Is it time for cities to hand over the responsibility for public transit to the province? The Toronto Region Board of Trade thinks so. In a report released Monday, the business advocacy group argues municipalities in the Toronto-Waterloo corridor should upload the entirety of their public transit systems to a new, powerful body created by the province. The release of the report follows the unveiling of the Ontario Progressive Conservative election platform on Saturday, in which leader Patrick Brown pledged to take over the TTC subway system if elected next June, but leave the bus and streetcar network under local control.The board’s proposal goes much further than that and is sure to spark controversy among local leaders across the region. But the report’s authors argue that consolidating the planning, construction and operation of transit into a single provincial body would benefit transit riders and municipal governments by reducing the risk of politics interfering in the delivery of evidence-based projects and freeing up cities to spend resources on other priorities. “The existing, fragmented transit development and operating model is not meeting the needs of taxpayers, the business community, and transit users,” the report states. Including GO Transit, there are 12 separate transit operators between Durham and Waterloo, and the report asserts that creating an overarching agency “would provide the vision, scale and resources to finally provide the world-class transit system that the corridor needs.” The report’s authors contend that the new organization, which they’ve nicknamed Superlinx in a play on Metrolinx, the existing provincial transit agency for the GTHA, would solve multiple problems that have plagued the region’s transportation plans for decades.Currently, badly needed transit projects can be delayed by political disputes either between different orders of government or within city halls.And beca ...
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