You may be able to stomach Mayor Rob Ford’s childlike simplicity. Even on the most complex public policy issue, Ford breaks it down into digestible, black-and-white blocks.

“Subways, subways, subways,” he’s roared in total dismissal of any alternate transit mode suitable for 5,000 passengers per hour.

On Wednesday, as he announced a mostly repackaged subway expansion plan costing a low-balled $9 billion over 32 kilometres — he added, “Bore, bore, bore. Till the cows come home.”

By “bore” he meant dig, as in excavate the tunnels for below-ground transit. Constructing the stations is the easy part, he said, incorrectly. So, just “bore, bore, bore.”

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If that was Ford’s only miscalculation on this day, his transit ideas would withstand the normal nit-picking that comes with the routine criticism of campaign platform announcements. But his misstatements are calculable and potentially calamitous.

So, while you appreciate a politician who turns hard policy into pablum, what’s impossible to swallow — unless you have total disregard for your civic health — is the mayor’s unfamiliarity with the truth, context and reality.

More than anyone running for mayor, the incumbent Rob Ford reflects the transit views of the average Torontonian. More than anyone running for mayor, Ford co-opts and so misrepresents that view that the outcome is impractical.

Ford starts where the people are; he fails to take them further. He grabs their musings and uninformed desires but refuses to infuse them with rigour, research, science, scholarship and common sense.

People in my profession of punditry often forget that the average citizen cares little about the details and the granular. They figure that’s the job of the high-priced lawyers, planners, bureaucrats and politicians. The average Torontonian would prefer subways over LRTs, underground rail instead of above-ground, transit in its own right-of-way rather than mixed in with traffic, where one slows the other. The details of where this happens — in one, five, 10 or all corridors — is a task for the guardians of our civic life.

The guardian in chief should be our mayor. He or she rides our dreams and tempers the journey with the fine-grained details gleaned from a bureaucracy empowered to stretch the mind and resources, without endangering the future.

It’s not a philosophical, airy-fairy exercise. The mayor matters. He or she can’t be so blinded by the knee-jerk wishes of the people that he gives them what they think they want. For, when the “cows come home” the people will blame him for recklessness.

So, the people prefer subways. But even the most imbecilic among the people know a subway along Finch Ave. W. is an absurd idea. Densities and ridership would have to quadruple before the conversation should begin. Yet, there it is in the mayor’s short-term plan.

Can you make a case for the extension of the Sheppard subway to link up with the Bloor-Danforth extension northwards from Kennedy? Yes. At a huge cost. And only if it is accompanied by rezoning along the corridor to increase densities and boost ridership potential.

Is there a case for pushing that Sheppard line westward from Yonge to link in with the Spadina-University line? Love it. But ahead of other links with more riders and of greater need? No.

To recommend the above, plus the first phase of a downtown relief line, is to exhibit a kind of boldness and long-term thinking that one might embrace. A serious proponent would buttress the vision with plans for financing, land-use, mobility and development. Those elements are all missing in Ford’s plan.

Worse, the mayor displays a sophomoric approach that renders the whole enterprise illogical and unworkable.

When he ran for mayor in 2010, Ford promised a subway in every pot. Free. With private financing. Minus taxes.

Just one subway was approved, and it was Councillor Karen Stintz that masterminded the compromise. It came with taxes from the province and feds. With property taxes from the city. Minus the private funding Ford promised.

Four years later, Ford is back with the same ruse. Only, now we can enumerate the falsehoods: he can’t work with council to deliver a credible plan; he grossly understates the costs; he overstates the need in key corridors; he picks routes council would never support.

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In short, while Torontonians love the sound of subways, subways, subways, they also know you must pay, pay, pay to improve transit where the need exists. As such, Ford wastes an historic opportunity.

My bet is the people will opt for a mayor more skilled at translating their dreams into reality.