When Premier Doug Ford sprung his “faster, better, cheaper” transit plan on Toronto it was hard to believe he could deliver what he so cheerfully and boldly claimed that day in April.

His promise to build a downtown relief line that was twice as long as the city had approved, two years faster and at a far lower cost per kilometre seemed to defy the laws of both engineering and economics.

Now, more than three months later, we’re just starting to see what the actual plan for that critical line is. Or at least what the plan is right now. It’s already radically changed once and, as a document from Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario states, “all alignments/stations are conceptual and subject to change.”

That’s hardly reassuring.

But for now we know the Ontario Line, Ford’s rebranded relief line, isn’t just far longer than the city had planned, reaching north to the Ontario Science Centre and west to Exhibition Place. It follows a new route east of downtown, dipping down to the Lakeshore rail corridor. And it’s no longer a fully underground subway but goes along the road surface and on elevated rails for much of its 15.5-km route.

Less tunnelling goes a long way to explain how the Ford government can claim to build the line so much cheaper and faster. Though, of course, that comes with other costs, including the greater potential for disruption to the environment and nearby residents, added maintenance challenges and “winter-weather related issues.”

Again, hardly reassuring.

We know the trains will be smaller, carry fewer passengers and won’t be compatible with the city’s existing subway lines, so that’s certain to create challenges for the TTC. But we still don’t know what transit cars will be used because the province intends to give the winning bidder of this public-private partnership project “the freedom to determine the exact design and technology within set parameters.”

What could possible go wrong with that?

Not only has there been no public input into any of this, but the plans were made public only after the Star’s Ben Spurr unearthed confidential Metrolinx documents.

While an 86-page report is hardly a back-of-a-napkin plan, the Ford government’s Ontario Line business case has that same conceptual feel about it, especially when compared to the city plan it replaces.

The report makes the case, over dozens of pages, that any transit is better than none and that a longer line with more stops is better than a shorter one. Few would disagree, but it’s hardly the point.

The issue, as it has always been, is the money and the political will to see the plan, any transit plan really, through to completion.

Toronto’s planned relief line might not have been perfect but it would have relieved overcrowding on Line 1 and shovels were going in the ground next year. While claiming to make things better the Ford government has really put big a question mark over what will be built, when and how much it will cost.

The report maintains Ford’s promise of finishing the line by 2027 but history teaches us that’s the least likely outcome. The price tag is already fluctuating and the timeline is sure to follow.

The Ontario Line was announced at $10.9 billion and has already climbed to as much as $12 billion. That’s before planners have tackled the “coordination challenges” of sharing the Lakeshore rail corridor with GO, the “complexity” of the Lower Don crossing, which hits flood mitigation and Gardiner reconstruction, and a host of other issues.

If the Ontario Line, the “crown jewel” of the government’s promised $28.5-billion Greater Toronto transit plan, is such a mess, what can that mean for the rest of it?

Ford’s grand transit unveil also included a three-stop Scarborough subway, a sped-up subway extension to Richmond Hill, and an expanded Eglinton West LRT with extensive tunnelling to make it more subway-like through Etobicoke.

Who knows what that will look like — or cost — once the government gets around to producing detailed plans?

And, again, we’re back to the money.

Initially, the province intended to pay just $11.2 billion of the cost of its transit vision. Ottawa and municipalities, primarily Toronto, were expected to come up with the rest, or $17.3 billion.

Briefly, Ford said if they didn’t agree to pay, the province would pay it all. And, most recently, the premier sought to score political points by claiming Bombardier issued layoff notices to half its Thunder Bay workforce because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hasn’t signed over billions of federal dollars for this transit plan.

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Ford has claimed his takeover of Toronto’s subway plans was necessary “because the people of Ontario have waited long enough.”

TTC passengers and those who hope someday to be transit riders certainly do have a right to feel like they’ve been waiting for a train that never comes. And that’s precisely why they deserve better than yet another politician creating havoc and almost certainly delaying badly needed transit.

People can’t ride to work on Ford’s words. They need actual transit for that.

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