It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

Photo by Loozrboy from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

The Globe and Mail is reporting that TTC Chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence) has approached the Ministry of Transportation about extending the Danforth subway to Sheppard—reversing course on the signed deal for light rapid transit that council recommitted to last year. If approved by all parties, the shift would mean that a subway would serve the centre of Scarborough instead of LRT.

We reviewed this proposal in January. Each option has its faults and benefits. How should we weigh them?

We need to replace the aging Scarborough RT line. Should we do so with light rail of a subway? Map from a TTC report dated January 21, 2013.

This is not just a question of rekindling interest in Stintz’s “One City” transit plan from June 2012, but of winning over residents in Scarborough.

The Strategic Questions

The politics are simple. Scarborough residents had an inferior technology, the SRT, foisted on them decades ago by Queen’s Park. (There had originally been a plan to build an LRT line, including a potential extension that would have gone as far as Malvern, which at the time was considerably less built up. That LRT plan was converted to an SRT route when the province decided that it wanted to show off an Ontario technology for other markets. Thus the SRT was born. It never got past McCowan Station.) Scarborough’s transit (indeed, all of Toronto’s) would have been much different if the TTC had implemented an LRT network back then. Frequent light rail could have served areas on the brink of development—areas where, instead, riders have waited years for anything beyond a bus. Transit planners would have an alternative to high-cost subways, and the transit network could have led city growth rather than following it.

Now Scarborough politicians, notably Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre), are trying to make up for that lost opportunity by arguing that since North York and York Region will get their subways (the Spadina extension to Vaughan and the proposed Yonge extension to Richmond Hill) Scarborough shouldn’t have to make do with a “streetcar” instead—even if those LRT vehicles would run on a completely protected right-of-way, just as the SRT does today.

This is a wedge issue for Mayor Rob Ford and his allies (though De Baeremaeker generally isn’t one) who paint anything other than subways—subways—subways as a plot by evil downtowners to deprive other parts of Toronto of first class transit. Conversely, if Stintz’s Scarborough plan finds support from local councillors and voters, this could break Ford’s claim on their transit loyalty.

The Policy Questions

Almost twice as many people would be within walking distance of the LRT route compared with the subway option. De Baeremaeker argues that this isn’t significant—that nobody walks to the SRT now, and it doesn’t matter how easy the stations would be to reach on foot. This outlook contradicts years of planning for rapid transit lines that would directly serve people without a bus connection, the bane of travel to suburban rapid transit today. De Baeremaeker himself has long pushed for a new SRT station at Brimley to serve a growing concentration of condos, whose residents would arrive at the station on foot.

De Baeremaeker argues that the subway would cost only an extra half-billion dollars, but the TTC has recently confirmed that the estimated LRT cost includes a half-billion for a new carhouse. This is not actually required because the LRT cars will be stored and maintained at a new Metrolinx carhouse near Sheppard and Conlins Road that is included in the Sheppard LRT. The cost differential is now double the original claims—the difference between a subway and an LRT is one billion dollars, not the 500 million originally cited—and who knows what other projects would need to be delayed or deferred to find that extra money?

A Comprehensive Approach to Transit

The most important question for Scarborough is not just this subway-versus-LRT debate; those are alternatives for replacing the aging, unreliable SRT, and we know that one way or another, that replacement will be happening. What’s less clear is whether anyone is thinking much about a larger, longer-term vision for Scarborough transit. Scarborough, like all of Toronto and the region around it, needs a network to serve a variety of travel demands. Regardless of which of the subway or LRT options are chosen right now, we cannot lose sight of the need for that network. It cannot be perpetually delayed due to cost pressures, and we cannot give in to any sense that one line will solve all of Scarborough’s transit problems.

View Scarborough Transit in a larger map

Updates to Toronto’s Official Plan are underway now, and the provincial Big Move plan is scheduled for comprehensive review by 2016. These plans are not set in stone, and Toronto should be thinking about how they can be improved. What needs to be added, not just in Scarborough, but elsewhere in the city? How soon should these lines be built and operated, not just be promises on map written with disappearing ink? What will be the cost, and will the city have to supplement the coming Metrolinx investment strategy with its own capital?

Toronto has a long history of planning one rapid transit project at a time, of pitting ward against ward, east versus west, north versus south, in a battle for even tiny improvements. The result has been decades of stagnation and a pervasive sense that nothing will ever be done.

Karen Stintz wants to talk about new plans to pull supporters onside for the transit funding debates. This is no time to completely redraw the map, or to trade off network segments for a single, more expensive option. The short term goal may be to win support for Scarborough votes with a promised subway, but the long term view demands an outlook for all of Scarborough, for all of Toronto.

If Scarborough wants a subway, this should only be the beginning, not the end of its transit plans. Many other transit proposals will serve Scarborough directly or indirectly and they must not be forgotten.

UPDATE MAY 7, 12:26 PM: Since we originally published this article the TTC has clarified its projected costs for building an LRT vs. a subway. We’ve updated to reflect the most recent information they provided us.

SPOTTED BY: Toronto Centre MPP Glen Murray.

WHERE: Near Eglinton Avenue West and Black Creek Drive.

WHEN: Earlier today.

WHAT: After several brushes with cancellation, the effort to build a 10-kilometre section of light-rail track underneath Eglinton Avenue is finally getting underway. The picture above shows just one of four giant boring machines that will spend the next few years digging twin tunnels for Toronto’s future fleet of light-rail vehicles to travel through. (The actual tunneling is expected to begin in June.) The underground railway will form part of the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown, one of three light-rail lines being built with $8.4 billion in provincial funding. If all goes according to plan, construction should be finished by 2020.

Spotted features interesting things our readers discover in their journeys across Toronto. If you spot something interesting, send a photo and pertinent details to tips@torontoist.com.

“The gridlock challenge in the Greater Toronto—Hamilton area is probably the greatest impediment to productivity improvements in the Canadian economy. Whatever government of whatever political stripe is going to have to come to terms with the reality that there will have to be new sources of revenue to support it.”

—Outgoing Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan (Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh) on Tuesday. Duncan also commented on the lack of funding for transit from the federal government—though he didn’t mention much about his own government’s decision to scale back on the original planned scope of light rail in Toronto, nor their unwillingness to take on any operating costs for the TTC.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/loozrboy/4683463347/"}Loozrboy{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

The TTC board meeting agenda for January 21 includes a report on technology options for the Sheppard East and Scarborough RT lines. Once again, Toronto drags out the debate on whether these routes should be subway or LRT (light rapid transit), particularly when it comes to replacing the deteriorated Scarborough RT (SRT).

