Another reason I don't live downtown...

Everyone who knows me well knows by now that I absolutely despise a few certain aspects of living in Toronto (or most other big cities). For those of you who don't, these main reasons are as follows:

1) Cost of Living
Houses in Toronto cost a ridiculous amount of money to buy. Based on my salary, I can only borrow about 1/3 to 1/2 the necessary amount of money from a bank. I hate to say this, but I almost need to see interest rates jump up to 30% overnight just so that some property goes into foreclosure. If that doesn't happen, I will have a very difficult time affording a house. Of course, house prices are obviously governed by the laws of supply and demand, as well as real estate agents who just want to make an extra buck. I wish it were legal for me to just tell the agent that I'd give him some money under the table if he could get me a price I'd be satisfied with. Anyways, with all these buyers in the market and only a limited number of sellers, it's no wonder that I need to figure out how to afford a house... which brings me to the next issue.

2) Massive, massive, rampant overpopulation
There are way too many people living here. There is no way to control the massive influx of people trying to move into this city. Everywhere you look, it's overcrowded. I wish there was some way to deter people from coming here too quickly. At the rate the city grows, the strain on various public services becomes greater and greater. There are never enough doctors. The lineups at government offices such as the passport office seem to get longer all the time. The crooks are probably slowly outnumbering the police. The pollution gets worse faster than the city's ability to deal with it. The list goes on and on.

I tell most people outside of Toronto to stay the hell away from the city because otherwise, it's bad for them and it's bad for me. I usually say this in the exact same way I tell people to stay the hell away from the field of Computer Science. There are simply WAY too many people in this field. It's making my life very difficult, and I almost guarantee that it will make the life of anyone who graduates with that degree very difficult as well. Despite what university recruiters tell you, at this point in time, getting a degree in Computer Science could very well be the worst thing that you could possibly do other than start bombing places at random.

3) Traffic/Transportation
Overpopulation is the direct cause of the crappy traffic situations I deal with on a daily basis in Toronto. There are probably more cars in Toronto than there are jobs. And due to the aforementioned issue of no regulation of population influx, the streets cannot accommodate the traffic, nor can the highways. It takes me almost half an hour to get to work every day, and I'm considered extremely lucky. I really feel for people who are stuck in traffic for 2-4 hours a day. Travelling to and from work is often just as energy-depleting as actually working... sometimes more! So if you can imagine lengthening your workday by 25% to 50%, but not being financially compensated for it, you'll know why I am so angered by all those other cars. Few employers will pay you for the time it takes to get to work, though I don't actually know any.

Enter the public transit solution. For the vast majority of Toronto, this is summed up by surface transit (busses, streetcars, etc) and dedicated transit (subways, go trains, etc).

Surface transit is summed up by two words: Almost Useless. During rush hour, surface transit is subjected to the exact same problems that cars are. In fact, the two conflict with each other and really annoy the living daylights out of the drivers and passengers. Outside of rush hour, most people don't even use transit because they're working. In fact, the only people I can see the busses helping out are people who either don't work, or have no choice but to use the busses during rush hour.

On the other hand, subways are spectacular. They transport massive quantities of people very quickly. The best part is, they usually do this without affecting the flow of traffic on the surface. What a novel idea! The downside to subways? They're extremely expensive to build. I'm sure at one point, the subway system probably was useful to most of the city of Toronto. Unfortunately, the city expanded far faster than it can really handle, and the subway was unable to keep up (see the section on streets and highways doing the same thing). These days I figure the subway is only really useful to a quarter of the city or less on a daily basis. It's practically useless for me.


So why did I pick on downtown in the title of this blog entry? Take all the stuff I mentioned above that I hated about Toronto. Multiply it by some number greater than 1. In fact, you can probably multiply it by about 10 or more. Every problem I listed above is worse downtown than anywhere else. The only saving grace is that if you live downtown, the subway is your best friend. Otherwise, you'd have to pay me to live downtown. And you'd have to pay me a helluva lot.

So what's the other reason that I don't live downtown? Let me tell you a story about a Shopper's Drug Mart near my home. Personally, I find Shopper's to be a great store. They have all sorts of medications to keep me well, and they carry a bunch of other stuff that makes it so that I can justify going there. On top of that, the prices of many things are fair. The one thing I hate about that particular Shopper's is that every time I go there, there's a guy waiting in the parking lot to beg me for money. I hate telling him that I don't have money, but at the same time, I hate giving him money. Regardless of what action I take, he's always there the next time, waiting to beg me for more.

The sad part is that I'm used to this kind of stuff happening downtown. It happens all the time there. I'm sure the police would deal with it, but they're too busy trying to keep up with the increasing numbers of criminals that accompanies an unregulated influx of people. The problem is that there's now a guy who probably wandered away from downtown, got lost, and found himself near my neighbourhood's Shopper's Drug Mart. What's more likely is that the network of people who beg for money grew faster than downtown Toronto could accomodate and some of them must have gotten pushed into other areas.

What a sad state of affairs. So there you have it. Now you know a brand new reason why I don't want to live in downtown Toronto. The worst part is that it won't be long before I won't want to live in the areas surrounding downtown either...