Joe Cressy to the rescue.

After hours of acrimonious and emotional city council debate Tuesday on a plan to transform Yonge St. in downtown North York, one that seemed to be leading toward a disastrously bad decision, the councillor for the downtown Ward 20, Trinity Spadina, put forward a surprise deferral motion postponing a decision indefinitely. Probably until after the election.

It was not a victory for council’s supporters of sanity and good city planning. But it grasped a chance to fight another day from the jaws of defeat at the hands of Mayor Tory’s preferred plan.

What’s more, the mayor voted in favour of Cressy’s deferral motion. The mayor could have won a fight. He would have won. He chose instead to wait on more information. That’s an interesting turn.

Among city council’s left wing, who have been served a fairly steady diet of lemons during Tory’s term of office, Cressy has emerged as something of a maestro when it comes to procuring lemonade recipes. He’s the John Tory Whisperer of the progressive council bench.

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He got the mayor onside, and kept him onside, supporting the Bloor St. bike lanes. And the King St. streetcar priority pilot project. He got support for supervised injection sites. He got support for an emergency homeless shelter in his ward. Cressy and the mayor have appeared to work well together, at least publicly, on the plans for a massive rail deck park in Cressy’s ward and on the Bentway park under the Gardiner.

Within the past couple of weeks they’ve been rattling sabres at each other over road construction rules downtown, but there seems to be a history of finding ways to make progress.

This, of course, isn’t an example of Cressy and Tory working together. I’m told they did not even discuss the motion before Cressy put it forward. It was a surprise to the mayor when it came up on the floor. But still, in that moment, it won the mayor’s support.

The mayor and his allies had spent a fair bit of time Tuesday, in a turn in the debate that was a bit of a surprise in itself, talking about the possible transit impacts of the plan to narrow the lanes of car traffic on that stretch of Yonge from six to four. That seemed to be a hastily conjured supporting rationale for the mayor’s preferred plan to put the planned bike lanes on a neighbouring side street and keep the six lanes of car traffic.

But when Cressy gave the mayor and some of his closest allies the option to actually see what those transit implications would be, they took it.

It’s hard for anyone to declare victory out of this. Certainly there’s a cars uber alles cheering section who will hold the mayor’s refusal to kill the bike lane transformation plan once and for all against him.

And certainly there are lefty urbanists who will hold the mayor’s refusal to back the long-planned transformation of Yonge into a proper downtown-style neighbourhood high street against him. If some of us were thinking the mayor would dodge having to wear this issue in the election by supporting the deferral, it’s equally possible he wears some blame for the delay from every side.

But after the hours of debate and where it seemed to be heading, this sure feels to me to offer the possibility of victory. Not political victory. A city-building victory.

The Transform Yonge plan that the mayor was attempting to torpedo was the right choice. It was supported by the local councillor as the result of a years-long planning process. It was the culmination of decades of effort to urbanize the Yonge-Sheppard corridor. It had the support of the city’s transportation and urban planning departments, as well as a long list of prominent planners and city builders who voiced support. It was the cheapest option by millions or tens of millions of dollars, it was the best from a public realm perspective, the best from a pedestrian and cyclist safety perspective, it would be finished faster. And it wouldn’t even be worse for car travel times in the near future than the mayor’s plan. Transform Yonge is a better plan than the mayor’s alternative. And today, it’s still possible.

Certainly if the TTC study Cressy’s motion asks for shows that somehow there are disastrously bad impacts on transit service, that will be worth considering, by all of us. I don’t expect it will. But accurate information will be valuable.

And it will serve a fresh discussion of the topic. One conducted with the heat of an election campaign in the past, and more accurate information in hand, and by new council with a fresh mandate and many of its old voices replaced.

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There is the possibility for a better decision. Early Tuesday afternoon, that possibility seemed to have disappeared. Cressy found a way to make it reappear, with support from John Tory.

It’s not a great result. But it’s not terrible. At this point, that feels like a win.

Ed Keenan is a columnist based in Toronto covering urban affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @thekeenanwire

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