Toronto Mayor David Miller: Earth Day Clean-Up, Go Public Transit

by Tomitheos Linardos | April 19, 2010 at 11:53 am

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Earth Day is April 22 and Toronto Mayor David Miller wants to clean-up the city and lobby the Ontario government to save Transit City funding for subway expansion.

The Ontario government has slashed the Transit City budget by nearly half in this year's provincial budget.

The TTC already began planning, engineering and purchasing modern light rail vehicles to replace Toronto streetcars and subway cars for increased safety and public capacity. Although these new transit vehicles are built in Thunder Bay, the parts are manufactured in Toronto and have created many new jobs.

Toronto Mayor David Miller Elected on Subway Plans

With more accessibility to the city's resources and a fast rail-based transit, Miller believes all GTA residents will contribute in Toronto's economic development. Miller was the former Toronto transit commissioner and was re-elected in 2006 on the subway expansion platform.

Mayor David Miller's announced his plan to extend the Transit City plan, with over 120km of light rail transit, at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December 2009, where he was chair of the C40 group of cities leading over 100 other city mayors in the fight against climate change.

Miller promised to also create green jobs and reduce Toronto greenhouse gas by 6% below 1990 CO2 levels by 2012 and 30% below 1990 CO2 levels by 2020.

Premier Dalton McGuinty on Toronto Transit

The time to make this sort of ambitious but realistic investment is now. Our economy demands it ..what’s more, our families deserve it, because gridlock not only saps strength out of our economy; it steals time from our families.

Recent mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson and others are riding the same Transit City expansion campaign with talks about mounting $5 pay tolls on the Don Valley Parkway to discourage gridlock and to fund the Transit City project.

Toronto's Mild Winter = Climate Change?

..the recent warm weather spell has brought out Toronto golfers in the GTA early this year, there are some concerns about the temperate northern climate conditions: Acting on reports from Inuit elders and hunters, scientists have confirmed that the weather in part of the Arctic is becoming more unpredictable.

Miller wants to celebrate Earth Day by lobbying for the reduction of greenhouse gases, recycling and climate change via an adequate city-wide public transit system.

*** UPDATE ****

Toronto Mayor David MIller and Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone will host the award evening with celebrations and special guests on Friday April 23, 2010 at the Green Living Show, Direct Energy Centre at Exhibition Place

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