Moving Beyond Ford: The Transportation We Want

Public Goods • March 17, 2019

In Toronto and beyond, campaigns are underway to confront the Ford government’s initiative to take the Toronto subway system from the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) in order to reorganize, further automobilize and possibly privatize transit and transportation across the Greater Toronto area (GTA). This and other Ford Government initiatives have put progressive transportation advocates as well as transit riders and workers on the defensive. Once more, proactive initiatives are forced onto the backburner. This includes proposals to make transit free, plans to provide mass public transit to working class neighbourhoods across the city and region, to integrate public transit, cycling and pedestrian life from the ground up, and shift transportation patterns from car and truck traffic at a regional scale.

Instead of only reacting to provincial policy, this panel discussion looks at current transit campaigns to a longer-term question: what would a just and environmentally sustainable transportation future for the Toronto region look like?

Moderated and introduction by Stefan Kipfer from Free Transit Toronto. Presentations by:

Daniel Tseghay from TTCRiders and the Anti-Upload Campaign. He is one of the editors of RankandFile.ca.
Deborah Littman from Keep it Public.
Herman Rosenfeld from Free Transit Toronto, and TTCriders.
Roger Keil is York Research Chair in Global Sub/Urban Studies at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University in Toronto.
Tricia Wood is Professor of Geography at York University and co-founder of the City Institute at York University; she also writes an urban affairs/transit column for Spacing.ca. She is one of the co-authors of Mixed Signals: Toronto Transit in a North American Context.