As part of its tête-à-tête series, the Toronto Star asked us: Is Doug Ford on the right track with his transit plan?

We think that’s the wrong question. Instead, we should be asking: Is the Ontario Ministry of Transportation on the right track? Is Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster on the right track, working with a team of advisers who share international transit experience? Is the widely respected advice of Infrastructure Ontario on the right track? Was the City of Toronto on the right track by planning for a relief line — a plan that is adapted, rather than scrapped by Metrolinx’s proposed changes?

The answer is, yes, over and over. The proposed relief line plan may have a new name, the Ontario Line, and it may have several changes compared to existing city plans. But those changes are designed to improve speed of construction, not delay it, and to improve transit capacity at the right places, not reduce it.

Transit advocates say we should learn from other cities (we agree), but often when a new way of doing something in Toronto is proposed, many of those same people suddenly resist.

Other cities are flexible on their use of vehicles and often have several types in their fleet, but opponents of the Ontario Line insist car standardization is more important than efficiency or evolution. Metrolinx has gone with different trains because its ridership modelling suggests they’ll be able to move more passengers on the new line, even with fewer passengers per car.

Narrower trains will make it possible to build a single tunnel rather than double bore and make it easier to bridge over, rather than tunnel under, the Don River. Both steps should mean faster and cheaper construction, drawing on the experience of several European jurisdictions (like Spain) that build subways faster and cheaper than we do.

Opposing View: Is Doug Ford on track with his transit plan? No.

The Big Debate

With respect to the route, some suggest it was a whimsical decision to extend the relief line’s terminus from Thorncliffe to a new end point at the Ontario Science Centre, when the obvious goal is to connect to the Eglinton Crosstown.

The northern extension builds on a joint city-povincial planning process that has already been underway since 2018 (www.relieflinenorth.ca). Meanwhile, the west extension can provide relief to Union Station if there is an Ontario Line connection to Exhibition GO.

Several urban leaders worked with the board in early 2017 to learn from other jurisdictions and stay flexible on station design to support transit-oriented development. The Ontario Line plan delivers on that request.

What’s different isn’t the Ontario Line’s goals relative to the original relief line plan, or its value. What’s really different is that provincial planners and engineers are backed with provincial dollars and legislative authority.

The province’s action is a manifestation of an awkward political reality, which led the board to push for a more regionalized, provincially led approach on transit in the first place at the end of 2017.

Queen’s Park has the authority to deliver on Toronto’s top transit expansion priority unilaterally. City hall has been working hard in recent months to speed up transit improvements, but the city’s power, money and authority is limited to a degree that provincial political support would always be needed to do the same.

THE BIG DEBATE: For more opposing view columns from Toronto Star contributors, click here.

In that context, the Ontario Line is a win, but it’s a win that must beget more wins.

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The Ontario Line plan still faces many hurdles, and building new subways helps nobody if the old subways connecting to it are falling apart, which is more likely following the province’s announcement that it would not increase gas tax transfers. The business community wants Queen’s Park and city hall to co-operate to address these challenges.

Yet, we’ve gone from debating whether the relief line would be financed at all, to debating whether the province’s cost estimates for a much larger line are too conservative. This is what transit progress looks like.

We can choose to reject that opportunity, and waste more time finger-pointing about who’s to blame for a quarter-century of missed transit opportunities. Or we can support the province in its willingness to invest in expansion, and support the mayor in his efforts to secure more support for the TTC system as a whole. From our point of view, progress is the obvious choice.

Jan De Silva is president and CEO of Toronto Region Board of Trade.

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