2018 London Municipal Election

[UpstairsCranberry]

Originally Posted by haljackey

Well I voted. Never studied up on how do do ranked ballots at all and it was super easy.

Good turnout at my polling station when I was there, but it was around 5pm so likely among the busiest time of the day.

-----

How long will it take to announce the mayor elect once polls close at 8pm?

My guess is 30 hours.

I believe it was 11:30 PM for the first round and then doing the rest tomorrow.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/live-civic-election-day-in-london-and-across-the-region

Megan Stacey notes city hall won’t release first-round ballot results until 11:30 p.m. or so. But it may be published earlier in wards with only two candidates: Ward 3 (incumbent: Mo Salih); Ward 6 (incumbent: Phil Squire); Ward 7 (incumbent: Josh Morgan) and possibly Ward 2 (incumbent: Bill Armstrong).

[Spoofy]

.

[Djeffery]

So long Bill Armstrong. God, no matter what else happens, this is awesome that he finally has been shown the door. I don't even live in that ward anymore and I still couldn't stand to see him.

Going to be interesting to see how the mayor race plays out. Cheng and Park are only a few hundred apart for 4th place, but Poalatto isn't that comfortably far ahead for 2nd, when you figure there are almost 3500 other possible votes in the 5-14th place candidates to be redistributed.

I was surprised to see Paul Van Meerbergen get back in. He was part of the Fontana 8 that got wiped out in 2014, although Paul wasn't as resoundingly knocked off that year like the others. Good to see Orser stays gone though.

[Dupcheck]

In undecided crowds the biggest sign will win you the election.
Holder knows how to play the game.

[MrSlippery519]

I voted just after 5pm last night and it was pretty quiet, I did not think to check what number I was but I sure hope the turn out was good.

I did see a few people on Facebook commenting they did not understand the ranked system so were just not voting. That is ridiculous as you do not have to rank people first of all and second they explain it to you in about 30 seconds when you get your ballot.

[GreatTallNorth2]

Originally Posted by Spoofy

BRT is dead.

From reddit:



This city is literally hopeless. As a student almost done school, I can't wait to get to the GTA.

Congrats on pushing away all the young talent Londoners.

Someone has their facts wrong. Salih is 100% for BRT and Lewis is for improving transit, maybe adjusting the current plan, not killing it. It don't think it's dead yet. Cassidy just won and it looks like Hopkins (pro-BRT) is going to win as well. No doubt that with the 6 month delay and a new council, there will be some tweaks and changes, but I wouldn't give up yet.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by GreatTallNorth2

Someone has their facts wrong. Salih is 100% for BRT and Lewis is for improving transit, maybe adjusting the current plan, not killing it. It don't think it's dead yet. Cassidy just won and it looks like Hopkins (pro-BRT) is going to win as well. No doubt that with the 6 month delay and a new council, there will be some tweaks and changes, but I wouldn't give up yet.

Given the amount of roadwork needed in London, and all the federal and provincial cash available right now (notwithstanding the whims of Doug Ford), the City would be foolish not to build BRT. Cancelling it would put city taxpayers on the hook for the full cost of the needed reconstruction.

I feel like a lot of anti-BRT people do not understand this, and are going to be sorely disappointed when their property taxes go up to make up for the lost federal and provincial money. Though given the ages of the anti-BRT folks they may all be in nursing homes by that time and won't have to worry about property taxes anyways.

[MrSlippery519]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Given the amount of roadwork needed in London, and all the federal and provincial cash available right now (notwithstanding the whims of Doug Ford), the City would be foolish not to build BRT. Cancelling it would put city taxpayers on the hook for the full cost of the needed reconstruction.

I feel like a lot of anti-BRT people do not understand this, and are going to be sorely disappointed when their property taxes go up to make up for the lost federal and provincial money. Though given the ages of the anti-BRT folks they may all be in nursing homes by that time and won't have to worry about property taxes anyways.

Feels like some of the politicians should be pushing that as well, so that anti-RT people understand. In fact tax payers likely will have to pay more in the long run NOT building RT.

[GreatTallNorth2]

Elected Ward Councillors

W1: Michael van Holst*
W2: Shawn Lewis
W3: Mo Salih*
W4: Jesse Helmer*
W5: Maureen Cassidy*
W6: Phil Squire*
W7: Josh Morgan*
W8: Steve Lehman
W9: Anna Hopkins*
W10: Paul Van Meerbergen
W11: Stephen Turner*
W12: Elizabeth Peloza
W13: Arielle Kayabaga
W14: Steve Hillier

We've got 6 new councillors and we will have a new mayor.

[haljackey]

Ed Holder is trending on Twitter, yet he doesn't have a twitter.

[Stevo26]

I'm very disappointed with the election result, naturally, but can't say I'm surprised.

