Buried in the marathon TTC meeting last week (a new record: 7 hours, 43 minutes from the announced start time of the public session) was a proposal to update Bylaw No. 1. This scintillating piece of legal literature adorns every TTC vehicle in a shortened form, and it’s rather out of date.
Never fear! The TTC Legal folks bring us the new, revised version. It’s a lot longer. I think the TTC will need to install station domination advertising just to fit all the text in, or they will need a scrolling video in every car. Thrilling reading. Not including the definitions or the table of fines, it is 8 single-spaced pages long.
You would think that an organization that trumpets its ability to manage billion dollar projects, to write complex requests for proposals, to operate the largest single part of the municipal infrastructure, could manage something as basic as telling people what they can’t do on the TTC. But no. This bylaw reads in places as if it were drafted by someone who never actually used the system and who has little idea of the implications of its content.
Before the report came up for discussion, I flagged it as problematic and gave an annotated copy to the Chair for information. To my surprise, rather than holding the report down, Chairman Giambrone suggested that it be approved with an amendment to come back to a future meeting. Fortunately, to come into force, the bylaw needs to be submitted to the Chief Justice for approval, and if the TTC has an ounce of sense, they will hold off until they fix the problems.
Some of what follows may seem legally pedantic, but it’s this sort of poor drafting that gets TTC customers hassled by security staff who have nothing better to do with their time than to enforce badly written rules.
The full bylaw is available on the TTC website.
Steve Munro 