In 2011, no file was more screwed up by Mayor Rob Ford’s administration than public transit. And as we enter 2012, no other issue will require as much attention to ward off imminent disaster. Luckily, fixing the situation should be relatively simple and painless, as long as we act quickly. For those who haven’t been paying close attention, here’s a recap of the headline-level problems:(1) The penalty tab for cancelling the old Transit City plan currently sits at $65 million and is climbing, according to TTC General Manager Gary Webster. Former TTC chair Adam Giambrone has said he thinks it could reach almost $200 million. This expense was incurred by the mayor without approval from city council.
(2) Burying the entire length of the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT line instead of just the parts from Keele Street to Laird Drive has almost doubled its cost to $8.2 billion, making it the most expensive infrastructure project in the country, according to ReNew Canada magazine. This will eat up all of the money the provincial government has committed to spending on transit in Toronto for the next decade, and delay the opening of that line by several years. Even worse, there is absolutely no point in tunnelling the line underground east of Laird Drive, where Eglinton is a highway-style boulevard that could easily accommodate LRT tracks without hurting car traffic flow. As Councillor John Parker—normally a Ford supporter—has said, “It’ll be the goofiest LRT line known to man.”
(3) The mayor’s plan to build a Sheppard subway extension financed entirely by private sector money is dead in the water. Gordon Chong, who Ford hand-picked to shake the business trees and make it rain free subways, will report early this year to the mayor, but he’s already told the daily newspapers that the private sector won’t pay more than 10 to 30 per cent of the expected $4.2 billion cost. It appears at this point unlikely to be built at all.
But it’s a new year, time for resolutions and fresh starts and all that. So I suggest that the mayor could announce that after a year of careful investigation, it is time to tweak the plan—to perfect it, say.
My own preference—and that of some activists currently rallying around the name Save Transit City—is to revert to the old plan, or something very close to it. Pros: We’d get three new rapid transit lines instead of one, it’d be quicker to build, would be financed entirely by the province and would make almost all of the cancellation fees we’re currently incurring disappear, saving somewhere between $65 million and $200 million. Cons: Rob Ford wouldn’t want to admit he was reverting to the plan he proclaimed “dead.” (Easy solution: He could call his revised plan “Transit Plus Toronto,” or whatever new branding he likes, and make some cosmetic tweaks to give it the appearance of being a different plan.)
But if he doesn’t want to do that, he could at least revert to the original above-and-below-ground hybrid plan on Eglinton, which would free up about $4 billion in provincial transit money while speeding up completion significantly. That $4 billion could then be spent to build the Sheppard Transit extension, which was the mayor’s only real transit-related campaign promise. And if the mayor’s private sector partners eventually do come on board, he could extend that subway line out to Malvern or build a mass transit line on Finch West or a downtown relief subway line.
Any of those options would be a welcome improvement on the current multi-billion-dollar boondoggle. And, if handled right, this would appear to the public as more of a refinement than an about-face. Ford made this kind of face-saving compromise on the Waterfront issue in mid-2011, and doing so was one of his best decisions of the year. But if he won’t do it, city council could do it for him, by voting to change the plan and asking the province to respect their vote. With or without the mayor’s cooperation, someone needs to make 2012 the year of transit sanity.
Original Article
Source: the Grid TO
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