Transit City

The GTA’s new regional transit body, Metrolinx, has had some of its plan leaked to press earlier this week and it seems to not to gel to well with the TTC Transit City Plan.  The main reported difference is that the Metrolinx plan has a subway-like rapid transit line along Eglinton Avenue, from Scarborough to Pearson International Airport. The plan is also rumored to include a new “downtown core” subway line connecting to the Bloor-Danforth line and would run east-west along King or Queen streets. That may seems great to those unhappy with Light Rail, but I disagree.  I think Metrolinx is confusing the picture and going to make it harder to get a good plan off the ground for the City of Toronto. Its going to politicize the process.

Why?  First off the Metrolinx plan would be about three times more expensive.  At $6 billion it would mean that money that won’t be available to build projects elsewhere or that other projects will be short changed, like the Jane, Don Mills, Sheppard or Finch-Etobicoke lines.  All these lines are going to service areas currently vastly under-serviced. The downtown core line would also be great but again downtown is well serviced by transit.  The focus should on be connection the people who pay taxes and live in the City but may not work downtown.  Scarborough and Etobicoke need and deserve better service.

Second, the Transit City is the first transit plan I’ve seen for Toronto in a long time that doesn’t reek of political interference. It covers areas of the city that needs to be serviced and the plan is fiscally realistic and achievable.

While an Eglinton subway would in no way be the sort of white elephant that the Sheppard line is, or the University line north of Bloor has been, is it would still be expensive and suck resources, time, and attention away from the other lines. The Transit City Plan is a good compromise because the centre of the Eglinton Line from Laird Drive to Keele Street would run underground in a tunnel that would be built with capacity to be upgraded into a full subway in the future. This means that instead of building a 31km tunnel this time we only pay for a 10km one.  When the Light Rail System starts reaching capacity the TTC then has the flexibility of upgrading the whole line into a subway at a significantly reduced cost.  The Light Rail gives us flexibility and spreads the costs out for when demand is necessary and the resources are available.

We have a lot of catching up to do.  We have not invested intelligently in our subways or rapid transit lines in decades.  From Sheppard to the Yonge-University Extension into Vaughan.  The Transit City is a good plan and the TTC, the City and the Province have embraced it.  They are already holding public consultations on the Don Mills and Sheppard Lines and in the past month five public meetings have been held to discuss and raise awarness about the Eglinton Line.  The money is flowing and this plan is already happening.  Metrolinx doesn’t even have a finished draft.