Round and round we go. Where we stop, nobody knows.
Welcome to the vision for the Toronto region's transit future: currently muddled, fractured and unstable. The hallmark of a successful transit vision for a city the size of Toronto and its surrounding regions will be stability. We're not there yet.While the Toronto Transit Commission agrees to less frequent service to many of its bus routes to address a funding crunch, its ridership continues to grow. While some exciting community-building projects in the Toronto region have been identified and prioritized in Metrolinx's The Big Move document, action - and funding - on those items seems slow to materialize or is entirely non-existent. This week, TTC Chair Karen Stintz, in an address to the Toronto Board of Trade, said Metrolinx, the provincial agency charged with integrating transportation projects in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas, needs politicians sitting on its board. "Municipal politicians are more likely to continue to support The Big Move and endorse a revenue strategy if they feel they've had some input into the process," she said.Stintz also went on to say the TTC's board, currently consisting entirely of Toronto councillors, should also be revamped to be a mix of elected officials and expert appointees. We agree it would be helpful to clarify the roles and respective make-ups of Metrolinx and the TTC. But is that really the fundamental problem here? We note that when Metrolinx was created in 2007, it had politicians on its board. How is reverting back to that governance model not going in circles? We're not opposed to Stintz's proposal if it grows communication and helps unify the continuous competing transportation visions in the region. There's a larger challenge, one that Toronto, the province and the Greater Toronto Area municipalities must come together and address - and it goes beyond who sits on what board. It's been said before that it's time for the Greater Toronto Area to start thinking and acting like a region. Transportation initiatives are a critical component of this as is a stable funding mechanism from the provincial and federal governments. We need a governance mechanism that forces the creation of a common transportation vision. With a growing population, Toronto has had to endure way too many false starts and aborted transportation projects. Some of the pieces are in place to achieve a workable plan; a lot of hard work has been put in already. But a lot of work has also been wasted - and will continue to be wasted every time the reset button is hit. If this continues, the transportation vision for the region will be fractured, not cohesive.