GenerationW
Senior Member
That's wrong. Metro would have contributed 1/3 or 1/4.
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Politics: Tim Hudak's Plan for Ontario if he becomes Premier
- Thread starter Solid Snake
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BurlOak
Senior Member
From the "BUILDING GREAT CITIES - WHITE PAPER", he says: "burying the Eglinton Crosstown as much as possible".
I think we may have to wait for this to be clarified. Since construction is progressing as we speak, it would have been impossible to state a clear position when the election date was completely unknown.
I think his best strategy would be to continue with the underground portion, switch the Leslie station to the south side, and build the Scarborough portion elevated. With this roughly $500M investment, Hudak could say:
- The line will be fully grade-separated and can be considered a Metro or Subway, as opposed to the on-street LRT that the Liberals had proposed. I imagine they will not be called "streetcars", because it would be using Rob Ford terminology - but I think some other mildly derogatory term such as on-street LRT will be used.
- There will be less traffic disruption at critical locations such as Leslie, DVP, Vic Park, both during construction and in the final configuration, as opposed to the 2 lane restriction planned by the Liberals near Leslie. Traffic during construction is already becoming an issue in the West, so this promise can be immediately understood by many voters.
- The DRL platform can be built concurrently at Don Mills, showing that the Liberals had no intention of prioritizing the DRL, or if they did, they have terrible planning abilities since the Don Mills area would be torn up twice in short succession.
He could use this $2.0B (the net from the $2.5B savings and the $500M for elevating Eglinton) to build the Eglinton West elevated to Pearson. This would appeal to voters in Etobicoke and Mississauga, both areas which have votes and ridings that have the potential to go Conservative.
He could promise to build the DRL. Again from the White Paper, he says: "Prioritize a . . . Downtown Relief Line, as the most important new subway route, and the necessary building block for future subway expansion east into Scarborough, north into Richmond Hill and west into Mississauga." This allows him to state that farther subway expansion is going to occur, but only after the DRL is done. The exact subways to be extended (B-D to Sherway, B-D to Markham Road, YUS to Richmond Hill) could be determined for the next election campaign. It would also highlight how so many people from Councillors to Liberals MP's have said that the DRL is a priority, but it is the Hudak government that would actually build it.
He would also have to keep the B-D subway extension promise alive, but maybe temper it a bit so that it could be switched with the combined SRT/Eglinton line at a later date. I do not think any of the Parties could outright cancel this subway during the campaign if they have any plans of winning seats in Scarborough. Maybe he could say something along the lines of: "we fully support the B-D subway extension EA study, we will fund it, and we will implement its recommendations". Then, he could cancel the B-D subway extension. when the EA results show that connecting the SRT to Eglinton would be a better solution due to lower costs, more stations, longer line deeper into Scarborough, and a more convenient location for the STC station
The costs of this plan are similar to the current LRT plan, but it replaces all LRT with subways or metros. It does not involve any increase spending early in the mandate when Hudak is concentrating on balancing the budget, but will have construction begun towards the end of his term. With the change in scope along the Eglinton line, Hudak could take credit for the entire line. This plan would also highlight numerous areas where the public have great problems with the current Liberal plans.
ehlow
Senior Member
^ I've never heard Hudak, or any other politician for that matter even mention elevated transit. He clearly wants underground for Eglinton as stated in the quote "burying the Eglinton Crosstown as much as possible". I've heard interviews of him talking about it saying that he would bury it if it's not too late to do so if he gets the power to make that change.
denfromoakvillemilton
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You can also see, like I said, he wants suburban subways everywhere.
I also think he will cancel the LRT order and get subway cars for the Eglinton line.TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
I assure you, there is more thought in your post than Hudak has put into his "plan." You think his people have considered what side of Eglinton the Leslie LRT stop should be?
The damned thing is SO thin. First, his funding plan (government efficiencies!) is idiotic.
Secondly, putting that aside, a Premier shouldn't be doing transit planning; that's why we hire experts (like the ones in Metrolinx who get ignored). So, something as specific as the stuff you list is really above his pay grade anyway. But, OK, he is picking routes that serve his political purpose (and, like Rob Ford, ignoring anything that runs on the surface of the earth). Except..
Thirdly, Mississauga doesn't WANT a subway. He has no timelines on his promises so they want an LRT now and he's offering them a hypothetical subway in the future and they don't want it.
He's also changed between saying Metrolinx should be ditched and saying they should take over TTC so I think the main thing to take away from the white paper is that Hudak has no effing clue what he's doing, but he knows traffic is bad.
It's not that I can't imagine a circumstance in which I'd vote for the PCs, but it seems an impossibility to me that anyone who knows/cares about transit in any detail would be taken in by Hudak.
MrsNesbitt
Active Member
I can't imagine how any person in this province who can remember the last time the PCs ran the show could willfully hand them their support again. And yet the blue lawn signs have already sprung up across Durham Region today.
1overcosc
Active Member
Aren't lawn signs illegal until Wednesday?
MrsNesbitt
Active Member
Not sure. But if they are, then Todd McCarthy (PC) has made a pretty big mistake because his signs are littering Pickering, Ajax, and Whitby
BurlOak
Senior Member
Most of what I said is what Hudak SHOULD do, not what he WILL do. What I suggest would generally be in agreement with everything that he has promised.
At some point in time, he will realize that turning Eglinton into a subway is too expensive. He can then either switch to elevated or continue to promise the subway with the full intention of breaking the promise. Being a politician, this is always an option. Switching the current on-street LRT to elevated is still a big improvement, so I do not think he would have to promise a subway and then immediately break the promise. I would save the political capital for cancelling the B-D subway extension.
