To many voters, the grand debate about transit we’re having in this mayoral election campaign can sound like a lot of bickering about details.

Oliva Chow: “He wants to make an almost 90-degree turn…”

John Tory: “Increasing bus capacity would require purchasing more vehicles...”

Details. It’s because that’s where the differences between their plans are. For all the fighting and napkin-waving, when you plot out the rapid transit networks that both say they support, or the ones the province has promised to build anyway, you come up with remarkably similar maps.

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Olivia Chow was initially tentative about her position on the relief subway line. Then John Tory took a turn hemming and hawing a bit on it, and then did the same with the Finch and Sheppard East LRT lines. But if we take each candidate at their word today, we should expect all three of those projects will be built as planned.

The province is already building the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. It’s promised to electrify all of its GO tracks within 10 years and to provide all-day, 15-minute service on them. So those are also common to Toronto’s future under Chow or Tory.

Comparatively, the differences in their transit proposals appear small. But the details are where, depending on your choice of aphorism, you’ll find God or the devil.

When it comes to replacing the Scarborough RT, Tory supports the three-stop Bloor-Danforth subway extension approved during this term of council, while Chow prefers reverting to the previously approved LRT option on a different alignment. The comprehensive debate between those plans was so recent, there’s no reason to go over it again (Longtime readers will already know I think the subway option is pure pandering lunacy.) Perhaps the most noticeable difference is in the budgets: the subway plan is about $1.6 billion more expensive, and the city government will bear $1 billion of that additional cost.

The big SmartTrack variation on the GO electrification plan — besides promising a bunch of new stops in Toronto and incorporating two lines into the TTC fare structure — is to build a 12-kilometre spur line from Mount Dennis to Mississauga. Tory wants this to serve traffic to and from the Airport Corporate Centre, a significant employment hub. It isn’t easy, though, as the line would likely require significant tunneling and face other engineering challenges.

The other big addition Tory makes is a $2.5-billion contribution from the city government to the cost. The existing provincial commitment, made as a recent election promise, does not call for any dollars from the city. Whether anteing up our own money buys Toronto more stops, better fares, or more control than we’d otherwise have is hard to say definitively.

Certainly, making it the centerpiece of an election campaign seems to offer financial and political bargaining chips in negotiating with the province on how the electrified line will work. But Tory’s vocal supporters in provincial government suggest it’s possible that the things Tory is putting forward may line up with what Queen’s Park wants from those negotiations anyway.

The other key difference in plans doesn’t show up on a rail map: Chow promises to improve bus service by increasing TTC operating funding $15 million per year. Service levels have been cut in recent years, creating longer waits for more crowded buses.

A TTC staff report in August approved by the commission said adding enough bus and streetcar service to properly reduce wait times requires an upfront capital cost of $84 million and annual operating subsidies of $18.9 million per year. Chow’s short of that, but was the only one pledging any specific funding until Doug Ford (open Doug Ford's poilcard)’s sudden promise Monday night to double her figure to $30 million, on top of his absurdly extravagant subway plan.

Tory’s city construction spending totals about $3.5 billion more than Chow’s. Chow makes a specific operating pledge of $15 million per year. Chow claims leeway to fund her priorities — such as a down payment on the relief subway line — with the $1 billion in new tax revenue that is otherwise committed to the Scarborough subway. She also promises an increase in land transfer taxes on properties over $2 million.

While she plans to keep property tax increases in line with inflation, Chow has said she’ll look at those as a source of further funding for the relief line when it gets beyond the preliminary study stage.

To the extent Tory actually does support building the relief line, as he says he does, he hasn’t suggested how to pay for it. For SmartTrack, Tory says he’ll avoid the 3 to 5 per cent increase in property tax rates he’d need by using a Tax Increment Financing arrangement that borrows against future taxes from new developments.

The fine points of that much-debated Tory TIF proposal are a topic for another column. But at its most basic level, the plan is to borrow money and pay it off over 30 years from future property tax revenue. Which is how we’d expect Chow to finance any further expansion. It’s the way the city has financed most of its capital spending for decades.

The difference, like with so much of the rest of the candidates’ transit proposals, is one of framing and emphasis and, of course, those all-important details.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire

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