It was basically a four-way race with Park and Cheng pulling up the rear.

It looks like BRT is dead and London will continue to remain the backwater, backwards-looking city it is.

I'm even more disappointed that Londoners are so lacking in vision. They want London to have a strong economy, but aren't willing to take the necessary risks to get there. Instead, they'd rather worry about the horrors of giving junkies supervised injection sites, even though those sites are smart public policy, if your aim is to reduce the number of dirty needles littering some of London's streets.

Looking at Holder's platform, I could see that he intends to do essentially nothing with the LTC. A few tiny nips and tucks here, but nothing substantive.

[Truenorth00]

London gets to watch as Hamilton and Waterloo build LRT. We'll see in a few years how quickly people flip once those other cities put theirs into service.

[Stevo26]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

London gets to watch as Hamilton and Waterloo build LRT. We'll see in a few years how quickly people flip once those other cities put theirs into service.

They'll have more to say, I'm sure, when they see young people not coming to London to study or work and opting for Hamilton or the K-W Region instead.

Like I said before, there are a lot of Londoners who lack vision, so I doubt that they'll be able to make the connection between BRT being killed off and declines in enrollments at Western or Fanshawe and fewer high-tech and IT firms choosing to locate in London.

Young people attending post-secondary institutions of education or starting their first full-time job have a far greater effect on a local economy than people realize. If they decide to stay, get married and have kids, the knock-on positive economic benefits are even greater.

However, London's problems really began when the city blew its opportunity to build a proper in-city expressway back in the 1960s. "Too expensive." "Nobody will use it." "We don't need it." "It will cause disruption." "People will lose their homes and businesses due to expropriation or construction." "I won't use it, so nobody else should need it or want it." "Taxes will go up to pay for it." "London is too small for 'x'. "

It seems like this anti-everything mentality set up roots back in the 1960s and has never really let go. Various factions have nurtured that mentality for personal and political gain. Has it gotten London anywhere?

Moreover, do all of those arguments look familiar? They should, because they are exactly the same arguments people advanced when arguing against building the proposed BRT/LRT projects.

Meanwhile, the K-W Region and Hamilton cracked on with building their own in-city expressways long before anyone guessed they were really necessary. Both cities are actively working on developing rapid-transit systems to accommodate future population growth, which they know is coming.

Both cities stand to prosper in the future because they took risks and ignored the cries of the professional whiners and axe-grinders. Whither London??

[ssiguy]

Yes KW and Hamilton built their inner-city expressways which is why you have, especially in KW, a bunch of disjointed neighbourhoods and lower per-capita transit ridership. Neither of those cities are even remotely as nice or livable as London. Hamilton still has it/s ugly Steeltown reputation and KW is seen as one big suburban office park and a bunch of malls connected by freeways.


London should have built a more suburban across-town freeway especially north/southbut thank God Londoners cared enough about their city to not allow hundreds of homes to be destroyed and communties ripped apart.

[ssiguy]

As far as the BRT, it's dead but frankly it was dead a while ago. Londoners voted a resounding no to the proposition and frankly I would have done the same. It was an ill conceived plan to begin with, poorly sold by the city, didn't take into account London's far more solid built urban form than especially KW, and worst of all, by the city's own admission, wouldn't have really made any difference in travel times for the users and many would actually see their travel times increase as their once single bus ride downtown now would require a transfer onto the BRT.

That said, I think the transit expansion a newer plan will take hold because Londoners don't want their portion of infrastructure funding going somewhere else. The transportation infrastructure by the Ottawa requires a plan that will be 'transformative' and a rail bridge over Adelaide doesn't qualify. An urban expressway would but it will never get built and the ever debated ring-road would not be eligible because it would hardly touch the city boundaries.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

That said, I think the transit expansion a newer plan will take hold because Londoners don't want their portion of infrastructure funding going somewhere else.

LOL. You actually think the average Londoner thinks this deeply? No.

Here's what is going to happen. They kill the BRT plan. They won't even really talk about any higher order transit for this term. There'll be some murmuring in the next election. But as Waterloo really starts to grow and once Hamilton and Mississauga's LRTs are in sight (about 2024), Londoners will be asking why can't they have the same thing. At that point, they'll have discovered that their councillors blew most of their federal and provincial grants on road network expansion.

BRT would have been a nice stepping stone to LRT in about a decade. Now, there's no way London sees any higher order transit for at least a decade. It takes half a decade to actually build anything. And you need half a decade to plan, approve, secure funding, etc. This election basically rules out higher order transit till maybe 2030.

