Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Toronto pressing the re-set button, too

It's hard to believe that the City of Toronto's mayor-elect Rob Ford is actually going to go down the same road which outgoing Ottawa mayor Larry O'Brien took: Cancelling a transit plan which had been approved by all sorts of assemblies of staff, council, and other governments in favour of his own direction.

Those who think O'Brien's decision was a mistake can look at Ford's for a little bit more solace: Ottawa had only signed the contract when the north-south plan was cancelled. In Toronto, not only have contracts been signed, but construction has already commenced. And O'Brien deferred to a task force on transportation to re-set the plans (that task force ended up recommending the downtown tunnel plan Ottawa has now), Ford's just out-and-out gone ahead and made his own plan: No more surface-grade light-rail, but instead a continued investment into subways.

Ford's first move as mayor is expected to be this morning's announcement of his intentions to stop the plan. Rest assured, it's going to be a bumpy transit ride in Toronto through his tenure.

2 comments:

Eric S. Smith said...

Ford's plan isn't "a continued investment in subways;" that's being entirely too kind. He wants to abandon a city-wide transit strategy in favour of an unfunded subway project that, as he proposed it during the campaign, cannot be built.

Anonymous said...

Ford believes that he can completely bypass the will of city council, the commission itself, the province and his electorate. One can only hope he will find out that the City of Toronto is not a dictatorship.