Buyer’s remorse can weigh heavily on a columnist. And so, a confession.

After 137 columns, here’s one that still gives me serious second thoughts: New on the job last February, I wrote that Premier Dalton McGuinty was doing the right thing by negotiating with Mayor Rob Ford to bury the entire Eglinton light-rail line.

It made sense to me at the time, if only by a process of elimination. Nearing the end of his mandate, McGuinty’s polling numbers were dismal. He couldn’t fend off Ford’s fresh electoral mandate and dazzling political honeymoon.

Back then, I thought the premier played a poor hand relatively well — acquiescing to Ford’s insistence on burying the Eglinton line, in exchange for diverting money from the less compelling Sheppard subway extension.

But what seemed practical and politic at the time now strikes me, with the benefit of hindsight, to be an incoherent compromise that cannot and should not proceed. It is destined to collapse under the weight of its own wasteful folly — unless politicians at Queen’s Park and city hall, egged on by the public, raise the alarm bells first.

Now, Karen Stintz, who chairs the TTC, is dissenting publicly from Ford’s determination to bury the Eglinton LRT from start to finish. Another conservative councillor, John Parker, has also dismissed it as goofy.

The original (and optimal plan) was to bury it in the high-density strip from Jane to Laird, then leave it above-ground for most of the eastern leg through Scarborough — tunnelling where necessary, but not necessarily tunnelling. But Ford charged ahead with his hide-bound defence of motorists against a mythical “war against the car,” which meant burying the LRT at all costs.

His antipathy toward any sign of steel rails on the sacred streets of Eglinton East blinded him to a more elegant compromise. Too bad he didn’t give more thought to a tantalizing offer dangled during closed-door negotiations last year: For any car lanes taken over by LRT rails on the surface, the province would expropriate adjoining land to widen Eglinton Ave. proportionately.

Such was Ford’s visceral prejudice against public transit that he didn’t bite. Instead, he imagined himself a savvy negotiator by getting the province to pay the extra cost — as much as $2 billion — of burying the entire Eglinton line. In exchange, he let the province off the hook for the Sheppard extension, confident that he could raise enough private funding and federal money to go his own way.

Neither of those tunnel dreams is turning out for Ford, who persists in burying his head in the soil. The Sheppard line isn’t getting any fiscal traction. And the Eglinton line is bogged down in its own internal contradictions, which provincial transit agency Metrolinx has long anticipated.

The expedient politics of a year ago may yet save us from ourselves. McGuinty’s studied moves — never confronting Ford head on, merely throwing him off balance with his own weight — have given him some extra manoeuvring room. Jujitsu of a judicious sort.

Metrolinx has husbanded its resources over the past year, buying time and maintaining flexibility should the politicians have yet another change of heart. Along the eastern zone east of Laird, no tunnels are even close to being dug — making a U-turn that much easier if politicians ultimately see the light.

Can the premier afford to wait Ford out much longer? The triangulation among city hall, Metrolinx and Queen’s Park can be dizzying. The TTC still dreams of a full-fledged subway along Eglinton, putting it at cross-purposes with Metrolinx, which is bankrolling the project and will be its owner.

By the end of this decade, as the Eglinton line powers up, one can only hope that the powers who operate it come to their senses. Perhaps, instead of endless posturing between rival agencies, the province will one day take over the TTC’s rail lines (subway and LRT) to integrate them with the larger GO network now operated by Metrolinx.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

And so ends my confession.

Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, twitter.com/reggcohn.

Read more about: