Getting public transit built in Toronto is a notoriously messy, slow and fractious process, but despite the common belief our politicians are to blame, the answer isn’t to take politics out of the equation.

That’s the contention of a new report from the University of Toronto’s Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance.

Its authors argue that as Premier Doug Ford’s government moves to take ownership of the TTC subway network, it’s time for a wider conversation about how to fix the problems with GTA transit planning, which has left the region without a transportation network to adequately serve its growing population.

“We have missed a generation of infrastructure investment ... And now we’re playing catch-up,” said Matti Siemiatycki, an associate professor in the university’s geography and planning department and one of the report’s authors.

Siemiatycki and his co-author, U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs professor Drew Fagan, argue that for years regional transit planning has been plagued by twin scourges: an ill-defined governance model that leads to competing interests between the province and the city, and an “uneasy relationship” between evidence and politics.

The result has been a pattern of delays in which one politician announces a grand new transit plan, only for their successor or another level of government to cancel it, and replace it with a new idea.

That was the fate of former mayor David Miller’s Transit City LRT proposal, and more recently the council-approved relief line subway.

Since 2000, no major Toronto-area rapid transit project has gone from conception to approval in less than a decade, according to research cited in the report. That helps explain why the GTA has about 75 rapid transit stations while Madrid, with roughly the same population, has four times as many.

But while delays induced by politicians have led to calls in Toronto to “take the politics out of transit planning,” according to Siemiatycki and Fagan “politics is an essential and legitimate part of the transit decision-making process.”

They make the case that elected officials are responsible for public spending, and as such should be in charge of setting the region’s broad transit priorities. But after that, the job of assessing how projects should be financed, built and prioritized should be left to experts.

Agencies such as Metrolinx, the provincial Crown corporation in charge of transportation in the region, should evaluate all potential new lines based on standardized, publicly available criteria, the report states. The government agency’s work should then be reviewed by an independent expert panel.

Only after experts complete that technical work should plans be sent back to the political arena for a final decision. Politicians could reject the expert advice on what to build and how, but they would be expected to explain why, and to make those decisions publicly.

“Politicians play a critical role as the representatives of that democratic will, so it’s really important that they’re involved,” Siemiatycki said.

The problem in the Toronto region is that “there’s been a sprawl of their role,” and politicians have “moved into all of the aspects of the decision-making process,” even into “the evidence-making process” itself.

The report cites instances of elected officials “putting their thumb on the scale,” such as when former Ontario Liberal transportation minister (and current party leadership candidate) Steven Del Duca secretly pressured Metrolinx to alter reports in order to recommend a new GO Transit station be built in his riding.

Such cases risk diverting scarce resources to projects that don’t provide a public benefit, Siemiatycki said.

But while politicians’ influence needs to be contained, the report argues evidence should not be “the final word on which projects get approved.”

The authors say it could be reasonable for a political leader to overrule expert advice and approve a project that may not be supported by quantifiable evidence, but would deliver societal or environmental benefits supported by the public.

Siemiatycki pointed to the relief line project, which studies have shown performs only marginally when subjected to a strict cost-benefit analysis. Despite that, it’s been backed by policy-makers and the public as a priority because it would help take pressure off of the TTC’s overcrowded Line 1 (Yonge-University-Spadina).

The report makes additional recommendations to improve GTA transit, including integrating land-use and transportation planning, establishing a long-term source of funding, and enabling Metrolinx to better co-ordinate the GTA’s various bus and regional rail services.

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The province’s upload plan is “clumsy” and focuses only on the TTC subway at the expense of these larger issues, the report states. But Siemiatycki said debate about the upload could provoke an appetite for the broader reforms his report advocates for.

The public knows “it’s taking a long time to get projects built,” he said.

“I think there is a desire to find ways that we can co-ordinate and make decisions that are based on evidence, but that keep that democratic accountability.”

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr

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