Toronto Spadina Subway Extension Emergency Exits | ?m | 1s | TTC | IBI Group

nfitz said:
We need to depoliticize the process.
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I dunno if that's feasible or even desirable.

We are talking about (tens) of billions of dollars of tax money that will be invested (or not) in ways that will fundamentally change communities. It's somewhat incredulous to assume these decisions could ever be purely technocratic or non-political.

Rather than politics per se, the issue seems to be the lack of functioning accountability mechanisms for politicians.

Most obviously, it's not clear who exactly is even responsible for transit/transit expansion.

At the municipal level, you could say the Mayor is. But Toronto's Mayor is fairly weak institutionally. Other than greater publicity, the Mayor's often just one vote on council. Councillors could be held responsible, but individually none of them are really responsible at all. And even though the City is responsible for the TTC, it's never had the fiscal ability to fund major capital works.

The Province has the money to fund capital works, but largely washes its hands of operations. And even if it has the resources to fund transit, it doesn't have any institutional responsibility to do so. It's not even practical to hold the Legislature or Premier accountable for transit in one city when they're meant to represent the entire province.

Federal officials are the same, only worse. So both Feds and Queen's Park approach transit planning as, essentially, gifts rather than core responsibilities. They reap all the credit of cutting ribbons and announcing n-billion, but at the end of the day they don't have to be responsible for when transit doesn't work or isn't there (people will credit Queen's Park for building a subway to Scarborough, but not hold it responsible for the absence of all day GO service elsewhere, even though that's basically what's happened).

Finally all of this is compounded by the fact that transit expansions tend to have timelines longer than electoral mandates. If government X comes in on a promise to seriously reorient transit, and inherits a bunch of projects it disagrees with from government Z, isn't it democratically appropriate to change them? Of course Schumpeterian accountability tends to be premised on the ability of voters to judge the outcome of incumbent policies before holding them accountable, yet a government would be lucky to have shovels in the ground before the next election was called.
 
nfitz said:
What? That's rather a retcon isn't it.

The NDP shelved the Peterson governements plans for subway expansion, until right at the end of their mandate. Then suddenly when they realised they weren't going to be on the hook for the deficit any more, they funded Eglinton and Sheppard - which the Conservatives quickly cancelled when they came to office. Toronto continued to fund Sheppard itself, and the Conservatives eventually came to the table with some money for it.

NDP was a huge disaster for transit. Not a surprise given how hard Layton fought, and managed to sink the DRL line.

All the parties are responsible for the mess we are in. What scares me is one of them still thinks cancelling most of the plans is the way forward, and a second is still not committing to anything, and seems likely to once again shelve much of the plans.

We need to depoliticize the process.
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I totally agree about the depoliticization. I was kind of rounding the corners in my succinct history. There are few heroes in the transit-planning/building story, clearly. My dream is that Metrolinx gets new, more powerful legislation along with the implementation of the revenue tools and we get something approximating a regional government to handle a regional issue. If everyone stays out of their way, there will still no doubt be quibbling about who gets what but we can (hopefully) rest assured things that are actually needed are going forward in (relatively) the right order etc.
 
diminutive said:
I dunno if that's feasible or even desirable.

We are talking about (tens) of billions of dollars of tax money that will be invested (or not) in ways that will fundamentally change communities. It's somewhat incredulous to assume these decisions could ever be purely technocratic or non-political.

Rather than politics per se, the issue seems to be the lack of functioning accountability mechanisms for politicians.

Most obviously, it's not clear who exactly is even responsible for transit/transit expansion.

At the municipal level, you could say the Mayor is. But Toronto's Mayor is fairly weak institutionally. Other than greater publicity, the Mayor's often just one vote on council. Councillors could be held responsible, but individually none of them are really responsible at all. And even though the City is responsible for the TTC, it's never had the fiscal ability to fund major capital works.

The Province has the money to fund capital works, but largely washes its hands of operations. And even if it has the resources to fund transit, it doesn't have any institutional responsibility to do so. It's not even practical to hold the Legislature or Premier accountable for transit in one city when they're meant to represent the entire province.

Federal officials are the same, only worse. So both Feds and Queen's Park approach transit planning as, essentially, gifts rather than core responsibilities. They reap all the credit of cutting ribbons and announcing n-billion, but at the end of the day they don't have to be responsible for when transit doesn't work or isn't there (people will credit Queen's Park for building a subway to Scarborough, but not hold it responsible for the absence of all day GO service elsewhere, even though that's basically what's happened).

Finally all of this is compounded by the fact that transit expansions tend to have timelines longer than electoral mandates. If government X comes in on a promise to seriously reorient transit, and inherits a bunch of projects it disagrees with from government Z, isn't it democratically appropriate to change them? Of course Schumpeterian accountability tends to be premised on the ability of voters to judge the outcome of incumbent policies before holding them accountable, yet a government would be lucky to have shovels in the ground before the next election was called.
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And yet Federal, Provincial, and even Municipal politicians are happy to glad hand and pose for photos at ground breaking, and opening ceremonies that they claim they built. If the same amount of money had simply been paid out as an operational subsidy, and transit agencies (in conjunction with other levels/departments of government. Planning, etc) were allowed to build their transit systems in the way they wished I am sure we would have a more functional transit system than what we have today. But stripping out operational funding robs transit agencies of having some financial flexibility for planning and constructing these systems. Forcing them to go back to the same people who should have given them money in the first place to beg for money for expansion and this is where transit becomes politicized as politician x directs funding for expansion in Vaughan, politician y directs funding only for subways, etc.

We need to go back to a model where transit agencies receive operational funding so that we can separate the desires of politicians from the planning of transit.
 
WislaHD said:
Out of curiosity, what is the issue with opening the Spadina Extension and just opening the Pioneer station later?
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They've said all along they're going to open the whole thing at once, and there's supposed to be a major bus terminal there too. I'm not clear if there are actual issues with holding one station back or whether they're just saying , for now, they think they can that one back on schedule.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
They've said all along they're going to open the whole thing at once
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They have, but they were talking about not having two different phases. The terminal is on schedule. I don't think anything TTC has said, precluded any intermediate stations opening later.

The question is, is the station so far behind, that it would delay the installation of track, power, and other systems?
 
nfitz said:
They have, but they were talking about not having two different phases. The terminal is on schedule. I don't think anything TTC has said, precluded any intermediate stations opening later.

The question is, is the station so far behind, that it would delay the installation of track, power, and other systems?
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Or at least it's, how long will it take TTC to actually tell anyone if it is?
(I watched that station box fill up for months before the story finally broke in the press and they made Ellis Don go to fix it.)

In theory, it makes sense. It would probably annoy York, given their desperation to get the buses off the campus but by any logical measure, it's not worth holding up an otherwise-complete subway (for a few months?) because of the delays.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Or at least it's, how long will it take TTC to actually tell anyone if it is?
(I watched that station box fill up for months before the story finally broke in the press and they made Ellis Don go to fix it.)

In theory, it makes sense. It would probably annoy York, given their desperation to get the buses off the campus but by any logical measure, it's not worth holding up an otherwise-complete subway (for a few months?) because of the delays.
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The most delayed station is actually Steeles West (I can't bring myself to use its new name), not York.
 
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