Dear Residents,
There has been a lot of misinformation regarding the potential conversion of the Scarborough SRT to a subway. The facts – based on land use planning, ridership projections and a cost/benefit analysis, not votes – suggest replacing the aging Scarborough SRT with an LRT, just as was agreed upon last year when Council reached an agreement. For additional background on this current transit discussion, please read my newsletter from May 1.
This is a fact sheet I distributed to my colleagues and the media last night:
Phase I of the TTC's Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study is now available online. Please click on the report cover above to access the study directly, or click here to visit the project website for updates as they become available.
Earlier today, Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency, and the Minister of Transportation, Bob Chiarelli, announced that construction on the Downtown Relief Line (DRL) will be accelerated by 10 years. The DRL is desperately needed to take the pressure off the already over-crowded Yonge line. This is great news for the entire Greater Toronto Area and Ward 22 residents who routinely wait 2 or 3 trains in the morning before getting on at Eglinton, Davisville, St. Clair or Summerhill.
It was also announced today that a real conversation, at long last, will begin in January 2013 about how to pay for the DRL and other regional transit priorities. The public consultation will consider a variety of funding mechanisms and there will be a report on how to move forward by June of next year.
For a long time I have been advocating for a regional plan for transit improvement and expansion. This will better reflect how people truly move across municipal boundaries everyday and, if the entire region is to benefit from better transit, then residents from Toronto and the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area should share in the responsibility for paying for it.
For more information please see the Metrolinx press release regarding today's announcement.
Sincerely,
Josh
From Openfile.ca
Posted by John Michael McGrath on Wednesday, June 13, 2012
For months now, Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul's) has been pushing for a more intelligent conversation on transit funding. Matlow, to his credit, has been willing to raise road tolls as an idea to fund transit, and yesterday had a motion before Rob Ford's Executive Committee with a request:
City Council request the City Manager to engage and participate with Metrolinx in establishing a working group of appropriate officials representing the City of Toronto, Greater Golden Horseshoe municipalities, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, the Ontario Ministry of Finance, the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and any other relevant bodies to provide input into the preparation of a funding strategy for the Metrolinx regional transit plan.
Metrolinx's "funding strategy" is what we've all been waiting for, as the provincial transit planner figures out how to raise the billions of dollars it needs for future expansion. It also needs to raise that money without simply getting the province to pay for it, since Queen's Park has been trying to keep costs down lately.
Matlow's motion passed through Executive Committee yesterday and will presumably be approved by City Council in July. Somewhat surprisingly, the Mayor's team even shot down a motion by Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) that would have excluded any sales tax, as well as any road tolls that were not applied regionally, from staff consideration.
Since a sales tax is one of the most important tools to funding transit in other cities, it would have been silly to try to start a working group by ruling it out at the very beginning. At the very least it should at least be looked at.
Road tolls, however, don't have a lot of political backers, at least when we're talking about adding new ones to existing roads. Minnan-Wong's move may very well be redundant on that count.
image via Metrolinx.
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