When you get down to it, Rob Ford was elected on exactly one promise.
This is not talking about the things that our mayor promised to stop doing - stopping taxes, cutting streetcars, getting rid of the Transit City light rail lines - but his city building initiatives. Or rather, we speak of Ford's single city building initiative: the digging of subway train tunnels, along Sheppard Avenue East and on the route of the SRT, through Scarborough.It's a promise that hasn't fared well. Initially, Ford hoped a portion of the province's funding of the Transit City lines would go to help build the $4 billion subway, and the private sector would soak up the rest.The province didn't bite. It did agree to cancel plans to build light rail on Sheppard, and west along Finch Avenue. But it took the rest of the $8 billion allotted for its transit expansion plan, and sunk it into the Eglinton crosstown route, wishing Mayor Ford luck in getting the full cost of the subway line from private sector investment.Ford's promise held less and less promise as the year went on. Now, Gordon Chong, the man charged with coming up with the private sector plan, has said the city almost certainly can't expect to get the whole price tag funded by the private sector. Road tolls will be necessary.And studies leaking out from preliminary land use planning meetings have demonstrated rather starkly what the private sector will want, in terms of density rights along the subway line: density rights that would translate into condominium towers, between 30 and 40 storeys in height.The mayor has made it clear he's not in favour of road tolls. And if history has taught us anything, the single-family neighbourhoods adjacent to Sheppard Avenue are unlikely to be in favour of 40 storey condominium towers next to them.All of this came to a head this week at the planning and growth management committee, as it dealt with a couple of requests to look at ways to improve transit along Finch, and Sheppard - routes where residents and businesses had been led to expect light rail lines.Celia Smith, a community worker in Jane-Finch, was one of a handful of deputants there, expressing regret that the Finch LRT line was cancelled.Smith said she and her organization spent time in the last election, encouraging residents in the highrises in that high-needs community to go out and vote."I'm here to say that I'm disappointed that after going out and educating the residents, saying you need to vote for your councillor," she said. "Those people went out and they voted because they wanted change. Now we're looking at a provincial election and we're planning to say to them you need to vote - but they are saying, the politicians make promises and they never fulfill them."For Smith, it was clearly sinking in: what was on the table may have been better for her community, than a promise that might not ever be fulfilled.