{"id":47804,"date":"2019-04-12T03:00:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T07:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=47804"},"modified":"2019-04-11T10:48:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T14:48:44","slug":"premier-ford-could-go-down-in-history-as-the-premier-who-landed-downtown-torontonians-their-white-whale-subway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/04\/12\/premier-ford-could-go-down-in-history-as-the-premier-who-landed-downtown-torontonians-their-white-whale-subway\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier Ford “could go down in history as the premier who landed downtown Torontonians their white whale subway”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> finds himself surprised at how sane<\/em> Doug Ford’s GTA subway-and-light-rail expansion plans sound:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Click map to embiggenate<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ll say this much at least about Premier Doug Ford\u2019s big $28.5 billion transit announcement on Wednesday morning ($11.2 billion if you only count provincial money): I never thought I would see him so enthusiastically tout a much-needed transit line to and through enemy territory in downtown Toronto. Faint praise, perhaps, but when Ford said he wanted to upload Toronto\u2019s subways to the province, I never imagined a plan even half this superficially sane.<\/p>\n

Crowding on the Yonge line at Bloor Street presents \u201ca clear health and safety problem,\u201d Ford told reporters in Etobicoke, \u201cand without action it is only going to get worse.\u201d Thus his number-one transit priority is the same as everyone else\u2019s: the Downtown Relief Line, which the PC government has wisely redubbed the Ontario Line.<\/p>\n

The most basic and essential piece of that line, which Toronto city staff are already working on, would connect City Hall with Pape station on Danforth. Passengers who live in the east end and work downtown could thus avoid the bottleneck at Yonge and Bloor, relieving the alarming rush hour situation on platforms there and \u2014 assuming new TTC signalling technology works as promised \u2014 freeing up southbound capacity for folks from York Region: Ford vows to extend the Yonge line to Richmond Hill (cost: $5.6 billion).<\/p>\n

The order here matters more than the timeline (2027, supposedly). It is undisputed that the DRL has to happen before the extension. That\u2019s basic knowledge. But Ford is capable of ignoring or fouling up very basic knowledge when stumping for subways. This is a man who nearly promised Pickering one. On Wednesday, he sounded remarkably well briefed.<\/p>\n

Ford\u2019s Ontario Line wouldn\u2019t stop at Danforth and City Hall, either. In the east it would head north across the Don Valley, through Thorncliffe Park and up to Eglinton. This idea is nearly as old as the DRL itself. And it would jog southwest from downtown to Ontario Place \u2014 a novelty, but again, not crazy. Total cost for the line: an at least semi-plausible $11.2 billion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley finds himself surprised at how sane Doug Ford’s GTA subway-and-light-rail expansion plans sound: I\u2019ll say this much at least about Premier Doug Ford\u2019s big $28.5 billion transit announcement on Wednesday morning ($11.2 billion if you only count provincial money): I never thought I would see him so enthusiastically tout a much-needed transit line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,237],"tags":[1188,1002,87,527,207],"class_list":["post-47804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-railways","tag-dougford","tag-lightrail","tag-ontario","tag-publictransit","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cr2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47805,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47804\/revisions\/47805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}