Weepy.

It’s a natural reaction — if your regular commute involves taking Toronto’s cramped subways at rush-hour — to catching your first glimpse of Central London’s transit map, so inundated with criss-crossing routes the map-makers are running out of colours to differentiate them, opting now for various shades of orange and blue.

As the London Overground subway car hurtles through Central London, Mayor John Tory — one of those daily commuters from his Bloor St. condo to City Hall — makes straight for the way-finding map to snap a picture on his BlackBerry.

Among the happy, diplomatic tweets sporadically posted by the mayor’s staff during Tory’s three-day tour of the city last week — a visit largely focused on transit — the blurry photo appears online with a different tone: “Wept a bit when I saw this . . .”

In a city as old as London — where tunnelling actually uncovers mass burials of victims of the bubonic plague — there has been a lot of time to build a transit network befitting of a big city.

But as a teenage Toronto grapples with a network currently bursting with commuters while politicians have spent the past decade debating and re-debating what to build or whether to build some lines at all, there are crucial lessons here on how to move forward.

London transit experts agree that Toronto is perfectly poised for a boom in rapid transit — compact city, growing population — but first, it has to get the planning right.

“I think it’s quite vital for you,” said Nigel Foster, director at the U.K.-based, transport-centric Fore Consulting. “Every year, every day you delay it the solution will not change . . . You’ve just got to start.”

There are fundamental differences between the two cities, especially when it comes to financing. Transport for London, the agency in charge of public transit and roads, receives a massive annual subsidy from the national government. London also benefits from a congestion charge, which dings drivers $23 daily to go through a “charging zone” during weekday working hours.

But more than a problem of cash, Toronto has long suffered from a lack of political consensus on what to build — “subways, subways, subways” versus light rail — and how to prioritize — SmartTrack or a downtown relief line? What critics have called a lack of leadership at city hall has resulted in no new subway stops since the Sheppard subway line — a pet project of former mayor Mel Lastman — opened in 2002. Officials now say the lack of riders on that line is causing it to bleed money, requiring a possible $10-per-ride subsidy.

London’s Crossrail is big and beautiful, even from the squishy clay floor of the unfinished Farringdon station in the borough of Islington, just north of the city’s downtown core.

Tory was mesmerized as he toured the tunnel that will carry a new heavy-rail line across the city and outer boroughs. For the mayor, Crossrail has been the inspiration for his own plans for a heavy-rail line, dubbed SmartTrack — which Stephen Joseph, the executive director of London’s Campaign for Better Transport, said could buy some time as the city continues to grow.

“He’s probably right that you can get some short-term hits on upgrading existing lines, that’s certainly the experience here,” Joseph said. “In a growing city, I think Toronto is a growing city . . . you probably have to also look long-term as well.”

But SmartTrack’s viability, what originally called for tunnelling on Eglinton that could cost billions, has been called into question as the province and city seem at odds over whether a separate service is possible.

Like many large infrastructure projects, Crossrail wasn’t without its own fits and starts.

Foster, who worked on the planning and design work, points out that detailed station design began in the mid-1990s, decades before officials showed off Canary Wharf’s completed six-storey station to Tory and a visiting delegation.

But the $30-billion project risked being canned over costs and, after it was resurrected in the early 2000s, delayed by the 2012 Summer Games. But construction has pushed ahead over the past decade to be on track for a 2018 opening. Perhaps more importantly, officials say they are on track to be on budget.

It’s been possible, the U.K.’s secretary of state for transport Patrick McLoughlin said, because of “cross-party consensus.” He pointed to a new national infrastructure committee that oversees large projects, that supports local transit priorities and allows for dedicated, long-term funding.

“I was a junior minister here 25 years ago. We were talking about Crossrail and there was lots of disagreements and et cetera, et cetera,” he said. Now the stations are ready to be open, some ahead of schedule.

Foster agreed one of the biggest successes of the U.K. experience is that, after many years of transit being a political football, the process has now become “apolitical.”

“Generally people are saying, you’ve got to have this,” he said. “People just get on with it.”

While it’s not unusual for there to be disagreement over different types of transit technology, Foster said a city of Toronto’s size needs a combination of modes.

“Getting the blend of solutions right is really important,” he said, adding that walking and cycling should also be given priority as planners consider the journeys people actually want to make.

Sustainable transit advocate Joseph said that between the 1980s and 1990s, his city went through a similar stalemate as Toronto, where few transit projects were completed.

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Now, experts said, all parties in London are focusing on transit investment and planning as an essential part of economic development and growth.

What London has now is the ability to imagine the kind of city it wants to be and how transit can get them there. Foster said that means not just planning for the next five years, but 10, 15, 20 years out.

Getting it right

London experts outlined five crucial things about building better transit.

1. A grand plan

As of today, Canada remains one of the only G8 nations without a national public transit policy framework — one that incorporates sustainable rapid transit into economic, environmental and other priorities. Normally, that kind of national focus comes with not only a substantial investment, but a predictable flow of cash that allows cities to better plan for future growth. The United Kingdom, unlike Canada, has that kind of plan. “You’re talking about a long-term vision plan and consistency of application and that’s been crucial,” said consultant Nigel Foster.

2. Political will

“Disastrous.” That’s how Foster described the current disagreement between the province’s transit agency Metrolinx and the city over whether Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack plan can be built. “Everybody’s got to come together with a common plan,” Foster said. Canada, like London, he said, would benefit from a cross-partisan committee to deal with long-term infrastructure projects and specifically transit financing.

3. Investment

London’s transport agencies benefit from multi-year funding deals, allowing them to better plan the growth of transit lines or plan big, bold projects. U.K.’s Secretary of state for transport Patrick McLoughlin also said the attitudes of private sector are changing, with investment groups and developers willing to write cheques before the shovels dig in on big transit projects such as Crossrail. For example, the Canary Wharf developer group invested $300 million in the construction of the station in their district as it is believed to boost the number of employees that will travel to the area to 200,000.

4. Planners know best

While political will has been important to getting transit built, experts say it has been equally important that politicians take a hands-off approach when it comes to the actual planning — something that has been difficult in Toronto where councillors and mayors have openly voted in and then scrapped transit projects already in the works (see: Transit City, Scarborough LRT). “You’ve got a bunch of politicians who have consistently respected the professionals’ advice,” Foster said of London’s approach.

5. Forward thinking

When it comes to transit, experts say politicians and bureaucrats should be looking well into the future for the best laid plans. “What you’re saying is we’re investing now, but that’s going to be in use in Toronto for several hundred years . . . Now’s the time to sort of intervene to make sure Toronto’s successful in say, 100 years time,” Foster said. “It’s difficult in terms of politicians and even talented officers or professional people to sort of get their heads around those sorts of horizons.”