Death of OneCity?

[Locutus]

Councillors set to tussle over TTC chair Karen Stintz’s transit plan




Some Toronto councillors say TTC chair Karen Stintz’s plan is so diluted, her OneCity proposal is now meaningless.

Whether the OneCity transit plan is in its death throes or is simply percolating through the city’s complicated planning and political machinery depends on who you ask.
By the end of the Wednesday-Thursday council meeting, Toronto could have begun a new roadmap to an ambitious transit future, says TTC chair Karen Stintz.

Others, however, believe the boldest transit plan Toronto has seen in years has already vapourized less than three weeks after it was unveiled by Stintz and TTC vice-chair Glenn DeBaeremaeker.
On Tuesday some city councillors didn’t even know what exactly they would be asked to vote for this week.

There’s a feeling among some that Stintz let the air out of her plan by removing the controversial proposal to hike property taxes to pay for a third of the $30 billion expansion scheme after meeting with the mayor’s staff.
“The OneCity transit plan as originally presented is so watered down, if it were a drink I wouldn’t know what flavour it was,” said councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, an ally of anti-tax Mayor Rob Ford.
It seems unlikely that even the name OneCity will appear on any council motions this week.



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OneCity: Councillors set to tussle over TTC chair Karen Stintz

 

[spaminator]

perhaps all of the above ground transit could be done first then all of the below ground transit could be done after so that way both sides get what they want eventually.

 

[Locutus]

The 'colorful map' is dead.

Looks likfe these two doofi are standing in front of their grade 6 class presentation. :lol:

Toronto council buries TTC chair Karen Stintz’s transit plan


The latest in a long line of shining Toronto transit plans — this time dangled before frazzled commuters by TTC chair Karen Stintz — has been buried by city council.
Councillors voted 43-1 in favour of a watered-down “face-saving motion” from TTC commissioner Peter Milczyn. But allies of Mayor Rob Ford declared Stintz’s OneCity plan dead and suggested it was never more than a colourful map unveiled at a news conference three weeks ago.

More: Toronto Transit Commission riders fed up with transit tug-of-war
“Transit went off the rails with the mayor for a while but I can assure everyone in Toronto the mayor is back in charge of transit and we’re going to move forward,” his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, told reporters.

The mayor did not speak to transit at council Wednesday.

Even those who sided with Stintz earlier this year in opposing Ford’s unfunded Sheppard subway plan, blocked her and TTC vice-chair Glenn De Baeremaeker’s attempt to reopen the future of the Scarborough RT.

They want it converted to a subway rather than the agreed-upon LRT. The province has already said it won’t reconsider that agreement.

It would cost about $500 million more to build a subway, but the ridership warrants that kind of train and the Scarborough RT would be able to continue running during construction, Stintz said.

It will be closed for three to four years while the LRT is built, consigning 40,000 daily riders to buses running in traffic.

The time to have looked at a subway in Scarborough was in the winter, before council approved the plan to build the LRT, many councilors said.

But hindsight is golden, said Paula Fletcher, who was behind the OneCity plan.

“In February and March, council was seized with looking at Sheppard as an LRT or a subway. . . . After all those decisions were made, people started turning their mind to what’s really going to happen on the LRT, that it will be closed for four years. The subway actually would allow it to continue to run,” Fletcher said.

“The penny dropped for me today, when I heard 160 buses an hour to replace the SRT.”

Even before Wednesday’s council meeting, Stintz had abandoned the key plank in OneCity, a scheme to tie transit funding to a property tax increase, which 80 per cent of respondents to a Star poll said they could support.

The city was already working on a study of potential transit funding tools including the property tax plan Stintz favoured.

Some councillors believe the funding issue needs to be led by Metrolinx, which is supposed to deliver a transit investment plan by next June, and include other regional municipalities.

Admitting she was disappointed, Stintz nevertheless insisted the nearly unanimous approval of Milczyn’s motion, which confirmed a review of the Official Plan that council had already ordered, was a step forward for Toronto transit.

“This will actually prioritize lines, link them to the Official Plan, bring together a funding strategy and we’ve identified our first priority project,” she said.

It’s a way for transit plans to survive elections when new politicians inevitably want to put their stamp on the map, said Stintz and her OneCity colleagues, including councillors Josh Colle and Joe Mihevc.

“I am disappointed,” she told council, “that we missed an opportunity to build a subway extension through Kennedy to Sheppard but the will of council is supreme and the will of council has been made and we will move forward.”

Council voted 38-6 to designate an LRT running along the East Bayfront from Union Station to Parliament St. as a priority. Waterfront Toronto has committed $90 million but the project still needs about $200 million more.

Milczyn, chair of the planning and growth committee, said transit plans must come from planners, not councillors.

“We have to let the professionals lead it, do it in an orderly way and tie it all together with the funding, with the right groups,” he said.
“We’re going to have public consultation, which we’ve never had in this city, a public consultation about what the residents want. . . . This process we approved today . . . is the right way to go about approving a transit plan, not just announcing it and saying, ‘Well we threw it up on the wall, we’ll see if it sticks.”

OneCity: Toronto council buries TTC chair Karen Stintz