Apparently not ... maybe anti-transit wasn't the best term. But she never in her career pushed for the kind of transit expansion we are looking at currently.
Because there was already a plan in place....remember? The one that called for subways to be built in some suburban corridors. Her goal was to get that implemented. Just because she didn't advocate throwing all existing plans out the window and drawing up a glorified streetcar program to lift troubled kids out of poverty does not mean that she did not advocate for transit expansion.
I strongly disagree with labeling someone who has steady long term vision as lacking ambition. If the next mayor comes in and rips up Transit City and puts out a new plan, are you going to suggest that he/she is visionary and that Miller did not support transit expansion as much as the new mayor?
The beauty of her plan was that it was scalable and allowed for economies of scale. If she got more money from the province she could have simply accelerated her plan, while costs would have been seriously contained thanks to the economies of scale that come from steady continuous expansion. No buying new boring machines every time. No starting up and closing project offices all the time. It's not a sexy plan. But it's exactly how most major cities around the world handle transit expansion.
Yes, perhaps anti-transit isn't the best phrase. But certainly not pro-transit. I'm sure if either had been elected, we wouldn't be as far ahead as we are now.
We'll never know, now will we. Given that Miller hasn't built a thing yet, I don't think we are as far along as Miller deserves credit for. But, if under Tory the province was willing to follow the existing plan at the time, do you really believe we would be behind what Miller's accomplished today?
There's a valid EA to extend the Sheppard subway further (to Vic Park I think) that could have been used by simply throwing some money at it. That alone would have been a bigger accomplishment that any actual built transit infrastructure under Miller. The rest of the stuff Miller's building like the SRT upgrade, Union station upgrades, etc. were all inevitable regardless of whoever was in the hot seat. So who's to say that we would not have been further along under Tory than Miller? I am willing to bet that at least Tory would have prioritized the DRL over other improvements in this city. That alone would have been a massive accomplishment over anything Transit City will pull off.
Finally on this point, I consider it ridiculous to suggest that just because somebody is a Conservative that they automatically won't support transit. There are conservatives mayors in Europe building high speed rail lines all over the place. We have a Republican governor in California who is pushing for one of the biggest expansions of HSR in US history. And we have a Conservative mayor in London who is presiding over one of the biggest expansions of the Underground in decades. I think John Tory would have been a mayor of a similar mold. Given the funds, he would have expanded the transit system to the extent that he could. Unfortunately, he was fighting an election where transit wasn't an issue, during a period when funding for transit wasn't sure and so he had to talk about the things that would help him get elected. He talked about crime, the Island airport, etc. Even Miller talked rather vaguely about transit and deploying some LRT here and there. Transit City came along only after he was in power. It's dishonest to suggest that Miller won because of Transit City, and that by extension John Tory was not pro-transit enough to win.
