Toronto Environmental Alliance

January 5th, 2011
Don Peat & Jonathan Jenkins
City Hall Bureau
Toronto Sun

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford vows he’ll push ahead with plans to build subways.

Ford’s blunt transit talk came in the wake of two environmental groups appealing for the mayor to save the Transit City light-rail plan which was killed by civic leader.

Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA) heralded a report by the Pembina Institute which found building subways was much more expensive and would carry fewer people than Transit City.

“It’s very simple. I campaigned on subways, I was elected as you know by a large mandate,” Ford said at Summerlea Park in Etobicoke. “People supported my subway plan and that’s what we’re going to go ahead with.”

The Pembina report, entitled Making Tracks to Torontonians, stated light-rail projects would deliver more than twice as much service as subways for every dollar invested. It concluded that the Transit City light-rail plan would bring “rapid transit service” to six times as many low income homes and the four lines would bring rapid transit to within a six-minute walk of 290,000 Toronto homes.

Ford’s subway plan, based on what has been said publicly, would only be within walking distance of 60,000 people, according to the report.

“We’re here today essentially because there has been a heck of a lot of talk about transit in the last while, but unfortunately most of it has been of the political variety,” said Jamie Kirkpatrick, TEA’s transit campaigner.

TEA also unveiled a map showing the entire Transit City plan — not just the 52 kilometres within the four LRT lines that have provincial funding — and contrasted it with what Ford has publicly said about building a Sheppard Ave. subway line.

He added TEA’s analysis of the report shows Transit City creates more “winners” in Toronto than Ford’s subway plan.

TTC Chair Karen Stintz said she expects a revised transit plan being developed by Metrolinx and the TTC to be scrutinized when it is released at the end of the month but added that doing so now would be “premature.”

As originally published here: http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2011/01/05/16774051.html