- As I said before, Hudak could not make any firm transit promises when the date of the election was completely unknown. Now that the date is known I expect that more details will come out during the campaign.
- Even if the Premier does not do transit planning, I would expect that there are some on the team that have knowledge of Transit - there is a Transportation Critic and they do have staff.
- I would guess many Mississauga residents would rather have a subway to Toronto rather than an LRT on Hurontario. I haven't spent enough effort thinking about that LRT so I am not sure how valuable it is and if it makes sense politically for Hudak to cancel it.
- Regarding Metrolinx, I believe he wants the TTC subways combined with GO transit - that was his initial promise. However, Metrolinx completely embarrassed themselves during the Scarborough subway debate and the Metrolinx reputation is quite low among many people in Toronto. So now to combine these two thoughts into one policy would suggest that maybe the TTC subways and GO would become part of MTO and not a separate agency - that also goes along with Hudak's comments from a few years ago that there are too many ABC's (Agencies, Boards and Commissions) which try to avoid ministerial responsibility and oversight.
- I think a good political transit plan also requires differentiation from the other parties and one that highlights the shortcomings of the other plans. He cannot just say that he will do what the Liberals would have done - but do it more efficiently. He needs to have some differences and those differences should be things that the voter can relate to. I think the Leslie portal is a good point to raise. The public has no concept of how it will look in the future, but they do realize disruption of traffic now and in the future. He can easily change the restriction from 2 lanes to 4 - something everyone can conceptualize.
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denfromoakvillemilton
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You live in Durham? Nice! People are greedy. Everyone is for the cuts until the government cuts them!
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
-I admire your optimism
I live in Thornhill and we just had a by-election, it seems like it was 2 weeks ago. Transit is a hot button issue and IMHO, my newly elected PC MPP has no idea what she's talking about on transit. She wants to cancel the Viva lanes they are building on Centre Street and redirect the $ to the Yonge subway. By my math, that would provide about 3% of the funding and yet she is adamant, because we need SUBWAYS. (We DO need that one, actually, but that doesn't mean we don't need bus lanes; but then ,again, those run on ROADS so they aren't useful in the PC playbook). Moreover, the whole point of the white papers was to define the PC positions on issues and while they'll obviously be more detailed in a campaign, the urban white paper was terrible and ill conceived, IMHO. If they're building off that...well, let's just say I don't personally trust Tim Hudak to build subways all over any more than I would have trusted Rob Ford to do the same. But one is born every minute.
-I guess someone can poll Miss. residents as to whether they want an LRT now or a subway at some indeterminate date. I do know that Hazel McCallion told him to stick that plan where the sun don't shine. I think you're just making the point rather than endorsing it but I think we've all learned over the past year what happens when you give people the line they "want" or "deserve." What's relevant is what they need and what the density justifies etc. Everyone would probably WANT a personal helicopter to get to work faster. (And again, my MPP is all about what people WANT.)
-No, Hudak's INITIAL position was scrapping Metrolinx, a bunch of useless overpaid bureaucrats on the Liberal dole. then he shifted to uploading TTC. I think you overestimate Metrolinx's "reputation" in Toronto. We know what they did and didn't do in that debate but most people don't know who they are or just wonder, generically, if something like that wouldn't be their purview. Really, it's a slim minority who grasp what we're talking about here. They didn't do much to distinguish themselves there, that's for sure.
-I understand differentiation (even if I'm not sure Horwath does) but Metrolinx has a plan which means the onus is on Hudak to explain why it's flawed or paint it as some kind of "Liberal" document rather than starting from scratch. He can't articulate why LRT and BRT are bad, beyond Fordisms; he just knows people "want" subways so he pitches it, even if (for example) Mississauga council has planning purposely designed around an LRT they do want, and not a subway, they don't. Which is to say, obviously, he's pandering.
I could not possibly defend the Liberals on any number of files but if we're talking solely about transit, it seems to me they are miles (or km) ahead of anyone else. We'll see if Hudak can do better, but he didn't when it counted in my riding, and we'll see if Horwath has any ideas at all.
(Oh, and the Leslie portal is in Wynne's riding, isn't it? You think he's going to make a dent by appealing to the 1,000 people who might care in a riding he can't win anyway? He should figure out how to actually pay for his half-formed ideas first.)
dowlingm
Senior Member
The current PC transportation critic is a one term MPP who represents the transit hotbed of St Thomas.
nfitz
Superstar
McGuinty proposed 55 or so transit projects early in his second term, and you focus on the one he funded during his first term?
Still, the point stands. Changing horses will delay transit for years.
Hmm, so it was. The memory cheats. Though by June 2007 (and even late 2006), the Liberals were generally in the high 30s and low 40s, mostly ahead of the Tories, so BurlOak's comment that the announcement came "late in his first mandate when he was fully expecting to lose to John Tory and it was his Hail Mary attempt", seems incorrect.
Though they did start construction on the Sheppard East LRT back in 2009, with that grade separation. Had the Liberal MPPs and councillors in Scarborough not put a stop to it, it would have entered service last year.
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TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
I don't know if you're addressing me?
But the answer is obviously yes. He announced $11.5B in transit in his first term and then proposed another 50 projects without funding in his second. So, I'll focus on his first until Metrolinx actually has sustained funding. I'm not going to suggest there was nothing political in Move2020 but everything else flows from that, including the Transit City funding. There really hasn't been any new funding since 2007, has there?
MrsNesbitt
Active Member
Yes indeed. It's automobile town out here. Every second day when there's bad traffic I hear someone ramble on about the need for huge wide roads and a 16-lane 401.
In short, perfect hotbed for PC supporters. Pickering-Scarborough East and Ajax-Pickering are currently Liberal but I wonder how long that might last.
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