Transit City Back On the Rails, Sort Of
Today, Toronto City Council voted 25-18 in favour of the one part of a motion brought to a special meeitng by TTC Chair Karen Stintz. This part of the motion dealt with returning to more or less the previous design for Eglinton, subject to engineering recommendations, returning to an SRT conversion to LRT that included an extension to Sheppard with looking into the further extension to Malvern Town Centre, and a return of the Finch West LRT route from Keele and Finch to Humber College.
The second part of her motion asked for a panel to be created to investigate what is best for Sheppard East, and this was also passed.
My “Sort Of” in the title comes from making the point that ‘Transit City’ involves a plan for eight LRT corridors. Four of those corridors were identified by Metrolinx in their “5 in 10 Plan” (the fifth is the YRT/VIVA rapidways). Three of the corridors have been restored and Sheppard East will be under review that must report back to council by March 12, 2012.
One comment of note was something that Councillor Raymond Cho said (ward 42 - Scarborough-Rouge River) when speaking in favour of the motion. He said that originally, he was in favour of Rob Ford’s plan of a Sheppard subway as he thought that meant the subway would go all the way along Sheppard to Morningside (or Meadowvale). Now, if a city councillor thought this, just how many people in Scarborough thought this? Worse yet, how many STILL think this?
February 10th, 2012 at 11:12 pm
Rob Ford keeps harping that people want subways. I want subways. In fact, I want all of the TTC routes to be underground. I also want to live in Casa Loma. We want everything, without paying for it of course.
What Rob forgets is that we NEED rapid transit for everyone as close as possible and at a cost effective manner. At least with Transit City, we could get rapid transit much more quickly and less expensively.
Early in Rob Ford reign, he signed a MOU (memo of understanding) with the premier. He had a whole year to get city council to agree to it, but didn’t. He thought he was Supreme Leader, and anything he wanted he got. Sorry, you have to play well with others. You can’t just take the ball home because the rest won’t play with the rules you changed and made up.
Cal’s comment: The ironic thing is that when the MOU first came out, Ford probably could have got council to approve it. Instead, he played Supreme Leader and felt his word was law. The MOU needed council’s approval and the time that has passed resulted in it not being able to get that approval.
We need rapid transit for all over Toronto, not just a few sections, and at a reasonable price. Transit City is not just what we want, but what we need.
February 14th, 2012 at 11:45 am
Save Our Transit…
…from the surface rail phobia of Rob Ford and his underlings.
February 28th, 2012 at 10:08 am
Right!! …from the surface rail phobia of Rob Ford and his underlings.
February 28th, 2012 at 10:13 pm
Rob Ford wants all departments and commissions to run efficiently. So the TTC presented Transit City as a efficient way to move more people across vast sections of Toronto at a less expensive manner. However, Rob does not want the TTC to be efficient when he rather spend vast sums of taxpayer money on short sections of the city using expensive heavy rail that will move less transit users than light rail.
Cal’s comment: I can’t add to that, except to ask why so many people don’t see this.