This should be a great time for transit in Toronto. Instead, it’s a scary time.

At just the time when Torontonians should be zeroing in on the paths to congestion relief, our political leaders are hell-bent on littering the road with conflicts and confusion and deliberate discord.

False economies. Untested solutions. Pet projects. Re-named and re-packaged transit ideas re-offered as campaign platform but designed as political wedge issues. That’s our fate in this city, May 2014.

In theory, elections are supposed to bring clarity around important issues. This precious democratic exercise allows citizens to focus on an issue, weigh conflicting views, and choose from among competing priorities and demands.

As such, citizens of Greater Toronto should be on the edge of their seats about now. We are in the middle of a provincial election that’s in the middle of a municipal election. Glory, hallelujah. Transit’s Second Coming is upon us. Transit heaven at last.

Surely, clarity will burst through the clouds and illuminate us after years of delay and dithering and false starts and restarts and . . .

Instead of clarity, we get confusion.

The mind that’s fixed on transit is suffused with decades of studies and talk about congestion and gridlock and transit and roads and subways and LRT and electrification of GO Transit and the train to Pearson Airport and funding tools and tolls and subways for free and taxes for subways and the “disaster on St. Clair” and state of good repair and downtown relief line and Yonge Street relief line and the Hudak relief line and Sheppard Stub-way and funding tools and revenue tools and . . . save us, please.

We finally get a government to invest in transit — yes, the provincial Liberals — and they self-destruct, putting the entire plan in jeopardy.

The New Democrats under Andrea Horwath are unrecognizable. We think they want to, maybe, ah, probably build transit but only if the big bad corporations pick up the tab because, y’know, the hard-working middle class can’t pay another dime.

The Conservatives — not content that the last time they were in power they crippled public transit in the GTA and Hamilton, filled in holes dug for the Eglinton Subway, stopped funding the TTC and, generally, made a mess of transit in the city region — the guys under a new hidebound leader want to finish off what Mike Harris started.

Hudak would take over the TTC’s lucrative subway system and fold it into GO, we think. (What he would do to fund the buses, now that the subsidies from the subway are no longer available to the TTC, is something they will figure out on the run.) He’ll privatize, in part or in whole. And, he’d build a downtown relief line without building the downtown relief line. At least, we think this is what he’s planning.

After you emerge from the fog enshrouding Queen’s Park, travel a little south to Toronto City Hall for more distressing observations.

The mayor is seeking re-election on a platform that promises to build a subway along Finch before considering the downtown relief line transit experts say is top priority.

Mayoral candidates Olivia Chow and David Soknacki say, if elected, they would kill the subway extension to the Scarborough city centre, replacing it with an LRT line — the opposite of what city council just did when it reversed itself and went from LRT to subway.

Mayoral candidates Karen Stintz and John Tory say they’ll keep the Scarborough subway. Enough talk, already, they say. Then, Tory ups the ante, promising to build the downtown relief line (pardon me, Yonge Street relief line) immediately. Forget the fact that the earliest we’ll see that line is 2031.

They are supposed to lead us. They are supposed to be honest and clear and responsible and well-studied and informed and serving in our interest.

“I know that people have heard all kinds of politicians say the same thing, and nothing ever gets done,” Hudak said at a botched unveiling of his transit designs on the weekend. “It’s time to take a bold new course.”

He isn’t. They aren’t. The people are beyond distressed.

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