The City of Toronto has (surprise, surprise) found another billion-dollar project to potentially spend taxpayer dollars on.

They will soon decide whether to install anti-suicide barriers on TTC subway platforms. On a provincial level, Metrolinx is considering similar measures to restrict access to GO Transit corridors.

At first glance, this seems like a worthy use of funds.

Who doesn’t want to prevent suicides — not only saving lives, but also sparing family, friends and witnesses the consequences of such acts?

Of course, we want to save lives. That’s not the heart of this debate, and anyone who presents it as such is creating a false dilemma.

The issue is there’s no evidence that installing anti-suicide barriers on subway platforms will actually stop any suicides.

They may prevent inconvenient suicides that cause multi-hour delays and traumatize drivers and witnesses, but the unfortunate reality is that people who desperately want to end their lives will probably find another way to do so if subway tracks aren’t accessible.

The topic of suicide-by-public-transit is getting a surge of public attention because the TTC’s top brass has only recently started to openly acknowledge that it actually happens. Rather than hiding behind euphemisms, stations now contain posters that blatantly offer help to those “thinking of suicide.”

The transit agency also now releases statistics on the number of actual and attempted suicides it sees.

The numbers are rather staggering, to be fair. There’s approximately one actual or attempted suicide every two weeks in our subway system.

It’s easy to react instinctively to such numbers and shout, “Put up the barriers!” But the better use of more than $1 billion would be to invest in our mental health-care system.

Anyone who has sought help for mental health issues in Toronto will tell you it’s — at best — not easy.

At worst, it’s a total nightmare that actively discourages people from seeking and ultimately getting the help they need.

Wait times for both diagnosis and therapy are out of control. If you do get off the waiting lists, publicly-funded counselling options are extremely limited and private counselling options are often exorbitantly expensive.

Pricey medications people need to function in their daily lives aren’t covered by OHIP and more and more employers neglect to cover health insurance.

A surge in funding could go a long way towards helping those in distress.

Spending a billion dollars on subway barriers is a Band-Aid solution. Doing so won’t prevent loss of life, but rather push some of society’s most vulnerable further into the dark corners we like to keep them in. Newspapers report on the TTC suicide rate because it’s a public interest issue, but rarely if ever discuss suicides that happen in private residences or out of the spotlight. These people simply disappear without debate or reflection.

Mental health won’t be solved by quick-fix solutions. If we want to see real change we can, and must, do better than a few barriers.