Transit foot-draggers will be hard to move
If you want an expansive, efficient, new-century transportation system to move you and your grandchildren around the Greater Toronto region, you will have to fight for it. The battle will be long and hard. The victory won’t be total. This will not be a rout, but a negotiated truce among battle-fatigued combatants. The opposition is entrenched and near intractable so just to get to a state of truce will demand herculean effort. Events this week underscore the above reality, as well as the realization that everyone’s an enemy unless proven otherwise. The Toronto Region Board of Trade, as enlightened a civic voice as one can find in a business lobby, continues to show a progressive bent with the release of its menu of funding tools that we could use to pay the $50-billion transportation bill over the next quarter-century. The idea of the plan called The Big Move (developed by Metrolinx, the provincial agency set up to manage regional transit expansion) is to keep North America’s worst commute from getting longer by the time we get to 2035. The $50 billion, therefore, is a starting point. Fixing our transportation mess will cost a lot of money over a lot of years, coming from a lot of sources such as the private sector, business, users and average citizens. Any agency or analyst or advocate is likely to tap the same well of funds offered by the board of trade: 10 cents per litre fuel tax, 1 per cent regional sales tax, 30 cents per kilometre toll for lone drivers to use high occupancy lanes, and a $1 per space daily parking levy. Those are offered because Metrolinx must submit its list to the province by June 1. CivicAction, a coalition of city builders, will release its toolbox soon. So will the City of Toronto. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath dumped on the board of trade plan, decrying the idea of tolls. On that, she is aligned with Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. They can all read the same polling numbers and, with a provincial election possible anytime, this is a hot-button issue that could swing votes. In fact, a new poll in Thursday’s Star showed 52 per cent of city of Toronto residents opposed to the board of trade suite of taxes. Expla- nations include: they don’t know where the money is going; they may favour some of the funding tools and not others, but were forced to choose “no” because the poll lumped them all together; better education is needed. All correct, to a point.
One commuter quoted in the story by Star reporter Tess Kalinowski beautifully sums up the dilemma. He said, “I pay enough as it is.” TTC service is horrendous compared with major world cities, but don’t ask me to pay more.
There are many forked tongues on this issue. The enemy is us.
Anyone who claims that if only government was to cut the gravy, chop spending and stop taxing us, there’d be money for all the subways we want. Ford has proven that claim to be a lie. He got elected on it, and look how many subways his approach has netted us.
Anyone who says there is no need for tax revenue to fund transit expansion as the private sector is lining up to build it for us, free. (Another Ford Brothers fantasy.)
Anyone hiding behind excuses such as, “Transit users should pay for it; drivers pay enough already;” or “What’s in it for me?” Or “The money will disappear into a pit.”
If those are some of your excuses, you may be your own worst enemy on this file — another reason why solutions are so difficult to find.
Of course, just stating the facts and calling out these fraudulent transit allies pushes them to further dig in their heels. That is why this is the fight of a generation.
Motivated by the common good, driven by the frustration of being stuck in traffic congestion, and fuelled by the righteousness of the cause, Toronto can win this.
But this is war. And when victory finally comes, there will be more than two million of our GTA neighbours still opposed and fighting the solutions. Royson James