Yes: We need to shift all transit up to Ontario

If you care about our transit system, the status quo is not an option anyone should be defending. In mid-August, on behalf of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, Environics polled Greater Toronto, Hamilton and Waterloo region residents on transportation issues. More than 85 per cent of respondents —drivers, riders and walkers alike — agreed the region’s transit network needs a “significant overhaul.” Within Toronto, 91 per cent agreed.

The board commissioned the poll to follow up on the Superlinx concept paper we released late last year. Superlinx calls for the creation of a single regional transit agency for the entire Toronto region backed solely by the provincial government.

Combining some, or all, of the tasks transit agencies manage into a single city-region authority isn’t an unusual, unwieldy or radical concept. In fact, it’s more common nationally and internationally than our current ad hoc approach.

The point of Superlinx isn’t that Queen’s Park will be better or worse than local governments at delivering transit; city and provincial transit services have strengths and weaknesses. Nor is it a simplistic call to save money by amalgamating local transit systems. Superlinx is about structural reform, concentrating responsibility with the level of government already constitutionally, financially and legislatively empowered to handle this challenge.

For 20 years, mayors, transit advocates and urbanists have fought to shift long-term growth revenues, financing capacity and planning authority down to where most of the transit is: the municipalities. The Board of Trade proudly led those discussions.

Despite everyone’s effort, growing our transit system remains a struggle. Mayors must still go cap in hand to assemble billions in funding from other governments, seeking dozens of authorizations from council to proceed at every step, praying along the way other governments don’t change the rules after — or even between — elections. If we can’t shift resources down, let’s flip the problem around: shift transit authority up to the order of government where growth revenues, financing capacity and regional planning authority already exists.

Some Toronto critics argue a Superlinx model would give the province a tool to prioritize suburban transit over core transit needs. Others insist a provincially based agency is more likely to put political priorities ahead of evidence-based thinking. The board has tried to address both concerns with new ideas on how to govern a regional transit agency.

Still, there’s bad news for those critics: we already face those risks with our current system. Little happens in rapid transit without Queen’s Park’s approval. It’s no coincidence the Eglinton Crosstown line — with a capital cost of $5.3 billion — is 100 per cent provincially financed. City debt constraints mean the more we want the transit system to grow, the more provincial influence will increase over time, without or without reform.

To be clear, the province’s promise to “upload subways” isn’t enough to deliver a regional transit model. Cherrypicking certain pieces of our transit network will make the system more disjointed, not less. Superlinx proposed uploading everything —assets, liabilities, debt, planning, fares, real estate development and so on. The subway upload debate should only serve as a starting point for discussions on a more systematic overhaul, with mayors and cities at the table.

The Toronto region gained nearly two million people from 1991-2011. We’re expected to gain another two million in the next 20 years. We need a regional approach, because we already live and work regionally.

We must balance the region’s current and urgent transit priorities with the future needs of potential riders. Some of the harshest critics of a regional strategy are the same critics who attacked Metrolinx for their latest long-range plan, insisting it didn’t do enough to move future suburban commuters from cars to transit. If we can strike that balance, we’ll get better service. We’ll also give millions of voters across the region a shared political stake in defending the transit system we all urgently need.

There will be tradeoffs with any model, but one thing is certain: nostalgia for the TTC of the 1970s is not a realistic strategy for the future. We can continue to try to make the old model fit the new city, or we can think ahead.

Jan De Silva is president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade.