC guys,” Johnson said, grinning. “I’m just letting loose. I don’t care how I play as long as it’s for charity. I don’t need to care anymore, I’m retired.”

TTC workers have a little more cause to care about their performance.

On one side is a skeptical public, on the other a mild-mannered general manager ready to give them what-fer if they start slipping once more.

There are so many charity hockey games in a year.

A pedestrian has been charged after he walked in to the path of a streetcar on Sunday evening.

The accident happened just before 6 p.m. when the pedestrian walked on to the streetcar tracks on Spadina Ave. near Grange Ave. He was hit by a southbound streetcar.

Police allege that the victim had been drinking prior to the crash. He has been charged with failing to yield to an oncoming vehicle.

He suffered cuts to his face, but is expected to survive.

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Not many people living here are happy with the transportation situation. The drivers are frustrated over downtown gridlock, TTC patrons over bad service, cyclists over what they perceive to be not enough routes. Everyone is weighing in on the answers, or the lack of. Bloggers are hopping on the subject.

Several solutions have been bandied about, including one recently encouraged with the participation of city council: car sharing.

The idea of car sharing is not new. It’s been around for a few years. What is new is that in October, city council issued street parking permits for shared cars whereas before the vehicles were parked only off-road in various lots.

The two most recognizable companies are Auto-Share and Zipcar. People can rent their vehicles by the hour or the day.

Car sharing is touted as a green alternative, but the on-street parking has its critics: people who complain about the parking spaces being taken up.

There is one Zipcar parked on the street in John Filion’s ward in Willowdale. A few more will be placed on city streets this month and in March, on a trial basis.

Having the cars on the street is a big step for the companies that own them.

“For Zipcar the exposure is important,” says John Lende, general manager of the office here in Toronto.

According to him, each Zipcar removes 20 or so vehicles from the road. How does the company come up with that figure?

“We count how many people rent one car,” says Lende.

Zipcar’s claims can be disputed, since there are people who use them because they have no other vehicle, or need an extra vehicle for a couple of hours, or use them at the office instead of paying cabs. Extra cars, in those cases, are not being taken off the road.

Alain, a university student who does not own his own car, is one such example. A regular Zipcar customer, he uses the vehicles for picking up groceries, furniture, or even accompanying friends home late at night.

“It’s convenient especially for someone my age who has not had insurance before,” he says. “The only inconvenience is you have to return the cars to the location from where they were picked up. Sometimes you don’t want to return to your point of departure.”

He says gas has to be purchased from specific stations, which takes up valuable time.

“But generally it is a great alternative to cabs or TTC.”

Like car sharing, bike sharing is another solution which is being developed. The most ambitious bike sharing program in the country is run by the city of Montreal.

Bicycles are stationed throughout the city and customers make arrangements ahead of time or simply swipe their credit card at one of the various bike stations. They can then hop on a bike, use it for a quick run, and can drop it off at any one of the many other stations spread throughout the city. Different groups have tried the same thing in Toronto but on a much smaller scale.

However, if we’re going to encourage cycling, then bicycle paths and lanes have to be more widely available. Judging from the number of bicycles locked to stands, poles and fences, cycling has come of age in this city. Instead of removing bicycle lanes from main streets, as at least one mayoral candidate recently vowed, they should be increased.

That would make things safer for both cyclists and drivers and is definitely a green alternative.

Of course the most important transportation alternative for the city is the TTC. It’s the lifeblood of this metropolis. A couple of TTC strikes have amply demonstrated that. A fast, accessible and widespread public transportation system is the key to getting more cars off the road.

Unfortunately, every service expansion entails more time and money than originally planned, as witnessed by the recent St. Clair corridor project or the Sheppard line. The constant fare increases on an already expensive ride and the recent spate of very public complaints have underlined an ongoing customer service fiasco the TTC can’t get a handle on.

The TTC is not the only target of public ire. The GO service also has its share of dissatisfied customers. Delayed and canceled runs are a weekly if not daily happening.

Not everyone can afford or wants a downtown condo. Moving the working, playing  – and paying – public is the priority in this city. Any candidate who is running for mayor has to make transportation the key issue of his or her campaign.

OMG! That’s, like, so Tiger Woods!

You bet. Toronto city councillors are finally giving the city a show. I mean, the garbage strike was all kinds of thrills and spills, but it was messy and called for audience participation.

Now the city has a straightforward sex scandal. Despite the inherent initial shocker that there is, in fact, one municipal councillor who doesn’t need Viagra, the whole thing has unfolded with maudlin predictability.