[Djeffery]

I don't really see why we are pinning London's hopes of competing with Waterloo and Hamilton on a second-rate "transit-light" BRT plan. Both of those plans are much larger in scope and cost and both involve LRT. And both cities have much higher growth projections than London does. If anyone really thinks a student at Western is going to stay in London because they can ride a fancy BRT bus downtown rather than a regular LTC bus, they are dreaming. And also in dreamland is the idea we can upgrade to LRT once we've already spent half a billion on BRT. If we think we want LRT, then put the plan forward, try to convince the governments to fund that the way they are for Waterloo and Hamilton (a billion each), and just get it done that way to begin with. But we know London doesn't need or can afford LRT.

[Blitz]

Holder's answers about transit during the debates were horrible and he repeated them again on CTV news tonight. He talked about how traffic lights need to be synchronized (they already are) and how London Transit should get an app that tells you what time buses arrive in real time (it already has an app that does just that and it's actually quite accurate).

Originally Posted by Stevo26

However, London's problems really began when the city blew its opportunity to build a proper in-city expressway back in the 1960s. "Too expensive." "Nobody will use it." "We don't need it." "It will cause disruption." "People will lose their homes and businesses due to expropriation or construction." "I won't use it, so nobody else should need it or want it." "Taxes will go up to pay for it." "London is too small for 'x'. "

That right there is the problem. Kitchener, Windsor, Hamilton, and St. Catharines all have expressways and have nowhere near the traffic issues that London has.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Yes KW and Hamilton built their inner-city expressways which is why you have, especially in KW, a bunch of disjointed neighbourhoods and lower per-capita transit ridership. Neither of those cities are even remotely as nice or livable as London.

I think this is easy for you to say from far off British Columbia but when I'm sitting in traffic every single day in London and it's taking me 25 minutes to get from the west side of the UWO campus to the east side of downtown I'm certainly not thinking about how 'nice or livable' London is.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

I don't really see why we are pinning London's hopes of competing with Waterloo and Hamilton on a second-rate "transit-light" BRT plan. Both of those plans are much larger in scope and cost and both involve LRT. And both cities have much higher growth projections than London does. If anyone really thinks a student at Western is going to stay in London because they can ride a fancy BRT bus downtown rather than a regular LTC bus, they are dreaming. And also in dreamland is the idea we can upgrade to LRT once we've already spent half a billion on BRT. If we think we want LRT, then put the plan forward, try to convince the governments to fund that the way they are for Waterloo and Hamilton (a billion each), and just get it done that way to begin with. But we know London doesn't need or can afford LRT.

I really don't get this mentality. No student is staying because they can ride a BRT. What they may stay for is quality of life. And given that the voters of London have now decided to make their city a congested hellhole, how will quality of life compare to those other cities? What businesses will locate to London if they can't get quality workers to stay in London? This is what all this is about. It's unfortunate that people are so ignorant and short-sighted that they can't see past their own utility for anything.

And Waterloo's LRT was $818 million in capital costs with $253 million coming in from KWC itself:

http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo...uestions.asp#f

A region that is 36% larger spending about 30% more scales pretty well in my books. London would have built a mode and network suitable for its size. KWC is doing the same. And getting that BRT built would have allowed for eventual conversion of those corridors to LRT later if done right.

[Stevo26]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Yes KW and Hamilton built their inner-city expressways which is why you have, especially in KW, a bunch of disjointed neighbourhoods and lower per-capita transit ridership. Neither of those cities are even remotely as nice or livable as London. Hamilton still has it/s ugly Steeltown reputation and KW is seen as one big suburban office park and a bunch of malls connected by freeways.

The K-W region put in that expressway because of increasing and unmanageable congestion along King Street, which was its only real major north-south route prior to the construction of the expressway.

Yes, it has resulted in 'islands' of neighbourhoods that aren't well connected to the rest of the city, but London has a similar problem in some areas, with neighbourhoods that are kind of 'hived off' from the rest of the city because of one-way streets and only one street that connects the neighbourhood to the main arteries.

Sure, Hamilton still has the ugly 'Steeltown' rep, but part of that is due to the major decline in the steel industry which caused the local economy to be somewhat hollowed-out. Parts of Hamilton Mountain are nice, and Westdale and Stoney Creek are nice neighbourhoods that pretty much remove you from the grimy feel of the rest of the city. Plus there's Ancaster, which is really nice, although not really part of Hamilton proper.

London should have built a more suburban across-town freeway especially north/southbut thank God Londoners cared enough about their city to not allow hundreds of homes to be destroyed and communties ripped apart.

Well, the across-town freeway is a moot point now since it will never, ever be built. That ship sailed long ago. I don't know that the proposed freeway would have done the damage that you suggest, because I'm not totally familiar with all the details of it. Plus, I wasn't living in London around the time that the expressway was being looked at, so don't really have a better feel for its potential impact had it been built.