Mayor Ford’s subway advocate boycotting final transit meeting

Frustrated that he’s being “ignored,” Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s subway advocate is boycotting the final meeting of an advisory panel on Sheppard Avenue transit.

Gordon Chong is skipping the meeting, which was scheduled to begin Thursday at 12:30 p.m., and he intends to quit the panel if its members decide to axe his pro-subway arguments from a crucial report to council.

“If they cut it out entirely, I’m gone,” Mr. Chong said Thursday. “I will not sign on to that report.”

Mr. Chong opted not to make an 11th-hour pitch to his fellow panelists, most of whom are on the record as supporting above-ground, light-rail transit on Sheppard Avenue East.

“I spent five or six meetings arguing it and frankly, even my patience wears a little thin,” Mr. Chong said. “I don’t like being ignored and then dismissed and then having our work diluted in a way that doesn’t faithfully reflect what we were saying.”

Mr. Chong’s potential resignation is the latest twist in Toronto’s subway versus LRT saga, which is expected to culminate in council chambers March 21.


Council will decide whether to spend what’s left of an $8.4-billion provincial commitment on a subway or LRT for Sheppard Avenue East.

TTC Chair Karen Stintz and her allies offered the panel as an olive branch to Mr. Ford at the February meeting where they revived most of a light-rail network the mayor killed on his first day in office.

Mr. Ford rejected the compromise and the panel wound up dominated by LRT proponents, meaning there’s little surprise at the group’s pending recommendations.

Mr. Chong, who spent nearly a year preparing an interim report that concluded a subway is feasible on Sheppard with new revenue tools, said he knew from the outset the panel wouldn’t recommend subways.

But he wants his case for a public-private partnership to be included in the body of a report, or in a 23-page appendix that he and his researcher, Joanne Kennelly, submitted to the panel this week.

One source familiar with the panel’s work said the report will go beyond a straight-up recommendation for a full LRT deep into eastern Scarborough.

It will also analyze possible compromises, including a two-stop underground extension to Victoria Park, one of the options the mayor’s office is shopping to the centrist councillors who will determine the outcome.

Original Article
Source: Globe
Author: kelly grant