Especially galling is support for the subway option, not from one of Mayor Ford’s sycophants but from a “lefty”: Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre).

In brief, the subway-vs-LRT argument goes like this: we can extend the Bloor-Danforth subway line to replace the Scarborough RT at only a modest extra cost (if you call $500 million “modest”), thereby giving Scarborough the rapid transit it dreams of.

Those dreams may be genuine civic pride, or they may be delusions induced by politicians who peddle the idea that only subways are good enough. This is an abdication of political responsibility.

Background

Transit City began with the premise that rapid transit expansion would have the greatest reach—go the farthest in reaching the largest number of residents—with LRT, and that subways should not be presumed as the first choice for any corridor. Originally, the Scarborough RT conversion to LRT was not included in Transit City to avoid that technology battle as part of the larger goal to win acceptance for an LRT network. Later, once retention of the orphan SRT technology (which is ICTS, or Intermediate Capacity Transit System) ceased to make sense, the SRT-to-LRT conversion plan took over.

TTC management did not shine here and continued to present the ICTS option well after it was clear an LRT would be preferable. Their cost comparison of the two technologies covered a line that stopped at McCowan Station. It ignored the considerable savings available with an LRT extension to Malvern and integration with a Scarborough LRT network. At a minimum, this position was misleading, and it held the LRT option at bay when it should have been actively pursued.

Although LRT exists world-wide in a variety of styles ranging from complete traffic isolation to near-streetcar operations, it gets a bad rap in Toronto in part because we have no good examples of LRT in a suburban setting. The St. Clair, Spadina, and Harbourfront rights-of-way work to the degree they can in settings with closely spaced traffic signals, tenuous traffic signal priority, single cars, pay-as-you-enter loading, and a line management style that accepts gaps six minutes wider than the scheduled headway as “punctual.”

Every time Toronto avoids building LRT and opts for talk of subways, citizens are denied a chance to see what LRT can do, and they are convinced that building LRT is settling for second best. They have to travel to exotic locales such as Calgary to see the real thing.

LRT vs. Subway for Scarborough

This week’s TTC report compares two implementations of a Scarborough line (see Exhibit 6, page 14 of the report [PDF]):

• An LRT line replacing the existing SRT on the same alignment and continuing northeast to Sheppard and Progress (where it would connect for carhouse access to the Sheppard East LRT).
• A subway line via Eglinton, Danforth Road and McCowan to Sheppard.

The LRT option would be slightly longer (9.9 vs 7.6 kilometres) because it would run further east, and it would have more stations (seven compared to three, not counting Kennedy in either case). Almost twice as many people (47,000 vs 24,000) would live and work within walking distance of an LRT station compared to the subway, whose primary function would be to funnel people into downtown, not to provide the kind of finer-grained local service possible with LRT.

A future LRT extension to Malvern has already been discussed, but it is not yet in Metrolinx’s short or medium term priority lists. A subway extension to Malvern would be difficult because Sheppard East subway station is further west (at McCowan), and a subway would likely be prohibitively expensive. These future cost and networking trade-offs are not included in the project comparisons.

LRT ridership is projected at 31 million, compared to 36 million annually for the subway, mainly because its slightly lower speed (a function of having more stops and of requiring a transfer—albeit an improved one—at Kennedy). There is no demand projection given for LRT with the Malvern extension, an option not available with the subway.

Although both lines have a “Scarborough Centre Station,” the subway station would be over at McCowan, well removed from the centre of the Scarborough Town Centre and further from condos that have developed there and to the west at Brimley. Indeed, a major condo developer at the Town Centre was required to fund a secondary entrance to that station on the RT, a connection that would be demolished along with the existing station when the subway opens. A long-sought “Brimley Station” would be impossible on the subway’s alignment.

The Cost Comparison

The projected costs for LRT and subway are $2.3 billion and $2.8 billion respectively, and a mentality of “what’s half a billion?” seems to be at work.

That half-billion could pay for half of the Sheppard East LRT, or could go toward extensions of the SRT to Malvern or the Sheppard line to UTSC campus. If the money were raised by the City of Toronto (supplementing Metrolinx funding with a “subway top-up”), this would add $500 million to the City’s debt, at an annual cost of $20 million (presuming they can borrow at four per cent). That money would not be available to run transit service elsewhere. (Only a few days ago, city council turned down a paltry $5 million in extra funding for the TTC’s 2013 budget.) As the Star points out, that $500 million is identical to the projected cost of repairing the crumbling Gardiner Expressway.

There is no comparison in the report of the operating cost of an LRT versus a subway, nor a discussion of who would pay for this. The LRT option would be a Metrolinx line and part of the LRT network now under construction. The subway option would be a TTC line, and its operating cost would fall entirely on the municipal government’s shoulders.

Metrolinx’s Role

After a lot of haggling about “who’s on top” in transit planning and operations in the GTA, Metrolinx emerged as the project owner for the new LRT lines. The simple fact is that funding is almost 100 per cent provincial (except for a $300 million federal contribution on Sheppard), and Queen’s Park wants its agency to be in control. The TTC will operate the lines, but the infrastructure and equipment will be maintained by a private partner yet to be selected.

Metrolinx was slow to embrace LRT as a viable technology, but now has seen the error of its ways and is pursuing several LRT projects in Toronto and elsewhere. The agency has stated quite clearly that it is sticking with LRT. From the Star:

Metrolinx, the provincial agency that is funding and building the SRT replacement as part of the Eglinton Crosstown line, immediately dismissed suggestions it might consider a subway.

“No, we have a plan, actually the city council approved that plan, the master agreement approved the scope—replacing SRT with light rail—and we are very rapidly moving forward,” said Metrolinx vice-president Jack Collins.

Metrolinx harms its own position by sticking with a lengthy estimate for the conversion period for the SRT. Again from the Star:

Converting the obsolete SRT system to modern light rail means closing the line down for about four years, shunting riders onto buses during the construction expected between 2015 and 2020.

“But then you have to look, on balance, at the lower cost and the bigger area that gets served … the disruption of building an entire new subway line versus repurposing an existing line. There’s trade-offs,” Collins said.

In fact, that 2020 reopening date is an outside number, and there was a time when the projected shutdown was at most three years long. Indeed, Collins himself has confirmed that the SRT project tender will encourage bidders to propose ways to shorten the total project time and get the LRT line open sooner.

