City council is expected to vote on a proposed deal with the province Tuesday that could change how transit is built in Toronto for years to come.

Mayor John Tory, some councillors, and transit experts say overall the deal is a win for the city, especially considering the potential alternative was Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government breaking up Toronto’s transit network by transferring ownership of the TTC subway to the province.

As part of the proposed deal, Queen’s Park would drop the subway upload, build four new transit projects in the GTA at no cost to Toronto, and reimburse the city for design work it has already done on lines the province intends to replace with its own plans.

In exchange, the city would agree to reallocate $3.8 billion in federal transit funding it had earmarked for the council-approved relief line subway and one-stop Scarborough subway extension to the province’s Ontario Line and a three-stop Scarborough subway extension.

Here are some potential pitfalls that may give councillors pause.

Back to the drawing board

Shoshanna Saxe, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s department of civil engineering, argued that whatever the benefits of the deal, approval by the city would represent “yet another time where Toronto changed its mind and backtracked on transit planning.”

As an example, she pointed to the Ontario Line, the 15.5-kilometre project that would stretch between the Ontario Science Centre and Exhibition GO station and replace council’s plans for a relief line subway.

Though a city assessment determined the project has potential benefits and could improve the transit network, it described the project as being at a “conceptual” phase and cautioned it “may change significantly” as design is refined.

While the province has said the line would be open by 2027 and cost $11 billion, the assessment said that given how little planning has gone into the project “the City and TTC are unable to assess the validity of the stated timetable or the estimated cost at this time.”

Saxe said it’s highly unlikely the Ontario Line will open by 2027. The first phase of the council-approved relief line was shorter than the Ontario Line and would have served fewer riders, but it had undergone more design work and was scheduled to open as early as 2029.

“Yes we had a plan, it was moving forward. Now we’ve gone back and we’re at a much earlier stage than we were before,” Saxe said.

Known unknowns

While the city can’t say for sure when the Ontario Line will open, the province’s three-stop Scarborough extension will take until at least 2029 to complete, three years later than the one-stop extension the city had planned.

The Scarborough RT that currently serves the area may not be able to keep running past 2026, and the deal doesn’t specify which level of government will be responsible for paying to extend its life until the subway opens, or if that’s not possible, funding replacement bus service in the interim.

The deal also doesn’t specify whether the city will be responsible for paying for day-to-day maintenance on the four proposed expansion projects, which would be owned by the Ontario government, or what the TTC’s additional operating costs would be.

In addition, the deal could affect how much gas tax funding Toronto receives from Queen’s Park. Currently the city gets about $185 million a year, which it uses to pay for its transit system. The city assessment says that amount could change as a result of “the province owning a portion of the TTC-operated network.”

“It’s not especially clear what’s being voted on and what the implications will be,” Tricia Wood, a professor at York University’s geography department and adviser to transit advocacy group CodeRedTO, said of the deal.

Vital projects unfunded

One of the main selling points of the deal is that the Ford government won’t require the city to contribute funding to the four projects in its plan, on the condition Toronto takes the more than $5 billion it would have been expected to commit to those projects and put it toward other transit uses instead — either state-of-good-repair work required to keep the existing system running, or new lines that aren’t in Queen’s Park’s plans.

The city only has a source for about $1 billion of that money, and will have to find a way to raise the rest.

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If the city is able to come up with the cash, Mayor Tory and others have said it could help pay for the Eglinton East LRT, which would run from Kennedy station to the University of Toronto Scarborough, or the Waterfront LRT network, which would serve booming, transit-starved neighbourhoods south of the Gardiner Expressway between Park Lawn Rd. and Leslie St.

Council has identified both projects as priorities but they’re not in the province’s plans. Together they would cost more than $3.6 billion to construct.

The province has made clear Queen’s Park would only consider allowing the city to divert funding to projects like Eglinton East and Waterfront transit if city hall has made “credible progress” toward addressing the state-of-good-repair backlog on the subway system.

That’s a tall order. Earlier this year the TTC estimated the subway backlog at almost $22 billion over 15 years, about $16 billion of which wasn’t funded. The deal presents no long-term plan to make up the shortfall.

“There’s definitely not enough money to go around,” said Steve Munro, a transit expert and blogger who has written about the province’s plans.

Provincial projects vs. city priorities

Supporters of the deal say that among its main benefits is the province agreeing to steer almost $30 billion to new Toronto-area transit. But much of that would be spent on projects that the city didn’t previously see as priorities.

About $4.7 billion would go to the Eglinton West LRT, significant portions of which Ontario plans to build underground. City experts have already concluded burying the line would be costly and an above-ground version would meet Toronto’s planning and transit service goals.

An additional $5.5 billion is allocated to the three-stop Scarborough subway extension council rejected in favour of a one-stop plan, and which many experts believe is a pricey overbuild that should be replaced with a less expensive LRT.

Steven Farber, a transportation geographer and assistant professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, said just because the province is footing the bill for the projects doesn’t mean they’re wise investments for the city.

“We shouldn’t just throw our hands up in the air and say, well, it’s their money, they can do what they want,” he said.

“It means there’s going to be less money down the line for better investments.”

The province would also spend about $5.6 billion on the 6.8-kilometre Yonge subway extension to Richmond Hill, almost 5 kilometres of which would be outside Toronto’s borders.

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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