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2018 Provincial Election Transit Promises

W. K. Lis said:
Will Patrick Brown admit that Mike Harris made a BIG mistake cancelling subway projects and cutting the provincial transit subsidies?
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How long must one party suffer and bear the brunt of scorn, derision and rejection by GTA voters all for the miscalculations of one Premier from 20 years ago? What did the Liberals do in the meantime to build out Network 2011 or any similarly ambitious plan? It's one thing to criticize the Tories carte blanche for cutting infrastructure funding when times are economically not so good; but if the picture is as rosy as the Prov/Feds are projecting, then there's no reason not to expect they'd be just as willing to invest big and wholeheartedly in transit too. The Tories are the party of financial stewardship after all and won't want to see workers losing productivity stuck in traffic anymore than reasonable.
 
i feel like they are trying to return to the 40 years of moderate PC rule when the Progressive actually meant something. Who knows though, there is still a whole election cycle to go.
 
crs1026 said:
It is really encouraging to see the Tories saying these things, even if we remain a bit skeptical of some of the fine details. I would much rather challenge the fine points and remain hopeful that the answers firm up, than naysay this platform.

- what is Brown's take on Metrolinx? Is he committing to more transparency and accountability? How will he staff its Board? Does he see it as effective now? vs a monolith that needs trimming and streamlining?
- (three. three questions) As noted, just which GO/RER projects is he saying should proceed? Electrification?l
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With the last point I think it's important. For the Tory's benefit on this front it seems much of the public is in the dark about what RER is. Even those that follow transit can be uncertain. Although RER is a fairly specific thing, recent press releases make it appear all GO rail now falls under the umbrella of "RER". But even with that it's a humongous project, and the platform paper doesn't say much about its future - be it electrification, new stations, high services for specific portions of certain corridors, etc. A big thing to gloss over.

And the second point would be interesting to see. I know he has a stutter, but am half expecting PB to do a Nigel Farage-to-EU type rant re: Metrolinx/Del Duca. 'You have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk...who are you? I've never heard of you, nobody in the GTA voted for you!'.
 
Patrick Brown and the Ontario PCs will assume responsibility for the city’s share of the Scarborough Subway Extension, including the more than $200 million cost escalator that the province has refused to fund, provided that the city makes a significant financial investment in extending the Eglinton Crosstown project to Scarborough’s University of Toronto campus.

If I understand this... they give the city a way out of the Scarborough Subway fiasco, build the Sheppard Line to STC as long as the city funds Crosstown East on their own...

As long as Relief LONG is priority 1-2-3, I can't disagree with that

In the matter of Toronto transit, seems like the PC are saying that post Liberals transit projects, they're all in on heavy rail and out of light rail. So Waterfront LRT might be totally on the city's burden to fund and build
 
I'll breathe a sigh of relief with genuine, certified, actual, real, bona-fide shovels hitting ground on Hamilton LRT in 2019.

While I am not a card-carrying PC, I am not feeling the fears of a Harris-era slaughter.

That said, PC just essentially suggested a defacto upload of the subway to Metrolinx (Eglinton Crosstown style). It looks like Metrolinx, quacks like Metrolinx, and is Metrolinx -- even though they're not saying "Metrolinx". I wonder what they'll do to the Metrolinx name/structure though, but whatever regional brand they slap on that entity, it'll essentially be the same entity operating the subway, SmartTrack, UPX and GO if this happens. I wonder how that will work though. Going to be messy, given TTC complexity, and Toronto's difficulty financing streetcar/bus operations without the revenues of the subway.
 
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44 North said:
With the last point I think it's important. For the Tory's benefit on this front it seems much of the public is in the dark about what RER is. Even those that follow transit can be uncertain. Although RER is a fairly specific thing, recent press releases make it appear all GO rail now falls under the umbrella of "RER". But even with that it's a humongous project, and the platform paper doesn't say much about its future - be it electrification, new stations, high services for specific portions of certain corridors, etc. A big thing to gloss over.

And the second point would be interesting to see. I know he has a stutter, but am half expecting PB to do a Nigel Farage-to-EU type rant re: Metrolinx/Del Duca. 'You have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk...who are you? I've never heard of you, nobody in the GTA voted for you!'.
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Branding opportunity.

One possible path is the whole RER project becomes called "Expanded SmartTrack" (all $13.5 billion dollars of it).

Time it right (2018, 2019) right before the shovels hit the ground, and whatever political party rebrands the new GO RER, gets the big bonus points if they market the hell out of it under GO RER's new brand name or nameplate.

We don't have to like the opportunisticism, but it looks like electrification isn't going to be cancelled under PC. It's a shovel-ready project, it perfectly fits in a 2-term (2018-2026 = Full RER Monty Ribbon Cutting!), the feds are dangling some boost-money for it. So it is a golden pot for grabs for any major Ontario party.

How can the PC/Libs/NDP resist?

Tweaks will be made to satiate the electorate (e.g. Northland, prioritization of specific GO routes, etc), and a route or two might get delayed/accelerated, but all by large and large, RER is essentially mostly modified (possibly rebranded).

