Hello! And welcome to another episode of Toronto's longest-running political program: It's time for Dystopian Transit Soap Opera!
Last season, we left you with Toronto Mayor John Tory trying to figure out how to pay for the public transit his city needs, while also finding billions of municipal taxpayer dollars to rebuild and maintain two highways that the province years ago forced into Toronto's unwilling hands. Mr. Tory's plan, which Premier Kathleen Wynne's green-leaning Liberal government had given him every indication of backing, was to put a toll on the Gardiner and Don Valley expressways. Make users pay.
So, all was settled. Only, it wasn't! Faithful viewers know the rules of Dystopian Transit: All logical decisions will eventually be reversed, all illogical decisions will be reinforced, all journeys start with a U-turn, and no one will ever reach the right destination.
So it came to pass that, in the opening episode of 2017, Premier Wynne told Mayor Tory that she was vetoing his idea. Instead, Ms. Wynne's cash-strapped government will set aside money it already raises from provincial taxpayers, and give more of it to municipalities. Toronto will end up getting roughly $170-million a year, about half of what it had hoped to raise through tolls. Toronto will then have to turn around and use the new but insufficient funds from Queen's Park to continue subsidizing its highways, so suburban drivers can continue driving them for free.
Regular viewers will recall how Ms. Wynne's government spent the last 47 episodes of our show crowing about all the public transit it is building. Yet Queen's Park, along with Toronto City Council, has for decades been finding ever more creative ways to push forward not the transit projects with the highest passenger priority, but those with the greatest political urgency. That's how we ended up with a one-stop Scarborough subway, an airport train priced for the 1 per cent and an unclothed emperor called Smart Track. Downtown Relief Line? Sorry, no money.
But who does a Premier facing an election next year suddenly think is deserving of a taxpayer subsidy worth a couple of billion dollars a decade? Suburban drivers. She wants their votes. Kathleen Wynne is U-turning into Rob Ford.