{"id":10717,"date":"2010-04-26T12:25:26","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T16:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=10717"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:06:35","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:06:35","slug":"lorinc-here-come-the-transit-saviours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/04\/26\/lorinc-here-come-the-transit-saviours\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Here come the transit saviours?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Look, over yonder: it\u2019s a band of conservatives, in their blue hats, galloping across the horizon to save\u2026 Transit City?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s with that?<\/p>\n

In a Friday speech at the Board of Trade, Conservative leader and renowned urbanist Tim Hudak pledged that if he was premier, he\u2019d \u201censure\u201d the City of Toronto would have access to reliable funding so the new mayor wouldn\u2019t have a fiscal sword of Damocles hanging over his or her head every time they sat down the do the books. And some of the money, he added, would go to transit. Believe it!<\/p>\n

Next up was Eglinton Lawrence councilor Karen Stintz, whose intriguing trek towards the ideological centre led her last week to a kind of political level crossing, if you will. As the mayor\u2019s office happily announced, she and David Miller have made common cause on restoring the Transit City funding, a substantial chunk of which will be spent boring a tunnel along the southern border of her ward.<\/p>\n

Stintz says she supports the Metrolinx \u201cBig Move\u201d plan, which includes the LRT network. \u201cWe came together,\u201d she told me on Friday, \u201cbecause it\u2019s not a partisan issue, it\u2019s a city building issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, we have John Tory, who used his CFRB 1010 drive-time show on Thursday to scope out the broad terms of a cease-fire and possible armistice.<\/p>\n

Saying that he\u2019s worried the mayor is \u201cmishandling negotiations with the province,\u201d Tory urged Miller to halt the Save Transit City campaign and instead ask Dalton McGuinty for a meeting. Then he called on the premier to stop being vague about delays and work out a binding, ten-year funding arrangement with the city. \u201cLet\u2019s nail down this money with dates and no going back a second time,\u201d Tory said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take them in order:<\/p>\n

Hudak is obviously looking to do nothing more than score a few points on McGuinty with an unconvincing bait and switch. He\u2019s nobody\u2019s idea of Bill Davis.<\/p>\n

Stintz, since bowing out of the mayor\u2019s race, has been busily reinventing herself, presumably with an eye to the post-Miller era. She\u2019s talked about parking levies as a way of raising funds for transit. And last week, writing in the National Post<\/a>, she threw her support behind the University Avenue bike lanes, describing them as \u201can interesting project\u201d put at risk by \u201capoplectic\u201d election rhetoric.<\/p>\n

Given that the Eglinton LRT won\u2019t make a huge impact on her constituents\u2019 commuting patterns, I\u2019m guessing Stintz\u2019s decision is at least partly tactical. But I\u2019m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt because she\u2019s adopted some risky positions on the city\u2019s transportation woes in an election year.<\/p>\n

And Tory? When I spoke to him on Friday, he said the fight has further underscored the point that the city and the province to need to consider a suite of transit funding options that include tolls, parking levies, and dedicated sales or gas taxes. Tory, of course, attacked Miller with hammer and tong in 2003 for musing about road tolls, but he insists he\u2019s acknowledged the error of his views. \u201cWe have to have all that stuff on the table.\u201d Easy to say when you\u2019re not shilling for votes.<\/p>\n

As for Miller\u2019s campaign, Tory correctly pointed out that the Liberals seemed far more anxious about the political fall-out from the sex-ed curriculum controversy.<\/p>\n

Thus his argument for a change in tactics: \u201cI\u2019m willing to bet money that if David Miller put down his tools and asked for a meeting, he\u2019d get the meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tory\u2019s proposal makes good sense. But the reality is that it\u2019s an election year.<\/p>\n

Miller spokesperson Stuart Green says the mayor\u2019s office did ask for a meeting with the premier on April 7th, before the campaign started in earnest, but they have yet to get a reply.<\/p>\n

Not coincidentally, the new and improved George Smitherman was busily telling reporters on Friday that he \u201cwon\u2019t wait until after the election to do what I can to lend influence in getting these projects moving.\u201d He implied he\u2019s been leaning on his former cabinet colleagues in order to \u201cchampion\u201d the Transit City projects. Translation: the guy on the white steed turns out to be wearing a red Stetson.<\/p>\n

So many saviors, so little will.<\/p>\n

photo from Toronto Archives<\/a>: series 648, file 127, id 0010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look, over yonder: it\u2019s a band of conservatives, in their blue hats, galloping across the horizon to save\u2026 Transit City? What\u2019s with that? In a Friday speech at the Board of Trade, Conservative leader and renowned urbanist Tim Hudak pledged that if he was premier, he\u2019d \u201censure\u201d the City of Toronto would have access toContinue reading “LORINC: Here come the transit saviours?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[94,2300,14887,6050,3216,425,8866,6245,444,1969,426,641,2306,44,3004,4047,1316,8893,19,3062],"class_list":["post-10717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-transit","tag-2010-election","tag-bill-davis","tag-cfrb-1010","tag-conservative-leader","tag-dalton-mcguinty","tag-david-miller","tag-gas-taxes","tag-george-smitherman","tag-john-tory","tag-karen-stintz","tag-mayor","tag-national-post","tag-premier","tag-queens-park","tag-spokesperson","tag-stuart-green","tag-the-national-post","tag-tim-hudak","tag-toronto","tag-transportation-woes"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Here come the transit saviours? - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/04\/26\/lorinc-here-come-the-transit-saviours\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Here come the transit saviours? - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Look, over yonder: it\u2019s a band of conservatives, in their blue hats, galloping across the horizon to save\u2026 Transit City? 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