I'd much rather have Metrolinx act as a coordinator between various transit agencies.
Clearly the province can't be trusted to operate local transit. They've screwed us over too many times before.
A balance is needed. Too much city control is bad. Too much provincial control is bad.
But right now we have too much city control. And it's not working.
Too much city control of public transit isn't working for the last 25 years.
- Transit City MIA
- Eglinton Subway(1990s) construction interrupted & tunnel filled in
- Sheppard expensive stubway
- St. Clair isn't significantly sped up as it should have been.
- Scarborough RT/LRT/subway indecision and expense.
- Vaughan delay.
- Enough said.
- Toronto's public has not yet entered a new subway station for the last 20 years!
When Metrolinx was born just barely under a decade ago, a huge fire has been lit under Toronto's transit progress. They have done more in the last 10 years than TTC did in the last 25 years! Even all the Metrolinx delays/boondoggles/waste combined, look like minor setbacks in comparison. Lots of new GO stations in the last 20 years. Lots of service increase (even if falling short of promise). Even their stupendously expensive airport train is, otherwise, a masterpiece of beautiful non-public-transit that is almost guaranteed to be popular/profitable (Even if it should have been a larger, higher-frequency cheap $3 public transit train instead, with better economic benefits to general public). Metrolinx European style LRTs, with proper stop spacing, better project management (even if imperfect), and proper traffic signal priority, will move twice as fast as TTC streetcars. And their continual GO upgrades have been wonderful as of late (e.g. Lakeshore 30-min allday) even if the upgrades aren't coming as fast as we hope. The Metrolinx mistakes look a mere detail compared to the TTC messes of the last 20 years.
Likewise, too much provincial control of public transit means we get a system that doesn't always serve city needs. So a balance needs to exist. A happy equilibrium will need to be reached, but I suspect slightly less city wrangling and slightly more provincial control. City control and provincial control should be balanced to be checks on each other. Whether it's inefficiency by operations, politics, cost overruns, corporate culture, etc.
Ever since Metrolinx started (love or hate them), they've certainly lit a bit of a fire in the Toronto transit scene a bit more than the 10 years right before Metrolinx... Now we're about to receive a bona-fide doubling of the size of Toronto's high-frequency "subway-convenience" network (with GO RER 15-min allday and new integrated interchange stations) -- is threatening to make recent TTC look really bad, especially if they don't up their game in the next 10 years. Even though cheap public transit has bigger economic benefits, the Scarborough extension is so ultra-expensive that even the UPX "luxury train" actually ends up ironically having better economic benefit to society than the three Scarborough stations. Even I myself even prefer the move of better subsidized inexpensive public transit, this is quite the irony that UPX is socially better than the three Scarborough stations because UPX cost less than 10% of Scarborough subway (and the improved business of UPX giving economic spinoffs apparently outweigh the economic benefit of replacing 8 RT stations with 3 subway stations). How stupid is that from a socialist point of view, that UPX is socially better than Scarborough subway extension from its overall society benefit perspective!? Which is kind of silly and ironic, even as I myself would have preferred UPX to cost $3 and use bigger subway-style trains that has more public transit stations. A Scarborough LRT would have helped a lot more Scarborough residents, and actually provided a faster way to downtown -- it's rapid European style LRT with complete grade separation, that might even have ended up moving faster than the RT, and not a slow TTC streetcar, and a shorter walk to many stations rather than a bus-transfer away. And now they pay higher property tax for far less. Plus, even the other Metrolinx nitpicks and delays such as Georgetown Corridor and their 'share' of Union revitalization delays doesn't even look nearly as bad as the Vaughan subway extension delay, and potential continued tension over the Scarborough subway, for example. And probably forcing TTC to confront itself, choosing someone who's finally willing to work with Metrolinx, Andy Byford is working harder than past TTC management. Credit where credit is due - Metrolinx is the best thing that happened to TTC.
We'll hopefully see a far more efficient TTC in the next ten years, thanks to Metrolinx prodding them down the right path.