Unfortunately, we are stuck with a situation where Queen’s Park stretched out the date to 2020 for financial planning reasons that have nothing to do with construction and everything to do with the government’s wish to defer transit spending for as long as possible. The Minister of Transportation, Bob Chiarelli, is on record saying that the line will open by 2020, and nobody wants to contradict him. As they say in political circles, “the minister was badly advised.” Possibly we will get a new minister, or a new premier will make an “aha!” announcement as part of a revised plan.

The idea of shutting down rapid transit in Scarborough for a five-year conversion paints the LRT option very negatively. Add to this the parlous condition of the SRT itself, kept in operation at Queen’s Park’s insistence until after the 2015 Pan Am Games. A subway looks far more appealing because the alternative is presented in the worst possible light.

There is deep irony in the fact that this entire debate turns on the provincial role in Toronto’s transit plans. Some politicians both at City Hall and at Queen’s Park would love to hand local transit to Metrolinx. Toronto wants provincial money as a way to avoid spending their own, but objects when Queen’s Park decides against Toronto politicians’ pet projects.

Where Do We Go From Here?

If this technology debate is going to continue at all, let it be on a fully informed basis with the real implications—capital and operating funding, accessibility and development effects, future network expansion—all on the table. On-again, off-again transit development should not be based on selective assessment of incomplete information.

Campaigns arguing that Scarborough, or any other community, “deserves” a subway miss a fundamental point. We all deserve good transit, and subways are only part of a much larger mix of options. Toronto and its politicians should be pushing for better transit overall, not pandering to and dividing local constituents from each other. Don’t pit riders of the Queen car, the Finch bus, the Dufferin bus, and the Morningside bus against each other, but fight for better transit everywhere.

City councillors can start by properly funding TTC service improvements. Three budgets’ worth of cutbacks must end, and even TTC chair Karen Stintz has said that freezing the subsidy is not an option for 2014. TTC CEO Andy Byford plans to present a five-year transit plan and this will not be without costs. Will council invest in transit growth by improving service and reducing crowding, the transit equivalent of road “congestion” everyone talks about? Or will they plead poor and stiff the long-suffering transit riders again?

Second photo by scorchez from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seango/8033888446/in/faves-30577037@N03/"}seango{/a}, from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Plans for a new subway in Toronto are—as they ever were—still just lines on paper, but a renewed push to realize them is gaining steam at City Hall. Last week TTC staff released a report on what is being called (to the frustration of many) the Downtown Relief Line (DRL), a new subway loop that could, in its most ambitious version, start at Eglinton Avenue East, go down through Pape Station and south to Queen or King and the Financial District, and then extend as far west as Roncesvalles. That report recommends the TTC proceed with detailed studies of what it would take to get such a subway line built, and that both Toronto and Metrolinx make constructing it a high priority.

Today, the TTC board endorsed that report, which will now go to city council for further debate.

The subway line in question has a troubled history: generations of residents and planners have said it’s a good idea, but nobody has managed to come up with a plan to pay for it—at least, not one politician is willing to stake his or her re-election chances on. It’s further complicated by current political divides at City Hall, where the downtown-vs.-suburbs rhetoric continues to rage. This is why the proposed line’s name bothers some: “Downtown Relief Line” implies a nice cushy ride for those latte-sipping denizens south of Bloor, while the rest of the city suffers, without relief, in slow-moving buses.

As was made clear by TTC staff today, nothing could be further from the truth. Subways are the busiest south of Bloor, but that’s not because downtown residents are riding them—it’s the population from outside the core that needs higher-order transit, to get to work, school, and entertainment destinations downtown. The TTC’s manager of service planning, Bill Dawson, summarized it this way: staff are projecting that by 2031 there will be a 51 per cent growth of travel to downtown, and 83 per cent of that increase will be from outside Toronto. GO Rail–originating journeys, which currently make up 34 per cent of inbound TTC trips, are expected to increase to 49 per cent. The Yonge line is nearing its maximum capacity, and the DRL is meant to target our most urgent transit-infrastructure needs, as determined by projected growth in density, ridership, and employment patterns.

The TTC has larger issues than the optics of what it calls this proposed new line though, as it still doesn’t have a funding strategy to accompany those pretty lines on a map. City council will consider a list of possible revenue tools (ranging from property-tax increases to road tolls) shortly, and Metrolinx is set to release its own report on the subject next June. But even if the funding issue—a huge one—gets settled, Metrolinx intends to build the DRL but has no intention of doing so anytime soon: the project is currently slated for a later phase of development (in years 16–25, specifically).

Complicating all this—or at least the public’s perception thereof—is the fact that immediately after endorsing the new report and declaring the DRL a priority that needs our urgent attention, the TTC board also green lit two feasibility studies that would reopen the debates about whether or not to extend the Sheppard subway—an endeavour that was promised in Mayor Rob Ford’s campaign and moved today by Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore)—and whether to convert the Scarborough RT to a subway rather than to an LRT, moved by Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough-Centre). Council fought bitterly about similar proposals less than a year ago, and decided after heated debated to restore the original light-rail plans. The TTC is close to signing a master agreement governing those light-rail plans with the provincial government (which is picking up the tab), and once those agreements are signed—which might be as soon as the next few days, TTC CEO Andy Byford told reporters today—we are legally locked into the LRT plans.

Essentially, commissioners voted to study something there’s no reasonable prospect they’ll build, and which council as a whole rejected just a few months ago. (“Stupid, stupid,” declared councillor and TTC commissioner John Parker, who was out of the room for the vote.) This is sure to suck up headlines, and to reinforce the concerns that Toronto city councillors are unable to summon the fortitude to make a transit plan based on evidence (rather than political interests) and stick to it for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Really, though, the feasibility studies are almost certain to have no effect. TTC Chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence), though she voted for the studies, said they were just requests for information, and told reporters that they will not change any plans the TTC already has for LRT on Sheppard or for the Scarborough RT replacement. Soon after, she tweeted, a bit more bluntly: “So we’re clear: the #TTC expert reports will say a Sheppard closed loop makes no sense and the Scarborough BD extension does. No changes.” The political spin will rage on, but for now there’s no reason to think actual plans will be revised in light of any of today’s decisions.