Giambrone, who generally looks younger than his 32 years, faces the press looking like a bashful 12-year-old as he informs Torontonians he’s let down his girlfriend, fellow councillors, human civilization, god and Buddha by sleeping with multiple women. He tearfully withdraws from the mayoral race.

Councillor Denzel Minnan-Wong, always up for grabbing a little face-time, demands Giambrone’s resignation as Toronto Transit Commission chair. On camera he looks like a sullen 10-year-old.

Businesses and residents between Dovercourt and Lansdowne, outraged about the loss of parking spots to streetcar routes, say they always knew he couldn’t be trusted.

Journalists, sensing greatness around the corner through their exposure of civic peccadilloes, pull out their Bartlett’s Quotations and wax literary.

For example, Toronto Star reporter Linda Diebel writes:

“In making the decision of a lifetime, Adam Giambrone lived through a long, dark night of the soul.”

Nice. Here, let me try one:

“Yesterday the Toronto Transit Commissioner took an emergency short-turn on the Streetcar Named Desire.”

Too Blanche Dubois?

Okay, how about:

“Would you could you on a train? Would you could you in an elected public official’s office?”

Meanwhile, commentators in various media blabber on about “Blah-blah-blah role model… Blah-blah-blah Tiger Woods…”

At least we can be thankful that Canadians still don’t have the gumption to construct some monstrosity like Fox News. Otherwise we’d have a six-pack of commentators with bared fangs and retro hairstyles, frothing with indignation in some tic-tac-toe split-screen thing.

Nonetheless, like all reality television, the matter seems more scripted than fiction.

And I may be a bad citizen for saying so, but am I supposed to care about all this? It’s gaudy, there’s sex, but what is it besides someone’s private life?

It’s the 21st century. Should I have to revert to a turn-of-the-century Baptist every time a politician gets down?

Or why should anyone maintain the 18th-century fiction that politicians – especially city politicians – are these Napoleonic figures who stride through halls of power clothed in some patina of virtue?

And we wonder why politicians lie. They say things they don’t mean that we don’t believe, but we’re more comfortable with the denial. Sounds like a cheating relationship, doesn’t it? We’re such enablers.

Anyway, it’s our role as voters is to elect people, not canonize them, right?

And sure, it’s true that infidelity hurts people, and for certain Giambrone is accountable to certain individuals in his life. But did he harm his constituents? And please don’t bring up the parking spots. There’s more to life than parking.

Can Giambrone handle transportation issues or not should be the question. Instead, the question is becoming whether transit’s future will slide with the personality so closely tied to it.

This is a crucial time for transit projects in Toronto. Ten-year projects such as a city-wide LRT are in early stages, subject to fickle winds of funding. The city just wrote a big cheque to Bombardier to build new streetcars. There’s adjustment to Metrolinx, the TTC’s adopted big brother.

Then there are fare hikes, labour issues, customer revolts, plus councillors and mayoral candidates – many now on the warpath against Giambrone’s virility – using the phrase “war on cars.”

Finally there’s an election in the works that could shake up all of the above like a tumbler full of bingo balls.

I, for one, hope we can get all the innuendo and outrage out of our system and get back to, you know, issues.

What’s more crucial for this city – an actionable vision for public transit or what’s behind some councillor’s pants?

Fellow TTC commissioners are lining up to back chairman Adam Giambrone.

Councillor Sandra Bussin said she doesn’t see the connection between the personal trials of Giambrone and his day job as head of the TTC.

“He stepped down from the mayoralty (race), it doesn’t mean he has to step down from chair of the TTC, or step down as a councillor,” she said Thursday. “I think it’s far too punitive and I’m very disappointed in the constant calls for somebody to be stripped of all of his roles for the city.”

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A 35-year-old man is clinging to life in hospital after being struck by a streetcar in Toronto overnight.

Police say the man was talking on a cellphone when he walked in front of the oncoming streetcar in the Queen St. and Broadview Avenue area around 12:45 a.m. this morning.

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What other two industries can lure you in at an early age, offer their customers a product with little to no regard to the quality of said product, laugh off their detractors, raise their prices and arrogantly pat itself on the back for its public service, all without any major financial and corporate repercussions?

The most recent TTC gaffe, a pic of a sleeping TTC ticket collector by passenger Jason Wieler, brought derision and fury upon the transit system, prompting  TTC union bonehead Bob Kinnear to respond by BLAMING THE PUBLIC for not checking to see if the employee was healthy and breathing.

Apparently Wieler failed to assume that a man peacefully reclined in his chair, hands folded neatly across his body, might have fallen that way after suffering a heart attack or stroke.

