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The best demonstration of the dysfunctional morass around which the players will now converge is transit, currently a mindless clash over lines on maps.

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There are no real economic or business studies behind any of the plans. It was all raw politics, with a few experts dragged in now and then to offer general comments about the likely impossibility of one plan or the potential feasibility of another.

This is not to dismiss Mr. Tory’s SmartTrack. Maybe it contains good ideas, although it is half-baked at best. But under the current institutional setup no one can evaluate any one plan, least of all the maze of politician-controlled agencies and commissions with fingers in transit, from the Toronto Transit Commission to Metrolinx to the provincial government and the Toronto vote-hungry federal Conservatives.

Take the Toronto Transit Commission. The board of directors is in the hands of city council members. The current chairman is Maria Augimeri, councillor for Ward 9, a social anthropologist and published poet. The world may need more published poets, but not at the head of a $7-billion business that is vital to the city.

True reform at the TTC might begin by looking at turning the commission into a stand-alone corporation with a proper business-oriented board of directors — a Crown corporation, perhaps, with real directors and real top executives.

That’s not going to happen under Mr. Tory, who will soon play a role parachuting preferred politicians onto the board, each meddling in petty and major ways with the operation of the city’s core transportation system.