Construction on the Eglinton Crosstown light rail line. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ashtonpal/7065367061/"}AshtonPal{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

September 19, 2012 marked the end of a long charade by Metrolinx, the Ontario agency charged with building and operating a regional transit system. All pretense of local control and involvement vanished with a Metrolinx announcement that its LRT lines, once part of Toronto’s Transit City plan, would be designed, built, financed, operated, and maintained by a private sector partner, not by the TTC. (For short, this is called the DBFOM model.)

Parts of these projects—underground stations, maintenance buildings, and the reconstructed Scarborough RT—were already destined for the private sector, but the TTC was still at the table as overall designer and project manager, and later as operator of the new routes. No more. The Eglinton Crosstown, Scarborough, Sheppard, and Finch LRTs will now be completely provincial operations. Infrastructure already underway (the tunnels) will become the contractor’s responsibility upon completion.

To regular watchers of Metrolinx, this development is no surprise. Almost since its creation, Metrolinx and its masters at Queen’s Park have favoured private sector project delivery, and exclusion of municipal governments and agencies from meaningful participation. This model is easy to justify for transit projects outside of Toronto, where municipalities operate relatively small bus systems and do not have a professional cadre of transit staff skilled in rail system design and operations. In Toronto, the tug-of-war between local and provincial agencies has been ugly, with each side disparaging the other’s abilities.

What is the rationale for this decision?

From an email we received from Metrolinx representatives today, describing their strong support for Alternate Finance and Procurement (AFP):

AFP is a well-established and innovative way of financing and procuring large public sector infrastructure projects that maximizes the use of private-sector resources and expertise. AFP provides early insight into the cost of all aspects of the project, as well as the certainty of the project schedule.

AFP also protects the public from cost overruns and imposes financial penalties on the private sector partner if a project is delivered late. If the project is late, the private sector pays. If project is over budget, the private sector pays.

Working in partnership with the private sector, we are confident that we can maximize our resources to build great transit projects, on-time and on-budget, with the least amount of disruption.

This sounds fine in theory, but the problems lie in the contract language. Indeed, one reason for the delay in LRT project delivery is the extra work needed to craft contracts specifying many details and responsibilities—ones that are already the routine function of public bodies like the TTC.

We may, through this process, learn what “value for money” (a touchstone phrase for AFP advocates) actually brings us on design and construction costs. Operations and the benefits private operation might bring won’t even begin until 2020 (with the possible exception of the Scarborough LRT, as it could start up a few years earlier according to Metrolinx).

A mock-up of the vehicles that will run on our new light rail lines. Photo by Nancy Paiva/Torontoist.

The political wrangling.

Only yesterday, Transportation Minister Bob Chiarelli spoke of Infrastructure Ontario’s “almost flawless” record compared with “TTC projects that have been long overdue and sometimes much over budget.” Characterizing the TTC as an utterly incompetent organization may play well at Queen’s Park, but the facts are quite different.

If Chiarelli is dredging up the St. Clair right-of-way project, most of the problems and extra costs were not of the TTC’s making. If there are other projects the minister has in mind, he owes Toronto the details. In their absence, one might diplomatically suggest that the minister is badly advised. The alternative is that he knowingly spreads misinformation to suit his government’s agenda. Major policy decisions should not be made on such flimsy evidence.

The ink had barely dried on the Metrolinx announcement this week when both the process and the details came under fire.

TTC Chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence) learned about the announcement the afternoon it came out. She may be reaping the effects of her “One City” plan, announced with considerable, if brief, fanfare in June. That plan included the appropriation of two GO corridors as part of a city transit system—the political equivalent of poking a stick in Metrolinx’s eye.

Stintz’s concerns about a seamless fare structure were hurriedly answered by Metrolinx through interviews and on their website. That such basic details came as an afterthought shows Metrolinx was simply pushing the TTC aside, leaving the difficult bits for another day.

The questions with no answers.

Does this signal a general change in regional transit planning and operations? Will Metrolinx simply appropriate projects in the GTA and other Ontario municipalities as it sees fit? Nobody knows. Toronto will soon launch a review of its Official Plan—and is set to specifically include long-term transit in that plan—but drawing lines on that map has little value if the real decisions will be made at Queen’s Park.

Fares and revenue are always at the heart of transit debates. Metrolinx claims that whatever the prevailing fare is in Toronto when the LRT lines open, that’s what riders will pay. This leaves unaddressed the question of future changes once the Presto fare card is in place, as that will allow options such as fare-by-distance, zones, and other ways of shaking more money out of riders’ pockets.

The financial model for the operation of the LRT lines has not been announced and probably does not yet exist. Will the private operator be paid a fixed amount to provide service, with the revenue going into a pot that TTC and Metrolinx will share? How will we decide which part of a fare belongs to each route (something that is impossible today with a flat fare, free transfer system)? It will remain difficult with smart cards unless we force riders to “tap in” at every leg of their journey simply so the transit system can divvy up the revenue. Try to imagine this at a busy LRT-to-TTC transfer point like Kennedy or Eglinton Stations.

On the capital side, most costs will be borne by the province through progress payments based on project milestones (a common arrangement for all construction work), but the contractor will be expected to finance about $1-billion of the overall cost according to Metrolinx. Further payments would stretch into the post-opening period, although it is unclear whether these would fund operating subsidies or capital maintenance work. These are expected to be from 20-to-25% of the total contract value.

Although there are four separate LRT lines, the likely arrangement is that Metrolinx will wind up with a single operator for service on all lines, and a single provider of common services such as vehicle maintenance and building operations. Whether these are one entity or several separate providers remains to be seen. The more we have, the more complex the management of separate pieces each with its own mandate and goals for cost-effective service provision.

Service quality, long the bane of riders and the focus of Toronto council debates, costs money. How often should LRT services arrive and how many riders constitute a full train? Will decisions be left to the secretive Metrolinx board, or to a private operator looking to minimize operating costs? For TTC operations, council can decide to improve or cut service based on funding and overall system standards. How would Toronto (or any other city with Metrolinx-operated routes) get service above a provincially mandated level, if that’s what it wants, especially if this triggered capital costs such as a larger fleet for peak service?

Karen Stintz rejected the idea that operating subsidies might be paid by the TTC (effectively by riders’ fares or City funding) to operate the LRT lines. This leaves the service and financial models completely in the hands of Metrolinx and its contractor. It is no secret that operating underground systems costs a lot, particularly in later years as the infrastructure wears out. Fares don’t cover those maintenance costs on the TTC—that money comes from a separate capital budget funded by all levels of government, mainly Toronto. Who will pay these costs for the Metrolinx lines?

