On matters of Toronto’s transportation and transit building, the more things change . . .

Our local politicians, often the mayor, push pet projects, promoting them ahead of independent study and thought. They use political pressure to advance said projects to the top of the priority list, even before democratic bodies like city council are given data, studies and information to make intelligent decisions.

They go to their back-scratching allies in other orders of government to strategize on how to best bribe the public with their own money. The bribes are then carefully doled out, strings attached, minus clear word on how much and for whom.

And the mayor claims victory, urging the puzzled city councillors to press ahead with projects that no one has yet approved.

This week is Exhibit A.

In advance of the upcoming federal election, the Stephen Harper government announced Tuesday the creation of a pot of money ($750 million over two years, starting in 2017) for public transit.

That’s less than half the cost of the LRT line to link Brampton and Mississauga; and it’s an amount spread across the entire country. Toronto’s downtown relief line or SmartTrack alone will cost more than 10 times that promise.

Little wonder Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa dismissed it as vague, too far in the future and not nearly enough.

In 2019, a year after the $750 million kicks in and as cities get information on who qualifies and for how much, the Harperites offer to kick in $1 billion a year to a national transit fund. That’s on condition the Conservatives get re-elected, of course. And the economy doesn’t tank.

It’s far enough into the future and piddling enough to have little immediate effect but generate much publicity, heading into an election. Cue Toronto Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard).

The mayor was effusive in his welcome of the paltry sum. To hear Tory speak, you would not know he asked the federal government for a contribution of $2.7 billion toward his favourite project, the $8-billion SmartTrack scheme.

That project — being studied now and yet to be debated at city council, much less funded by the city — has to be ready for passengers by 2021 to fulfill Tory’s election promise.

Listening to Tory, you would not recognize that if Toronto received every penny of all the federal money promised for the entire country, it would not be here soon enough, neither would it have enough coins to deliver the project.

That didn’t hinder Tory from saying, “Let’s be clear, this is funding that did not exist before. It does now, and, as you all know, SmartTrack is my top transit priority and has won support from my council colleagues.”

It’s not an all-out falsehood, it’s just enough to remind anyone paying attention how the game is being played.

City council has not considered SmartTrack. Council did approve a lot of money to study the matter. That study, one surmises, would take into consideration the several potentially conflicting projects and ideas that overlap with SmartTrack. The Downtown Relief Line is one. And it does seem that the northern part of SmartTrack is awfully close to the Scarborough subway extension and other existing corridors.

But none of that gets in the way of the SmartTrack steamroller.

When council voted the funding for studies, and councillors insisted on getting specific data and knowledge to guide their decisions, they were told to relax and hold their fire until the studies arrive. And while they wait, the mayor speaks as if approval is a fait accompli.

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This is how we let the Scarborough RT flounder and die in front of us, when a few hundred million dollars would have modernized it. That’s how the RT morphed into a billion-dollar LRT. That’s how the LRT ballooned and transformed into a $3-billion subway extension. And that’s how that subway threatens to now spread all the way out to Markham Rd., at untold costs, before heading back to the Scarborough Town Centre.

The more things change . . .

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca

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