SmartTrack become FastTracked, and we know it defacto requires Lakeshore electrification (due to Whitby maintenance facility), so Lakeshore gets electrified (in both directions), the dominoes fall, and thusly, the electrification project is handed to the party on a silver platter to say "I did it, I did a miracle of turning the GO system into a surface subway!" to the politican that successfully markets GO RER as a frequent 2-way surface subway .... (all the while it was already planned all along under any party color)

(Yeah, yeah.)
 
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I don't think most Torontonians really know exactly what RER is because they have yet to see it.

I think the Liberals have made a fatal mistake of trying to complete all RER lines at the same time........2025. I appreciate it is a huge project but they should have focused more energy on getting one line up and running as opposed to the standard "it will be completed soon" as Torontonians have a very valid reason for doubting any transit projects until they are up and running. If they had one line up and running by now people could experience the speed and reliability of RER and how it is superior to just regular GO service. There are more trains and stations now than a few years back but the results in ridership have been less than stellar.
 
ssiguy2 said:
I don't think most Torontonians really know exactly what RER is because they have yet to see it.

I think the Liberals have made a fatal mistake of trying to complete all RER lines at the same time........2025. I appreciate it is a huge project but they should have focused more energy on getting one line up and running as opposed to the standard "it will be completed soon" as Torontonians have a very valid reason for doubting any transit projects until they are up and running. If they had one line up and running by now people could experience the speed and reliability of RER and how it is superior to just regular GO service. There are more trains and stations now than a few years back but the results in ridership have been less than stellar.
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We probably won't see it until we kick CN and CP freight out of the GO corridors.
 
Cobra said:
Patrick Brown and the Ontario PCs will assume responsibility for the city’s share of the Scarborough Subway Extension, including the more than $200 million cost escalator that the province has refused to fund, provided that the city makes a significant financial investment in extending the Eglinton Crosstown project to Scarborough’s University of Toronto campus.

If I understand this... they give the city a way out of the Scarborough Subway fiasco, build the Sheppard Line to STC as long as the city funds Crosstown East on their own...

As long as Relief LONG is priority 1-2-3, I can't disagree with that

In the matter of Toronto transit, seems like the PC are saying that post Liberals transit projects, they're all in on heavy rail and out of light rail. So Waterfront LRT might be totally on the city's burden to fund and build
Click to expand...

Glad to see Sheppard Subway still matters to at least one party. How in hell forcing a permanent linear transfer at Don Mills was looked at as sound transit planning is beyond me.

If the Tories pick up the tab for SSE, that frees up the at least $910 million the City had to pay into that project. Surely a bone-bones Crosstown East could come in at around $1 billion, just by cutting out the superfluous minor stops. Seems some good may come from this election after all, either through new governance or forcing the incumbents to shape up their act.
 
denfromoakvillemilton said:
I think the PCs should take the entire TTC away from the city.
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No, but I think the province should take paratransit (Wheel-Trans) away from the city and have the TTC focus solely on conventional transit. IMO one of the reasons why Brampton Transit and Miway are so successful (relatively) is because they don't have to worry about paratransit - it's handled by Peel Region.
 
This is certainly interesting news to mull over. Its nice to see him throughing his weight at the subway system, but I wish he'd be gauranteeing the DRL over Scarborough and maybe Sheppard. His offer of taking the city's share of the Line 2 extension while the city can fund Eglinton East is a very tempting one.

Add in greenbelt protection and from a transportation/land use side of things this is a surprisingly progressive platform. But it does still depend on whether he plans to gut RER and put the DRL on hold.
 
We really need to see some numbers crunched to understand the puts and takes. If the Province were to relieve the City of the capital cost of subways, but declined to fund LRT or streetcar or bus lane improvements, is that a net gain for the city or a loss? And what about future projects after the DRL and North Yonge - it sets up a scenario where the city clamours for further lines which the Province may consider extravagant. And what if the Province wades in on value for money eg cut and cover instead of deep bore for a line? Does the City have a veto? Must the City take the hit on disruption? Part of me thinks that bypassing Toronto Council is a good thing, but part of me thinks they need to keep skin in the game lest their antics get even sillier.

I can understand why they would posture around a shorter planning and execution cycle. It's an easy promise to make and not that easy for anyone to prove success or failure. Electrification is a good example - the TPAP went smoothly and kept to schedule, it is ML's vaccilations and the Province's should we/shouldnt we deliberation (it was first promised around 2010, after all) that is dragging the thing out. Perhaps a better stage gate process where progress is assessed more often and the milestones more transparent would keep things going in a straighter line.

True story: in 1960-61, the construction industry in Toronto was in disarray due to unscrupulous contractors abusing immigrant labour, which led to union unrest with serious levels of violence, intimidation, and disruption to the contruction boom of the day. The City and Province basically tut-tutted their way along but did nothing tangible to intervene .....until.... the disruptions began to happen on the University Subway construction. At that point, the Province found the conviction to fix things. The history lesson that the Wynne Liberals forgot was that delays to infrastructure, especially transit, is a voter issue. Brown's policy people seem to have remebered this and know which noise to make, even if the solution is a bit simplistic.

- Paul
 
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