Metrolinx is fond of saying that they already have private sector partners delivering service on GO Transit, but omits mentioning that the lion’s share of costs are paid by Queen’s Park, GO riders, and GTA municipalities through a Metrolinx chargeback scheme. None of the big ticket costs are borne as a risk by private companies, who are simply contracted to provide services such as staffing trains. There is no equivalent for the scale of responsibility Metrolinx expects in bring the DBFOM model to Toronto’s light rail.

Metrolinx's light rail projects in Toronto.

Where do we go from here?

GTA cities are beginning a debate about new revenue tools at the municipal level. How does a model with full provincial control fit with projects that may have funding from local governments? How do cities participate in definition and management of contracts with service operators in the Metrolinx model?

The Metrolinx “Investment Strategy,” under development for years, is supposed to lead to proposals in 2013 for new revenue tools to pay for transit capital (construction of new lines); renewal (ongoing maintenance); and operations. The amounts under discussion are huge. In the rosy early days of the Metrolinx “Big Move” plan, the number was $1 billion a year, but this has grown as realism sinks in about just how big “transit” is in the GTA. A billion just scratches the surface, and even that’s a hard sell when every news story on the subject mentions provincial deficits and spending cuts. The danger is in aiming too low and having a limited new revenue stream—once we convince people they should pay more for transit—that gets soaked up by existing commitments rather than new services. Both need funding, and both may be short-changed.

Metrolinx argues that the DBFOM model is necessary to ensure a continuous responsibility and risk to the private operator. If infrastructure is built by someone who won’t operate the line, then the incentive is to build it cheap, make a profit, and vanish. Only if the builder is responsible for operations, long term, will they deliver robust, reliable infrastructure. That’s the official line, and it ignores decades of public sector projects built and delivered by the private sector, but then operated in public hands.

The private sector is littered with remnants of companies who didn’t care about the long term because they could walk away from unprofitable schemes of their own making. The challenge will be to write contracts placing responsibility on the private operator and enforcing those contracts with penalties up to and including taking the assets back into public control.

On the surface, the argument here pits the TTC against Metrolinx and its private sector delivery model, but the underlying questions are much more important. Who decides what “transit” means in Toronto? What are its goals? What public funding will we provide to sustain and improve mobility at the regional and local levels?

If Queen’s Park could be counted on as a benevolent, if slightly dotty, uncle who believed in transit as a good, important service, we could hope that not much will change as Metrolinx supplants the TTC for some routes. Politics doesn’t work like that though, as we remember from the Harris years—when transit was dumped onto cities, who were left to fend for themselves. What prevents a sale of the Eglinton-Crosstown line to a Highway-407 like entity through a sweetheart deal, with Toronto left to pay the tab to a locked-in private sector contract? With the TTC out of the picture, selling a network of LRT lines would comparatively straightforward, especially if the buyer were already operating them.

Metrolinx is a notoriously opaque agency that conducts much of its business in private. Details of the arrangements for a DBFOM contract are likely to be shrouded by the term “commercial confidential” that conveniently hides private sector agreements. If the TTC screws up, everyone knows about the problems, and the fallout can damage political careers. If a private contract goes awry, we may never know. This is not acceptable for such important public infrastructure that could remain, through a badly written contract, “public” in name only.

Metrolinx owes Toronto an open discussion of its intentions for how the new LRT lines will be built and operated, how the funding will work, and what expectations the city and its transit riders should have of what they’ll be getting. At a regional level, Metrolinx needs to be frank with all municipalities on its future role in transit operations and funding. The Toronto LRT decision should have been a detailed announcement, with the unknowns clearly acknowledged and marked for future discussion. What we got was a two page letter between bureaucrats.

WHERE: Canadian National Exhibition

WHEN: Friday, August 24

WHAT: After much hemming and hawing, to-ing and fro-ing, Toronto has finally—dare we say conclusively—decided to go ahead and build some new LRT lines. On display at the Ex: a model of Bombardier’s new “Flexity Freedom” light rail vehicle cars, which will run on those LRT lines. You can find it outside the Direct Energy Centre, but note that it isn’t quite the same as what we’ll be getting. For one thing, the mock-up on display is short—just a cab and one module, while the full-size versions that run on our rails will have five modules. The aesthetics may also change, as the fabrics and colours have not yet been approved. (We are still holding out for the trademark TTC red.) Still, it’s nice to start getting a feel for the new ride some key routes will be getting over the coming years.

The original OneCity transit proposal.

At City Hall this afternoon: another chapter in the long story of council’s vexed relationship with transit planning, as councillors debate several motions that have to do with establishing long-term transit priorities and the funding thereof.

Today’s debate is sparked by the OneCity transit plan unveiled a couple of weeks ago by TTC Chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence), and TTC Vice-Chair and Scarborough councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre). Though it initially called for 21 new transit subway, LRT, streetcar, and bus rapid transit lines, and a new property tax-related revenue tool to help pay for them, the plan’s authors have backed off considerably. What’s left for debate today: a proposal for a staff report that will outline a process for creating a long-term transit strategy for Toronto, a proposal to create a regional roundtable to discuss revenue tools to raise money for transit, and proposals to make an East Bayfront LRT and Scarborough subway the city’s top two new transit priorities.

Follow our liveblog of the debate after the jump…

6:48 PM: Peter Milczyn’s motion calling for a major study on long-term transit planning priorities PASSES 43-1 (the one dissenter is John Filion). And the motion to make an East Bayfront LRT a priority transit line; report on funding options in October PASSES 38-6. (Rob and Doug Ford were among the dissenters.)

6:47 PM: Bells ringing, signalling that voting is about to commence. Woo!

6:38 PM: More seriously, Stintz says that this motion is important because it will install transit priorities in the City’s Official Plan, and that will make them more resilient. One of our big problems, she says (and she is far from the first), is that “our transit plans don’t survive election cycles.” She adds: “I would be remiss as chair of the TTC and as a member of the Planning and Growth Management Committee if I let the debate end at those four [Transit City] lines.”

6:36 PM: Karen Stintz rises to speak, thanks Peter Milczyn, as chair of the Planning and Growth Management Committee, for taking carriage of the motion calling for a long-term transit study. She jokes that when he agreed to take carriage of the motion, he told her he’d do it on one condition: “that next time I have an idea, I keep it to myself.” A few awkward laughs.