Almost as ludicrous, Joe Fiorito of the Toronto Star suggests that Wieler was employing “vigilante justice” (seriously, Wieler is Batman) by taking a picture and running off to the Internet instead of taking the photo to the TTC head office where “he’ll be disciplined as he should be.”

Will he be disciplined Joe? Really?

1 – The union head has already virtually absolved him of any wrong-doing because, as we’ve already been told, this whole situation is our fault.

2 – All disciplinary issues regarding TTC employees are private and confidential. So I guess we’ll have to assume the TTC will do the right thing. Especially in light of….

3 – The TTC received over 31,000 complaints in 2009 – a huge jump from previous years. And, as is evident by their increasingly unreliable service, fare hikes, strikes, token-hoarding, constant service interruptions, sleeping employees and now officials telling us it’s all the CUSTOMER’S FAULT, they clearly DO NOT CARE about the patrons who use their service each day.

But what are you going to do about it Toronto? Start your own transit system? Brave rush hour traffic in your own car? Bankrupt yourself by taking taxis? Write a letter and neatly place it on the pile of over 31,000 other similarly ignored complaints?

What else can we do, Mr. Fiorito, but utilize “vigilante justice”? When all other avenues are blocked, or ignored, or too expensive, or useless, what choice do we have?

Good for you, Jason Wieler. This is how people are going to start taking out their frustrations with our flawed system. More pictures (two more have already surfaced here and here), videos, testimonials so the TTC can’t just shove the issue aside like they do with private complaints. Take it to the Internet, the press, somewhere wide out in the open. Embarrass the crap out of them until they have to act. If they don’t, someone is going to take it to the extreme one day and bring a gun or a knife or a bomb into a subway station or onto a bus to make their statement. Of course I would never wish that, but that’s how some desperate, disturbed, angry people react.

And one day, God forbid, that picture of the TTC employee on the front page of the paper may actually be one who no longer shows any signs of life. And then Bob Kinnear can blame the public some more. And Fiorito can write about how the shooter should have just written the TTC a letter.

For more commentary and interviews with the people who help shape Toronto’s arts and cultural communities, check out Mike’s full Bastard Type blog.

The Better Way is going to get a little pricier starting Sunday.

A fare hike approved by the TTC in November will go into effect tomorrow at 9 a.m. when the subway opens.

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After years of construction, shuttered businesses and inconvenient detours, the TTC’s much-maligned St. Clair right-of-way is, for the most part, up and running.

The first streetcar rolled out early Sunday morning on the new designated line between Bathurst Street and Lansdowne Avenue. It won’t be until next year that the final phase is done – the stretch between Keele Street and Oakwood Avenue.

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The TTC appears poised to reject AshleyMadison.com’s advances today.

Toronto Transit Commission officials are recommending the six city councillors on the authority’s advertising review committee jilt a $200,000 media buy offered by the controversial but highly successful website that advocates adultery.

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As of Monday, barriers will be in place and about a dozen extra TTC staff will be moving people farther down the southbound platform on the Yonge-University-Spadina line in the morning and afternoon rush hours. The aim is to move people away from a congested area at the north end of the platform.

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For the second day in a row, a TTC bus has become the unintended target of gunfire in the city’s west end.

At about 9:30pm Friday, a gold-coloured minivan drove up and began shooting at a 41-year-old man sitting in his silver SUV near Weston Road and Lawrence Avenue West.

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Suicide by subway train has always been an issue kept under wraps by the TTC. At the risk of spawning copycat attempts, even the mainstream media have agreed to a blackout, leading to frequent speculation about train delays and loudspeaker codes. The frequency of these incidents has been whispered about colloquially, but without any solid data, and many riders wonder if they should be chilled by a “passenger injury at track level” announcement.

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An editorial cartoon by Michael De Adder on the cover of the November 18th issue of the Metro has got the head of the Toronto transit workers union all hot and bothered. According to Bob Kinnear, the cartoon, which depicts a streetcar operator picking the pocket of a pedestrian bystander, places the blame for the recently announced fare increase on font line TTC workers rather than the commission’s management or insufficient government funding.

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TTC token hoarding is already becoming a problem and the transit commission has sprung into action with a serious effort to thwart it.

Effective immediately, TTC staffers have been instructed to sell no more than 5 tokens at fare collection booths. Automatic token dispensers in unattended subway entrances will be programmed to deliver just one token. And the worst part of this all? If a fare collector booth run out of tokens, staff have been instructed to charge riders the full fare of $2.75. Is this fare fair?

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