Toronto’s problem isn’t transit, it’s the car. Until the city decides to make the former a priority, the latter will prevail.

Though we’ve been told we can have both, that’s not true. There is only so much space, money and time. For decades, most of those increasingly precious resources have gone to the automobile. Toronto’s transit failure is directly proportionate to its auto dependency.

In this, Toronto is not alone. The same story is playing out in cities around the globe. Indeed, in the decades ahead, the cities that succeed will be those best able to deal with the basic human need to get around, but with means other than cars.

Global warming has brought a new urgency to the matter — yet even in the face of such an unprecedented threat, we remain unconvinced.

At the same time, two-thirds of Torontonians now say they are willing to pay an extra tax of some sort, providing it goes to transit.

In this regard, the people are well ahead of their political masters, many of whom are a generation or two out of date.

And so Toronto finds itself in a familiar bind: damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t.

This is a future city that adds density with every additional condo tower yet remains mired in the past and refuses to admit that there are other uses for streets than cars and the parking of those cars.

This deep-seated reluctance to let go of comforting but discredited ideas is exemplified by the recently completed bicycle path on Sherbourne St. Here is the least gesture the city could get away with and not be laughed out of town. It is most definitely not a separated bike lane, but a strip that accommodates parking space and TTC bus stops.

It may seem a small detail but that lack of a curb says everything about trying to have it both, if not all, ways. Concrete parking curbs would have been more effective — and a whole lot cheaper. But despite creating a safe bike lane, they would have blocked traffic.

The fear of street-level transit is another example of Toronto’s inability to see beyond the car. Evidence tells us the most vibrant streets in the city — King, Queen, Dundas, College and now St. Clair — are all served by streetcars. Despite the fretting of merchants and councillors, transit is clearly good for business.

Still, taking those first baby steps has been difficult for Toronto. Naturally Mayor Rob Ford is on the wrong side of the issue. His only concern is that transit be put underground so it’s not in drivers’ way.

As a result, the long-delayed Eglinton line will have LRTs running in buried tunnels, providing neither the numbers of a subway nor the finer-grained surface coverage of the streetcar. In other words, Toronto will end up with the worst of both transit worlds.

For the thousands of Torontonians who rely on transit along the Finch corridor the outlook is even worse. A planned LRT was killed several years ago, and they’re left with nothing but an antiquated bus service that comes nowhere near to meeting their needs.

In June Metrolinx will present its proposals for how to pay for unbuilt transit. Though the emphasis will be on how to reduce the pain of more taxes, the time has come for measures that will get people out of cars and raise cash. But already 42 per cent say they’d be willing to pay a toll to drive on the Gardiner.

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How much greater would that be if transit were a priority?

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca

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