Toronto Transit: A Modest Proposal

originally posted by: ipsedixit
a reply to: InTheLight

Very true. I'm hoping that some of the hundreds of millions of tax dollars lost every year (according to studies) due to Toronto's inability to handle more commercial traffic, starts to come on stream. If that happens we should have a better standard of living all around, which is so important in the north, where the standard of living issues lead to severe social problems.

Let's hope the planners get smarter with time and circumstance.

I'm down with that as long as I can just run over all the bastards that walk against the traffic lights. Slowing down traffic. Hell I'd pay out of my pocket per person. Double for cyclists

It looks like the winds of change blowing over the transit situation in our area are all starting to blow in the same direction. Now the Toronto Board of Trade has come out with an even further reaching call for the province to assume complete control of a number of urban transit systems in their entirety, including that of Toronto.

Good. This is the rational way forward. I applaud the people making the case for this new approach. It makes sense.

One hopes that this approach, when embarked upon, will include strict supervision of any attempts by "gubmint" to insert itself into the processes. (I live in hope.)

www.thestar.com... -trade.html

Is it time for cities to hand over the responsibility for public transit to the province?

The Toronto Region Board of Trade thinks so. In a report released Monday, the business advocacy group argues municipalities in the Toronto-Waterloo corridor should upload the entirety of their public transit systems to a new, powerful body created by the province.

. . .

The board’s proposal goes much further than that and is sure to spark controversy among local leaders across the region. But the report’s authors argue that consolidating the planning, construction and operation of transit into a single provincial body would benefit transit riders and municipal governments by reducing the risk of politics interfering in the delivery of evidence-based projects and freeing up cities to spend resources on other priorities.