Remember what i said about Ford's authoritarian policies? Thats litterally why theese new projects are complete 15 years after first design. (OL)
If theese projects were put forward as something akin to "were thinking of doing this project what are your thoughts?" instead of "were doing this now you cant stop this" theres no way theese projects would even come close to any kind of detailed business case or even contract tenders.
The issue with that approach is that with too much bureaucracy nothing gets done. Projects getting completed 15 years after first design isn't normal, its an atrocity. Look at any city in the world with strong transit construction, even in strong first world countries like Spain or Australia. No they don't take 15 years from proposal for the projects to be finished, and that's because they're built by drawing lines on a map, and there's a group of people at the helm making all of the decisions. Local feedback could maybe change the lines alignment by a small bit but never that drastic, but the most important part is that STUFF GETS DONE. 15 years for a project shouldn't be "normal", it should be a non-starter, and as these liberal era projects are being finished, we're now seeing that these 15 years don't really contribute to making the lines better. The Otrain is a light metro running on what are basically trams. Even though I love iON, I do have to admit that it has an extremely wonky route owing part that its an allignment that tried to please too many people at once, and since the route is so curvy with tons of turns, it makes having proper transit signal priority extremely challenging, and if frequencies ever increase in the future, it would cause havoc on the city's traffic grid. Eglinton Crosstown is a wannabe Stadtbahn without any of the elements of Stadtbahns that make them effective. Hurontario despite trying to feed people to a GO Train line won't even have a proper connection to Port Credit, and would thus require an 800m walk just to transfer to a GO train.
I lean quite libertarian, so for most issues I do agree that we do need to focus more on more libertarian ideals, but unfortunately Transit is not a place where more open design philosophies work. You need someone at the helm directing all of the ideas, and you do need to strong arm ideas if you want to get anything done in a reasonable timeframe. Look at Montreal, instead of endlessly bickering over what they should build, the CDPQ came in with their REM proposal, and 5 years after conception they're getting a brand new frequent and automated Light Metro Line, which will reach 67km by 2024, and due to that success they're already planning both a REM B and a REM C. We should be building transit, not talking about transit.
I think the problem is that if the Liberals spend big, they open themselves up to accusations that they're, well, "tax and spend Liberals". The OPC doesn't have to worry about that.
EDIT: for an example of this at the federal level, see HFR.
That line of attack only works if people feel like they're money isn't being used properly. Sure the PCs will shout it from the top of their longs, but its not an argument that wins people over unless people don't feel like things are happening with their high taxes. If a politician comes in saying we're taxing you, but look at all of these metros and subways we're buildings, and these transit projects are placed in areas where they're incredibly useful to a good chunk of their voterbase, I don't think they would care about paying taxes. Its only when high taxes lead to endless bickering and a whole lot of nothing does the argument begin to sway people. For an example of this at the federal level, see HFR.
