With millions of passengers in play, and billions of dollars at stake, Ontario’s mega-transit agency should by now be a household name.

Yet Metrolinx remains the missing link in our transit planning, a symbol of missed opportunities that have got us where we are today: Rapid cash flow that gets us nowhere fast.

As an umbrella co-ordinating agency, the Metrolinx mission is to be Ontario’s farsighted overseer of future planning — not under the radar, behind the scenes and out of the transit loop.

Long rudderless, now leaderless, the agency is searching this week for a new CEO. Its last chief executive, Bruce McCuaig, slipped away quietly last spring, heading off to Ottawa to do what he knows best — husband big money for giant infrastructure spending.

Now Metrolinx needs a sharp turnaround to reach its destination — a pivot from funding and planning to building and executing. To get back on track, the new CEO of this invisible agency must be both visionary and grounded, practical and political.

It would be unfair to fault McCuaig for the detours to date. A career bureaucrat, he had to navigate the political shoals of Queen’s Park, city hall and regional governments.

As a former deputy minister accustomed to deferring to ministerial authority, McCuaig never quite shook the habit. His successor, who is being interviewed this week by a search committee of the board, needs to tell his new bosses how he intends to triangulate between competing political power centres.

On one side sits the ambitious minister of transportation (who aspires to be premier), Steven Del Duca. On the other, Metrolinx board chair Rob Prichard, who is more of a political operator than a conductor of transit operators.

The new CEO must also use jiu-jitsu to defend against the chaotic impulses of Toronto city hall, whose councillors and mayor keep driving sensible transit plans into the ground as they prostrate themselves before the electoral deities of Scarborough. And beyond the boundaries of the GTA, there are dozens of regional princelings.

Machiavelli’s The Prince should be included in the briefing books for any new CEO handed maximum responsibility with minimal authority.

Against that backdrop of backroom manoeuvring and inherited boondoggles, Metrolinx cannot bear all the blame for the costly U-turns along the way. But unless lessons are learned from past fiascos, future derailments lie ahead:

Scarborough’s bumpy pathway began with a sensible LRT rapid transit line, cannibalized by the bravado of ex-mayor Rob Ford’s subway fantasy, exacerbated by pledges of fealty from rival provincial parties. Pushed and pulled by competing power centres, Metrolinx obediently went back to the drawing board rather than forcing all sides to face facts and figures. A similar U-turn plagued the Brampton LRT plan;

The UPX airport express is a runaway success for which we will pay the price in perpetuity. Orphaned long ago by a private sector consortium that realized the $456-million project would never make money, it was later adopted by Metrolinx. Built on budget and on time, times changed. Conceived in an era of $60 limousine rides to Pearson, UPX must now compete against unexpected Uber trips that cost half as much. The initial ticket price of nearly $30 flopped, and the original concept of airport-only passengers went awry as trains ran nearly empty. Now at cut rates, ridership has rebounded but will be subsidized forever more. And more;

High speed rail has returned to the planning horizon, as the Liberal government promotes a Toronto to Waterloo and London route just in time for the next provincial election. Oddly, Queen’s Park has mooted yet another arm’s length agency to shepherd the process, leaving Metrolinx the odd agency out. Such duplication is indefensible. As a regional transit planner Metrolinx needs to remain in the loop, lest there be any overlap between the Toronto to Waterloo routes of various velocities;

Regional Express Rail is central to the Metrolinx mandate of connecting passengers to economic zones across the GTHA. But a disturbing report by my Toronto Star colleague Ben Spurr shows how Del Duca meddled in the planning process by lobbying for a station in his home riding of Vaughan — despite an internal study showing there was no business case. When the minister flexed his muscle, Metrolinx cried uncle — and Prichard is still defending the agency’s acquiescence.

That’s no way to run a railroad, unless you want to run it into the ground. With more than $22 billion on the table and millions of riders on the platforms, financial probity and planning clarity are paramount.

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Metrolinx is looking for a new CEO to be a builder, but it also needs a bulldozer — a leader who can push back when push comes to shove. And stand up for riders’ rights when politicians go wrong.

Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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