6:16 PM: Shelley Carroll, a few minutes ago regarding Peter Milczyn’s motion calling for a broad transit study: “It’s a face saving motion, and we need one right now.” The difference between that and the OneCity plan, she adds, is that it begins with staff study and research. Message: if council is going to go out into the community and conduct public consultations on what our transit priorities should be, they can’t do it properly without staff advice.

5:36 PM: Gord Perks makes a plea for councillors to pay attention to maintaining and sustaining the network we already have instead of just getting fixated on building new things, and also to pull together and work together more effectively than they have been. “Stop fighting about what part of the city you’re from, stop fighting about what part of the political spectrum you’re from, stop fighting about what technology you want, and start fighing for Toronto.”

5:25 PM: Diversion! Former mayoral chief of staff Nick Kouvalis has rewritten the lyrics of U2′s “One” in honour of OneCity and addressed to TTC Chair Karen Stintz, and is publishing these new words line by line on Twitter. A sample:

Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come to play Jesus?
Is the TTC Union in your head?

Did I ask you for too much?
More than a lot.
You gave me Transit City
Now LRT’s is all I got
We’re one
But we’re not the same
Well we
Hurt each other
Then we do it again

5:17 PM: So, councillors continue to discuss the merits of long-term transit planning. Given that they have already voted to conduct a long-term transit study (earlier in the spring) and are today considering a motion that doesn’t substantively add to that earlier request for study, there is not much new that is being said. At some point, council will turn to the East Bayfront LRT line—a priority which, while on the books, could potentially get accelerated by a decision today. Which is to say, that debate might produce something new. For now, not much to report.

5:12 PM @TTCchair: An unfortunate missed opportunity @ ‪#TOcouncil‬ to consider a subway in Scarborough. Moving forward with a ‪#Toronto‬ transit vision.

4:58 PM: Giorgio Mammoliti is speaking again. Yelling, actually. “What’s in your Kool-Aid?” he asks councillors who sometimes want subways and sometimes LRT, among various other complaints.

4:38 PM: And, councillors uphold the chair 26-14. De Baeremaeker’s motion is out of order, will not be debated. No Scarborough subway study. One of the last major elements of OneCity falls. (Note: councillors who voted to uphold the chair / kill Scarborough subway bid: Ford and most of his allies, and most of the progressive/left councillors. Voting against the chair, trying to keep the Scarborough subway vision going: Augimeri, Bailao, Cho, Colle, Davis, De Baeremaeker, Doucette, Fletcher, Fragedakis, Lee, McMahon, Mihevic, Milczyn, Stintz.)

4:35 PM: Glenn De Baeremaeker has just introduced his motion regarding a Scarborough subway. Speaker Frances Nunziata rules that motion out of order because; councillors will now vote on whether to overrule her.

4:18 PM: Milczyn: “I have heard no new ideas in the past two weeks.” Speaking now in favour of his motion, which calls for a global transit study that would eventually have a list of priorities incorporated into the City’s Official Plan. Also, a plea to his colleagues: “If we could set aside egos.”

4:16 PM: More information from Byford: the Scarborough RT ridership is close to subway capacity; ridership projected to be 11,000—14,000 an hour if it is rebuilt as a subway extension. Also, he says that the RT could stay open for relatively low cost if a subway was constructed, during the construction period; this option doesn’t exist if the RT is replaced with LRT.

4:13 PM: Deputy mayor Doug Holyday asks TTC CEO Andy Byford if, supposing the goal of transit is to take cars off the road, it wouldn’t make sense rather than extending the Bloor/Danforth subway east, we extend it west into Mississauga? Andy Byford, diplomatically, replies that such questions could certainly be folded into an overall transit review.

3:55 PM: “For reconsideration of a specific line now you’re back into what we went into for six or eight months and the end of last and beginning of this year.” City manager Joe Pennachetti in reply to questions from Raymond Cho, on the consequences of revisiting council’s decision on Scarborough transit. He say that changing one of the lines now might re-opoen up whole debate, and also will incur costs due to delays, new studies, and so on. A bit later in questioning he says the added costs could be as high at $100 million.

3:42 PM: Metrolinx is coming in for some pointed remarks today—even Pennachetti said during questioning that they are not an accountable body, since no politicians serve on the board.

3:40 PM: Technical note: the province has indicated that it is not interested in revising the plan for Scarborough transit. Since they are the ones paying for it, that’s significant. Since in principle they have said they will only pay for complete assets (like the planned LRT line) rather than extensions of other assets (like adding new subway stops to the Bloor/Danforth line) even if council were to change course and vote for a subway rather than light rail as the replacement of the Scarborough RT, it seems they will have no provincial money to enact that plan. (This is importantly different than the province’s “we will respect the will of council line”—that was contingent on council proposing a plan that met the province’s funding guidelines, which a Bloor/Danforth extension would not.)

3:28 PM: We’ve got advance copies of the language of two key motions.

For a transit study (from Peter Milczyn):

That City Council direct the City Manager….to report to the September [2012] meeting of the Planning and Growth Management Committee..respecting transit related matters including the development of a Toronto Public Transit Expansion Plan; consultation with the Toronto Transit Commission and Metrolinx; review of all transit routes contained within the current Official Plan, Metrolinx Big Move, the previous Let’s Move Plan, and other previous City, TTC or provincial plans.

That City Council direct the City Manager…to report to the Planning and Growth Management Committee in the second quarter of 2013 with a proposed City-wide transit plan to update the Official Plan and a prioritization strategy for all lines.

For a study on a Scarborough subway extension (from Glenn De Baeremaeker):
De Baeremaeker wants to amend the above motion by adding the following clause—

…respecting transit related matters including the development of a Toronto Public Transit Expansion Plan, such expansion plan to consider the eastern extension of the Bloor/Danforth subway and that an interim report on the merits of the eastern extension of the Bloor/Danforth line be submitted to the October 12, 2012 Planning and Growth Management Committee meeting.

3:15 PM: Michael Thompson asks Pennachetti about what opportunities there might be for the public to weigh in on transit, so it isn’t just politicians participating in the discussion? Pennachetti says that what he thinks is best is for staff to finish its research and prepare its report, to come out in October. Then councillors could weigh in, and City staff could facilitate a period of public consultation. The City would then need to make a final decision about its priorities by February, so that it could pass those decisions on to Metrolinx, which needs to issue its own report on a regional transit strategy next June.

