A transit plan: pause, study, debate, do what’s best

They are not ready to build a subway, or an LRT. Neither a horsedrawn carriage nor a gondola.

Toronto City Council — and the transit planners and agencies supporting our municipal government — would do well to take a pause, get their stories straight, develop real numbers from real studies and then spark an informed debate about our transit future. Call a referendum, if you wish. The city is already so far behind in transit infrastructure — and so conflicted about how best to catch up and proceed — that a sober second thought is not the worst course of action.

Such a delay rankles. We need to be moving at three or four times the pace afoot. But it’s clear our transit leaders themselves are confused — or deliberately peddling confusion — and the public doesn’t know who or what to believe anymore.

Some readers are raring to go. They would give our governments an extra $100 a year, dedicated to transit, if only there was a conduit to take the cash. And a plan they could believe in. Instead, this is what we have:

Scarborough’s subway hero, Mayor Rob Ford, has insisted for more than two years he didn’t need a penny of your taxes for subways because the private sector would gladly build them. Finally he has seen the light — but only dimly. City council appears ready to approve property taxes for transit, but Ford continues to muddy the water. City manager Joe Pennachetti says he needs half a per cent increase in 2014 and 2015, followed by .6 per cent hike in 2016, to pay $745 million of the city’s nearly $1 billion share. That’s about $41, phased in over three years, for the average property taxpayer. Ford fusses he can only stomach a quarter per cent hike, or half of that. This seems a minor dispute until you realize that the Scarborough subway that is the beneficiary of this proposed tax hike is a transit line that will trigger a mountain of other costs that can’t be avoided and can’t be met without further taxes. A report to city council set for debate Tuesday sparked a wave of discontent Friday, when it should have been received as common sense alert from the city manager. If you are going to proceed with a subway instead of the fully funded LRT, please note the following, Pennachetti is saying. For example: “Regardless of the alignment . . . the impact of extending the BloorDanforth line on the transit network as a whole is not clearly understood at this time. “The ridership growth attributed to the extension of the subway would require the early implementation of Automatic Train Con- trol (ATC) on the entire BloorDanforth line, in addition to other system improvements to relieve overcrowding on the Yonge Subway, south of Bloor and at Bloor-Yonge Station. “The construction of a Relief Line subway or equivalent may become a prerequisite to address the higher ridership on the Bloor-Danforth line that will be accelerated by construction of the subway extension.” Whoooooa! We didn’t know anything about “may be a prerequisite,” some councillors claim. Then, there are all the other transit projects still to be debated and costed and funded. The mayor’s attitude towards those has been to turn his back and reject all the funding tools — disparaging them as taxes. So, a pause, please. Some will fear this is a tactic to deny Scarborough residents their subway. Others will see it as a strategy to get LRTs and Transit City back on the rails. A few will consider it a mistake because it slows progress just when all three governments have committed money.

And some misguided souls will rejoice because they actually think Toronto is the only major city in the world that can treat subways and transit building as a regular manufacturing exercise: If people want it they will pay for it, so build only transit that the fare box can support.

There is nothing to fear. The pause would only strengthen the case for transit improvement. Torontonians are prepared to pay for the new lines. They will engage in a discussion on what’s best, if given the options. And they will opt for the optimum solutions — even in the face of a referendum on this most important issue in our civic life.

This should be the core issue in the 2014 municipal election. And if there is not a single mayoral candidate who can articulate this issue and position it in direct contrast to the political posturing and deception from the mayor, then we’ll be doomed to the current malaise. Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca