And so another municipal election comes to an end — not with a bang, but with a whimper. Once again, Toronto has settled for the status quo. The future can wait. In the meantime, John Tory will do. Yes, he’s bland, boring, timid and singularly lacking in imagination, but that never hurt a politician in this city. Indeed, it enabled Tory to win a surprising two-thirds of the vote Monday night.

Although his main rival Jennifer Keesmaat did relatively well in “old” Toronto, she was less popular in the suburban communities that Tory has courted since he was first elected in 2014. Clearly, the former chief planner was just a bit too edgily urban for suburbanites. Ford Nation is now Torytown. In Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York, parts of the city where the more things change the more they stay the same, Keesmaat’s promises to lead Toronto into the 21st century sounded more like a threat than a reward. The electorate there prefer councillors who fix potholes, plow the snow and otherwise stay out of their way.

Pollsters claimed transit and affordability were the big issues in the election, but that didn’t translate into votes. By re-electing the incumbent, Torontonians made it clear they can live with things pretty much as they are. The TTC may be wholly inadequate, but Tory’s supporters are more likely to equate mobility with the car than public transit, let alone the bicycle. For them the problem isn’t poor service or overcrowding, it’s congestion and the price of parking.

Although improved transit would lessen gridlock by getting people out of their cars and off the roads, Tory was focused instead on small, largely illusory tweaks such as co-ordinated traffic lights, towing double-parkers, cracking down on jaywalkers and the like. Despite Toronto’s appalling record on road safety, Tory's commitment to Vision Zero remains tepid at best. During the campaign, he insisted there's no need to lower speed limits on city streets outside of designated residential neighbourhoods. In Scarborough, for example, which has the most dangerous streets in Toronto, reducing speed limits is a non-starter.

In addition to the familiar litany of existing problems, however, the big challenge facing Tory and Toronto's new less-is-more council will be Doug Ford's hooligan regime at Queen’s Park. The city has already experienced firsthand the recklessness of which the Progressive Conservatives are capable. More than anything, Ford’s council-cutting move reminded us that the premier is quite willing to do what he wants, regardless of local sensibilities. This sort of heavy-handed intervention is tough on a weak-kneed, let’s-all-be-friends mayor such as Tory. The fact that both Ford and Tory are Progressive Conservatives clearly doesn’t mean as much as it might have once upon a time. Ford obviously feels no embarrassment making a predecessor look foolish.

And now that Ford has speculated publicly about taking over the subway from the TTC and uploading it to the province, Tory has a whole new threat to deal with. Whatever Ford has in mind, one can safely assume it has nothing to do with what’s best for the city. More likely, such a move would be part of some ill-conceived plan to extend the subway into the suburban communities surrounding Toronto. Ford has already proposed running a metro north to Markham and east to Pickering.

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The wisdom of such schemes is highly debatable. Transit planners everywhere are shaking their heads in disbelief as the Toronto transit debacle goes from bad to worse. From a city perspective, Ford’s scheme continues decades of eye-rolling transit madness. Through it all, it’s still unclear whether Ford is even aware of the downtown relief line, which has the overwhelming virtue of answering real needs. From a political point-of-view, however, transit in these parts is less about attracting riders than appealing to voters. Hence the Scarborough subway.

But Ford will prevail in his war against the city, mainly because the Constitution is on his side. Tory, for all his good intentions, functions more caretaker than chief magistrate. Under him, the city has barely managed to maintain appearances while being starved for investment. From Tory to Ford, right-wingers never grasp the difference between investment and expenditure. To them, it’s all a waste of money. That’s why transit can't keep up, social housing is crumbling and only the rich can afford to live here.

It’s also why the battle for the soul of Toronto was lost before the election even began.

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Christopher Hume is a former Star reporter and freelance columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @HumeChristopher

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