3:08 PM: Josh Matlow asks City staff: given that TTC CEO Andy Byford has said publicly that Toronto’s next major transit need is a downtown relief line, does that mean that the DRL is, in fact, already established as our next major transit priority, and is it useful for council to be advancing other transit lines at the same time? City manager Pennachetti (Byford isn’t the council chamber right now) replies that what they (staff) would prefer is to be able to report back to council in October on what their research indicates should be our city’s top transit priorities.

2:59 PM: Reminder: council has already asked City staff to write a report on revenue options for transit funding, and on what our transit planning priorities should be. The results of staff research will be summarized in a series of reports anticipated in October of this year.

2:55 PM: Mammoliti to the City Manager Joe Pennachetti: “did the decisions in the spring take you off your game?” (Note: this is fairly aggressive as councillors don’t generally impugn the professionalism of staff in public debate.) Mammoliti’s voice rises as he asks “Where is OneCity??” And then, as his mike is turned off, “where’s Waldo?”

2:52 PM: And, we’re off. Councillors will begin by asking questions of City staff. Currently up: Giorgio Mammoliti, who is trying to get staff to describe the councillors who wrote OneCity as flip-floppers, for backing a subway in Scarborough now after resisting the mayor’s call for subways earlier this year. TTC Chair Karen Stintz rises to point out that nobody is voting on OneCity today.

The original OneCity transit proposal.

“The transit plan that never existed.” “One neighbourhood.” “Nothing more than a press conference.”

Harsh words today from many city councillors, in response to the OneCity transit proposal announced with some fanfare a couple of weeks ago by TTC Chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence) and TTC Vice-Chair Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre). Councillors will be debating a number of transit motions beginning at 2 p.m. today; to help you navigate that discussion, here is a quick rundown of what they will—and won’t—be voting on, and how the debate is shaping up.

What was the original OneCity plan?
OneCity called for building about 170 kilometers of subway, light rail, streetcar, and bus rapid transit lines, in a network that would span across the city. To pay for this, the plan included a proposal for a revenue tool called CVA Uplift. That tool would work by allowing the City to keep some of the revenue from property taxes based on the increase in value of properties, rather than the current system, in which some properties diminish in value to balance out properties that gain value (currently when properties are reassessed, the City does not get more property tax revenue in total, it’s just the distribution across properties that changes). That regulation about property tax assessments is set by the province, and so the funding plan would require a legislative change at Queen’s Park.

This municipal revenue would account for, according to projections by OneCity’s authors, one-third of the money needed to construct all the projects they listed; federal and provincial governments would need to step in and provide the rest.

How was OneCity developed?
Discussions about OneCity began to take place, very quietly, during our last major transit debate in the spring, when council voted to restore the Transit City light rail plan. Four councillors in particular—Stintz and De Baeremaeker, plus Josh Colle (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence) and Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s)—worked on the plan.

How was OneCity received?
The day that OneCity was unveiled, many councillors, including all but one of the TTC’s commissioners, attended the press conference during which it was introduced. Some were there to show their support, but many were there to learn more about the plan. OneCity’s authors, nervous about leaks while they were in the midst of developing their plan, kept its existence quiet, and several councillors we have spoken with only learned about it when the Star published an article the night before the press conference was convened.

A plan of this scope—dozens of lines and an estimated of $30 billion for construction—immediately generated a great deal of buzz and curiosity. One councillor commented to us that it was a “map of needs” and to that extent it was valuable, but expressed immediate reservations about the funding mechanism. That day, almost all the councillors we spoke with simply said that they needed time to learn more.

What’s happened in the weeks since?
Though many both in council and in the public have applauded the ambition and scope of OneCity, recognizing that Toronto needs a long-term vision for transit development, the chorus of concerns has grown even more quickly. Rob Ford and several of his allies dismissed the plan as a tax grab (“I can’t support taxing the taxpayer,” said the mayor). Meanwhile, councillors on the centre and left of the political spectrum identified a range of problems, including the absence of any plan to pay for operating the transit lines we’d be building, the insufficiency of the funding, the resistance of the province, and questioning whether trying to pay for this much transit via property taxes at all was the right approach.

Some of the plan’s authors maintain that many of these objections are nothing more than hurt feelings—councillors upset at being excluded from the planning process. Those who are raising the objections, meanwhile, contend that it’s unreasonable and irresponsible to present a plan of this magnitude without consulting much more broadly.

What will get voted on today?
Stintz and De Baeremaeker have backed off the key elements of their plan: today council will debate neither the funding tool they proposed nor the map of routes they suggested. Instead, they are expected to consider the following items:

• A motion that originated with Stintz and that was passed by the Planning and Growth Management Committee, which calls for including transit priorities in the review of the Official Plan the City is currently in the midst of reviewing. Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore) told reporters earlier today that he will move an amendment to this motion, asking for a full study of Toronto’s long-term transit options. This is very similar to a motion council already approved back in March (see #5 here), and Milczyn told us that really all his motion does is reaffirm the commitment to develop this long-term plan via a process of staff research and public consultation.
• A motion that calls for making an East Bayfront LRT a transit priority for Toronto, in the hopes of completing such a line in time for the Pan Am Games in 2015. This proposal also addresses some concerns that the rapid development in the Port Lands requires that transit infrastructure be included from the beginning—that it will help shape the neighbourhood to have transit included at the outset rather than trying to jam it in later.
• A motion that originated with councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul’s), which calls on the City of Toronto to try to establish a working group, consisting of officials from GTA municipalities as well as Metrolinx, to discuss the various revenue-generating tools Metrolinx might include in its long-term funding plan, which will be released next year.

What about a Scarborough subway?
Earlier this year council voted to restore the original Transit City plan, including replacing the aging Scarborough RT, now at the end of its lifespan, with LRT. Stintz and De Baeremaeker want council to reconsider that decision; they have said that someone (almost certainly De Baeremaeker) will attempt to introduce an amendment today that will ask staff to study the viability of extending the Bloor-Danforth subway line, as an alternative to building the light rail line. This, they say, is a key element that remains of their original OneCity plan; two key priorities they identified originally were the Scarborough subway and the waterfront LRT.

However, there is a major procedural hurdle they will need to clear. City council rules prohibit councillors from reopening a debate on an issue they have decided within the past 12 months. Should councillors wish to bypass that rule, they need to vote two-thirds in favour of doing so, and it is unclear that the authors of OneCity have that two-thirds support needed to open the debate in the first place.

