As Toronto city councillors debate which taxes or fees should be dedicated to transit expansion, one former mayoral candidate has already picked her poison — a 1 per cent Toronto sales tax to be spent exclusively on building subways.

Sarah Thomson dropped out of the race that put another subway supporter, Rob Ford, in the mayor’s office.

Unlike Ford, however, Thomson doesn’t see the proposed sales tax as a bitter pill to be inflicted on residents. Rather, it’s the best way to pay for a new downtown east-west subway the city desperately needs, she said.

That’s why the publisher of the Women’s Post agreed to front the 1 per cent Solution Unlock the Gridlock, a campaign for the Toronto Transit Alliance.

The group of business leaders has a website featuring a network of proposed subways intersecting with the existing lines. It includes the proposed route widely referred to as the downtown relief line, running down from Eglinton and east-west through the south end of the city.

“We know there are all different types of transit we need, and we need it quickly,” Thomson said. “But right now we’re saying: We need subways and we’re never going to get it underway if we keep waiting on handouts from other levels of government. It’s not coming, it hasn’t come in 40 years, so that’s why we’ve got to take the initiative.”

Thomson believes it will take a two-year campaign of informing residents about the economic costs of gridlock, much like the campaign that convinced residents of Los Angeles to vote for a half-cent sales tax devoted to transit improvement. The Toronto campaign will cost about $1 million, money the group hopes to raise through donations.

“This is why I got into politics to begin with. Now I figure, even though I’m not in, I can still do this,” she said.