Newly released documents show the Ford government plans on moving forward with taking over Toronto's subway system and making changes to four transit projects.
In two letters sent to the TTC's executive Officer and Toronto's City manager the province complains about the ballooning costs of the Scarborough Subway Extension and the first phase of the downtown relief line.
The province wants to convert the Scarborough Subway Extension from a one-stop to a three-stop extension; put the Eglinton West LRT underground for a significant portion of its route; build the Downtown Relief Line using "alternative delivery methods" that would create a "free-standing project" that would use different technology than the rest of the subway system; build the Yonge North Extension to Richmond Hill in parallel to the Relief Line in order to accelerate its opening date "to the greatest extent possible."
Mayor John Tory says he learned of the first letter to the city yesterday at 9 a.m. "One hour later I was in the premier's office taking up my very real concerns with this letter in a number of different respects, which we can go through as you wish, with him. We agreed that the best place to have those things dealt with, at least on a preliminary basis, was the streering committee which is sitting and talking about all of these issues. It met yesterday afternoon. That resulted in a second letter being sent by the province clarifying a number of the points that they made and that letter was sent today and made public to city council this afternoon."
The province says it's considering "significant financial committments" to speed up work on these projects but they would come with a catch; the province would expect to have leadership in the planning, design, and delivery of these projects.
Tory disagrees with some councillors opinions, namely Gord Perks, that the city should get up and walk away from the table. "We can pretend that we are going to lose their phone number and take our marbles and go home, sit at City Hall, and we will then just await what they decide to do with the money that they're going to put into these transit projects which is a good deal of the money, together with the federal government. I just don't think people expect that. I think they expect us to work together, get the best result that we possibly can, which from our standpoint is that we leave the subway in the ownership of the City of Toronto and we continue to operate it with increased financial support from them."
Councillor Joe Cressy is incredibly concerned about the delays any changes to transit plans this would cause. "When Rob Ford was the mayor of Toronto and got elected he ripped up the detailed transit city plan that would have resulted in LRTs opening this year. Instead, he ripped it up and started from scratch and that what Doug Ford at the province is proposing to do all over again."
Councillor Shelley Carroll questions if Doug Ford really wants to build anything. "Doug knows, just as his brother knew, that when you make a massive change to an already studied line like that you've got to go back to square one and study it all over again. Any change like that requires a new environmental assessment. At the end of the day it means we have to ask ourselves, does he really want to build anything at all? If the premier wants to build a line and take credit for it, we've got a drawer full of plans. He just has to pick one, fund it, build it."