Click on the map to view a larger version.

TTC Chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence) and Vice-Chair Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre) launched their OneCity transit plan yesterday with a City Hall press conference. In it, most of the schemes and pet projects of past decades are loaded onto one map which magically becomes a 30-year plan covering Toronto with new rapid transit lines.

OneCity: An Overview

Planning Priorities
Top priority goes to a Scarborough subway extending the Bloor-Danforth line northeast to Sheppard and McCowan, with a Waterfront East streetcar line second on the list. These routes already have money on the table from Queen’s Park and Waterfront Toronto, respectively, leaving Toronto to top up the funding rather than footing the entire bill. The remainder of the plan hopes for contributions from the provincial and federal governments in a sharing arrangement rarely seen in Toronto.

Subway advocates will thrill not only to the Scarborough line, but to a Don Mills Express (formerly the “Downtown Relief Line”), a Yonge extension north to Steeles, and a Sheppard West link from Downsview to Yonge. The Don Mills Express proposal settles the question of whether a “downtown relief line” should simply be a link from the Danforth Subway to downtown by pushing the line north to Eglinton where it could serve Thorncliffe and Flemingdon parks, and connect with both the Eglinton and Don Mills LRTs.

Transit City’s full LRT plan—calling not just for the lines reinstated by council earlier this year but the full suite of lines originally proposed under David Miller [PDF map]—reappears almost completely intact, and is joined by bus rapid transit (BRT) lines on Wilson, Ellesmere, and Kingston Road. There is even a streetcar extension on St. Clair, going west to Jane.

OneCity dispenses with the technology wars of previous plans. It recognizes that each mode has an appropriate place with subways going (mostly) where there is greatest demand, then LRT, then BRT. This avoids conflicts where “my” subway plan precludes “your” LRT plan, allowing both to co-exist.

The most vaguely defined element of the proposal is a blend of schemes to convert GO Transit corridors to the airport and to Markham into express in-town routes. The technology might be mainline rail equipment or subway or LRT, and the comparative difficulties of any of these were not explored in the announcement.

Details for this and other matters will be left to a technical review by staff, a tactic that neatly avoids telling some council members that their pet projects may not quite work out as they had hoped. This leaves oddities on several routes including the Scarborough subway, whose path from Kennedy Station to Sheppard cannot possibly be as simple as shown on the map; a Waterfront East line described as going to Parliament, but mapped as continuing up Cherry to King; and Transit City lines whose shortcomings are known but not acknowledged in the new plan.

Funding
To pay for all this, Stintz and De Baeremaeker propose that the tax regime planned for coming years be changed. 2012 will see new assessed property values in Toronto. Normally these changes would be revenue neutral in the sense that higher average values would be offset by a lower tax rate. Properties whose values went up more than the average would pay more; those that fell relative to the average would pay less.

The OneCity funding plan—something called Current Value Assessment Uplift Funding—seeks to tax part of higher assessed values on the premise that better transit improves a property’s worth. Homeowners and businesses whose property is now more valuable (at least on paper) would pay a tax on that increase. The average house would pay $45 more in the first year, and this would ramp up to $180 more in year four. Legislative changes will be required at Queen’s Park to allow this (the province regulates property taxes via the Assessment Act), and a thorough analysis of the effects of this tax scheme will be needed to see just who will wind up paying for all of the transit improvements.

Oddly enough, Stintz and De Baeremaeker seem to be avoiding a head-on debate about simply raising taxes to generate the revenue needed for transit funding, and the CVA Uplift scheme may fall most on those whose property values have gone up more than the average whether they actually benefit from new transit infrastructure or not.

Missing from the plan is any discussion of how to pay for the extra operating costs of better service—more subways, LRTs, and rapid bus routes—and maintenance of new infrastructure. De Baeremaeker was emphatic that new tax revenue would be dedicated to construction, not diverted to operations where its benefits were less visible.

The Benefits, the Risks, and What Should Come Next

Whether OneCity winds up with funding through some form of property tax or another source, the plan launches a discussion about what Toronto should strive for in its transit network. That discussion is at a municipal level where it should be, not a sideline to a regional plan where local needs scant attention.

New municipal tax revenue will only pay one third of the cost of OneCity, but the worst possible tactic would be for Toronto to sit back waiting for both Queen’s Park and Ottawa to sign on with bags of cash. Just as it did with Transit City, Toronto should launch detailed planning for its high-priority lines so that when money is available, work can start immediately rather than waiting two years for preliminary design and public participation. Having specific “shovel ready” projects can focus the minds of those who might fund transit more than simply asking for a standing entitlement. Voters and riders want to see results when projects are announced, not endless delay for study.

The most important change with this proposal is the political context. Councillors—and you can bet OneCity’s sponsors already have a majority of votes lined up—have launched a major transit program independently of the mayor and his dwindling band of supporters. Karen Stintz, a moderate conservative formerly part of Ford’s inner circle, joins forces with Glenn De Baeremaeker, a lefty from the Miller era, to push their own comprehensive view of what transit might be in Toronto.

Only hours after their press conference, Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig issued a statement saying that his agency “welcomes the TTC chair’s proposal,” and is “encouraged that Toronto is addressing its local needs.” This is not a full-bodied endorsement, but nothing in the OneCity plan is rejected. Metrolinx, and by implication Queen’s Park, sees this as a positive evolution in Toronto’s goals.

The “OneCity” brand was first used by Stintz in a speech she gave at the Economic Club two months ago [PDF], and a plan like this (not to mention the political coalition supporting it) does not materialize overnight. The TTC’s recent moves to defuse rivalry between its own management and Metrolinx takes on a new colour knowing that OneCity, by then already in preparation, would require co-operation between the municipal and provincial agencies.

Both Stintz and De Baeremaeker stress the apolitical nature of their proposal. It is not a suburban or downtown proposal, a plan for the left or the right, but one for the whole city of Toronto. If they can pull this off—moving debates at Council away from parochial and party biases to a city-wide understanding of and support for better transit—this will be a huge contribution to the city’s future.

Much remains to be done, including undoing Ford era budget and service cuts, moving day-to-day bus and streetcar service back to more comfortable levels, and actively seeking new riders by improved reliability on the system as a whole. This is not glamourous stuff and there are few ribbon-cutting opportunities, but the credibility of transit depends on more than beautiful maps of what might be decades in the future.