It’s Transit City, the Big Move and a few more bells and whistles all rolled into one audacious – not to mention massive – transit platform.

Its brazen author, Ari Goldkind, a 40-year-old lawyer and fourth-placed mayoral candidate, deliberately courts controversy by proposing to extend the St. Clair streetcar right-of way and implement a whole new range of taxes to pay for transit.

On Tuesday he released an unheard-of 21 pages that Goldkind recognizes few will read. The detail, he said, was necessary to remain true to himself.

The proposal outstrips the other candidates’ platforms in terms of new kilometres of rapid transit – 207; new stations – 120; and cost – a staggering $57 billion.

He calls it “More than a Map,” although, naturally, it includes several – showing a three-phase, 15-year transit expansion of unprecedented proportion.

Central to the proposal are six new “LRTways,” Goldkind’s rebranding of surface light rail he said could run on four-lane streets by switching one car lane to the peak traffic direction at different times of day like the reversible lane on Jarvis St., and devoting one lane to the LRT right-of-way.

Not only do world-class cities have LRTs, “people love them, want more of them, (and) they are being funded. Every world-class city you go to (has) congestion fees, tolls, central-core charges. You know what it all does? You actually get moving faster,” said Goldkind.

His plan connects outlying neighbourhoods such as Clairville and Malvern and the U of T Scarborough campus to the rest of the network.

Goldkind has also included city-wide express buses that would run in the rush hours and alternate with local all-stop buses.

He wants a TTC University – the world’s only post-secondary institution devoted to rapid transit.

“The whole vision of this is something that is doable, big, affordable and will attract other levels of government to the table,” Goldkind said Tuesday.

Goldkind admits his platform borrows heavily from other transit plans. But he has incorporated a traditionally toxic feature – a finance proposal based on $1 billion a year collected from a range of taxes and tolls, including a reinstated $75 vehicle registration tax.

Candidates’ transit platforms say nothing about how we’ll pay to run new trains

He’s made a video designed to prove that people will pay his signature tax – a 50-cent-a-day ($183 a year) increase on the property tax – if they can witness meaningful progress.

He also wants to keep the land-transfer tax, implement parking levies, lease air rights over transit stations and put tolls on the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway.

It is ridiculous, he said, for someone who owns a car to expect they wouldn’t be taxed while another person who takes their kids to swimming or skating has to pay higher user fees.

The average driver says they can’t afford tolls. But, says Goldkind, “If you said to that worker you can get to your job 37 minutes quicker, get home to your family quicker and it will cost you a toonie and, by the way, it will cost you $6 less a trip to Petro Canada, that’s the conversation we’re not having.”

It took him more than four months to develop “More than a Map,” based on conversations with experts he won’t name. Some, he says, are affiliated with other candidates and can’t risk being associated with an outsider like him.

He’s releasing the plan in the campaign’s 11th hour. He admits he’s been tweaking it for a while and things haven’t rolled out the way he expected. Goldkind thought the big issues would get the most thorough airing in the home stretch and that he would be a player. Instead he’s been barred from most of the big debates.

Transit expert Cherise Burda, who is the Ontario director of Pembina Institute, likes that Goldkind is specific about financing his plan.

“He’s throwing things out there for people to talk about,” she said.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Stressing that the sustainability think tank hasn’t seriously analyzed any of the Toronto mayoral candidates’ platforms, Burda nevertheless thinks Goldkind’s has some appealing features.

“He’s trying to build a big plan. . . He’s not playing favourites to one particular neighbourhood. He’s got a big, long-term vision. He wants to build and keep building,” she said.

“It really is on the ambitious side,” said Burda. “But if you think about it, it’s not any more unrealistic than promising to build all subways with no funding plan. It’s the funding part I like about his plan.”

Transit platforms: Are the experts on board?