As Antoine Grumbach explains it, the value of urban transit lies less in its ability to move people than its power to transform the city.

The renowned French planner and architect was in town last week to help make sense of the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown line, the controversial 25-kilometre LRT route that, when complete in 2020, will run from Black Creek in the west to Kennedy Rd. in the east.

Despite low densities and enormous added expense, the $5-billion Crosstown line will run underground, at roughly triple the cost of building it at street level. That option was championed by Mayor Rob Ford, who famously favours public transit that doesn’t interfere with vehicular traffic.

Grumbach, who has taught at the University of Toronto and worked around the world in cities such as Paris and Moscow, questions this choice.

“I have a feeling it was the wrong decision to put the tramway below grade,” Grumbach argues. “This will only help in terms of mobility. Putting the tramway underground will have huge consequences for Eglinton. There hasn’t been enough study. We need to know the meaning of this line at the level of the metropolis, not just at the level of people living on either side of the line. What Toronto wants is a vision of the line; many things have been decided already so we must be careful not to go too quickly. I think tunnelling has started too soon.”

In his work in Paris, Grumbach has approached the tramway — what we’d call an LRT — as a way “to pacify the street and create immense value.”

This encompasses everything from major intersections and LRT platforms to trees and benches. He insists that a transit line includes all that and more. The effects, he says, are felt regionally as well as individually.

“We have to make Eglinton one of the most beautiful urban spaces in North America,” he declares with obvious sincerity. “I feel there’s much we can do. There is a lot of space which means there are a lot of possibilities. You can build quality of space with interconnections and continuity of shopping. The DNA of Eglinton has two things: main streets and two-storey buildings.”

Grumbach imagines the New Eglinton as a fully connected mixed-use urban artery designed for cars, bikes and pedestrians. Because the stations will be subterranean, he worries about figuring out ways to make them part of the larger urban context.

To Canadian, let alone Toronto, ears, this sounds a bit mad. Let’s be honest, Eglinton has little going for it except, perhaps, between Allen and Laird. Even there, it’s a bleak landscape.

Besides, in these parts, transit planning is generally considered an engineering task; that’s why the TTC looks and works like a public toilet.

For Grumbach, whose Paris transit work includes street-level stations with trees, benches and in one instance, a library, to fail to grasp the city-building potential of a project such as the Crosstown is simply to miss the point, not to mention the opportunity.

He refers to stations as “oases,” something that hasn’t occurred to the TTC in its 90-odd-year history.

“This isn’t just a transportation project; it’s a huge urban project for the whole city,” he says. “The transportation system is public space.”

In Grumbach’s mind, that makes it important, and worth doing well. Yes, it costs more, but as he points out, the ultimate return on investment comes in the form of higher property values and enhanced quality of life.

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In Canada, that’s something the private sector looks after; governments should stay out of the way.

But, Grumbach maintains, “You can’t leave streets to the private sector. That would be dangerous.”