Subway madness

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What the hell is going on in the peabrains at Queen's Park? The transit community consensus appears to be that the 670 million Ontario is putting in a "trust fund" will be conditional on the Spadina extension going beyond the planned terminus at Steeles Avenue to Highway 7 since no mechanism to draw down the funds for a "partial" extension has been declared.

Now, Vaughan may have big plans for a city centre effort in that area, but surely this is overkill when the rest of the city (where there are passengers already) needs additional transit provision - Kipling extension to Square One/Mississauga boundary, Sheppard extension to Downsview and Scarborough, the SRT replacement project and the provision of modern LRT in downtown and along Eglinton. Vaughan has only just got into the high end bus transit market and now feels they are ready for a subway?

Furthermore, will this now be held up pending an Environmental Assessment when the one for the Downsview-Steeles line just finished?

Let's call this what it is - a votes grab which will saddle Toronto with another low density subway which and which fails to exploit the existing GO Transit infrastructure. Meanwhile, the "$200m for transit" will not be spent on transit but to keep Miller's 3pc property tax increase promise so the price increase will go ahead as scheduled. Bah!

Comments

talk talk talk / Shireen said…
I hadn't absorbed the fine detail when I first heard of the subway announcement. I figured they would build the subway line to Steeles while they do an assessment of the line from Steeles to Hwy 7, so that by the time they finished (partially or fully) construction up to Steeles, they would be ready to start construction on the Steeles to 7 portion, sort of like the incremental idea the original subway builders had. Mea culpa, I forgot politicians don't think pragmatically and prefer the smoke and mirrors.
Sat Mar 25, 11:19:00 am GMT-5
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