Premier Dalton McGuinty needn’t worry — if Toronto Mayor Rob Ford doesn’t want it, Mississauga will be only too happy to take the province’s money to build light rail transit (LRT).

That’s the cheeky suggestion proffered by Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion in a letter to Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne.

“If any Toronto transit contracts are cancelled I want to inform you up front that we could use the money that has been allocated for those projects, for transit projects in Mississauga,” McCallion says in the Dec. 3 letter obtained by the Star.

The letter surfaced just as McGuinty and Ford had their first face-to-face discussion Tuesday on the fate of Toronto’s Transit City light rail plan.

Ford wants to build subways instead of LRT with the $8.15 billion the province has committed to Toronto over the coming decade.

McGuinty has repeatedly said he’s willing to work with the new mayor but there’s no more money coming to Toronto for transit and he’s not picking up the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars in contract cancellations and work already finished on Transit City.

McCallion wants to build LRT on Mississauga’s busiest bus corridor, Hurontario St., and that project is already included in the 25-year provincial transportation plan, although it has not been funded.

“Metrolinx has recently approved the business case analysis for LRT with results that are very favourable compared to other projects currently allocated for funding in Toronto,” McCallion said in her letter, which is copied to Mississauga MPPs, councillors, Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell and Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig.

Mississauga and Brampton are already moving ahead on the project’s design so it’s ready to roll as soon as money becomes available.

Above-ground LRT costs about a third as much as subways — the TTC estimates about $100 million per kilometre compared to about $300 million for tunneling.

Ford hasn’t specified whether he would agree to underground LRT such as that being planned for the Eglinton line of Transit City, rather than subways which carry more riders. But once a project goes under the road the costs are about the same as subways, according to TTC chief general manager Gary Webster.

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