It would appear Transit City is moving forward. At least until something else lays across its light rail tracks slowing it down or derailing it altogether.
After the Dalton McGuinty Liberals announced in their March budget they had to scale back Transit City funding by $4 billion, talk turned quickly to how to move forward with the city's ambitious citywide transit plan: What needed trimming, what could proceed, what could be delayed.After several weeks of tweaking, Metrolinx board members approved a scaled-back Transit City plan at their Wednesday meeting. The plan pushes Finch and the Scarborough RT back to 2015 until after the Pan Am Games, and slows down the implementation of the Eglinton cross-town and Sheppard lines.How does this help the city, especially with so much hinging on the Games (and all the construction taking place around them)? Transit will, by no means, be ready to support Pam Am tourists, athletes, and Torontonians. This will surely blacken the city's eye when transit logistics elicit more negative than positive reviews.But if we were to listen to former Toronto planner Paul Bedford or president and CEO of Metrolinx Robert Prichard, our city should be thankful we're able to move ahead with Transit City at all. Something is better than nothing seems to be the mantra of the day.Granted, in times of fiscal restraint by all levels of government, it's understandable some aspects of the city's light rail network would be delayed. However, the choices of which lines and how to move ahead seem somewhat misguided.On Monday, the day Prichard announced the scaled-back plan, Mayor David Miller voiced his concern and disappointment, reiterating what he had told an April 30 editorial board meeting with Toronto Community News.With Transit City's most important feature being that of social justice - not economic, not infrastructure, not even the Pan Am Games - connecting large underserved, disenfranchised parts of the city with the rest of Toronto is the plan's linchpin. However, with the new revised Metrolinx plan, areas most-deserving of transit service - northeast Scarborough, central Etobicoke, and swaths of central North York - will wait several years, maybe even longer - to feel connected to the city proper.Something is better than nothing, and thankfully Transit City will move ahead in some way or another, but the scaled-back plan still needs provincial approval, which may or may not require even more tweaking.