TTC chair Stintz calls for special council meeting on Transit City.
Councillor Karen Stintz, centre, flanked by councillors Josh Matlow and Glenn De Baeremaeker, has presented a petition to the city clerk demanding a special council meeting this Wednesday.
Staff photo/DAVID NICKLE
Toronto Transit Commission Chair Karen Stintz and 22 other city councillors have demanded a special Toronto City Council meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 8, to consider whether to bury the Scarborough-Eglinton Crosstown LRT through Scarborough.
Stintz, who represents Eglinton-Lawrence on council, presented the petition to the city clerk prior to the start of the city's regular council meeting Monday, Feb. 6.
Under council rules, a majority of councillors can request a special council meeting at any time provided they sign and submit a petition to the clerk 48 hours in advance.
The meeting will bring the festering issue of the future of public transit to full council for the first time since Mayor Rob Ford took office and declared the then-underway Transit City light-rail plan "dead."
Ford negotiated a memorandum of understanding with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty that stopped work on the Sheppard LRT and put $8.4 billion of provincial money into the Eglinton LRT project, which included turning the above-ground portions of the Eglinton line into tunnels through parts of North York and Scarborough.
Ford had campaigned on keeping light rail off roads and building a subway along Sheppard Avenue.