You could be forgiven, if you listened only to the candidates talk, for thinking Mayor John Tory and mayoral candidate Jennifer Keesmaat have wildly different transit plans for Toronto. Tory calls Keesmaat’s a “risky proposition.” Keesmaat says Tory’s is a “mirage.”However, when you look at Keesmaat’s “network planning approach” — illustrated neatly by a map showing the whole long-term plan for a network of subway lines, LRTs, and express bus routes — and then you look at the long-term plan John Tory led council in approving, you’ll notice that they bear a striking resemblance. This isn’t actually that big of a surprise, given that the bulk of Tory’s plan was developed and brought to city council by Keesmaat when she was the chief planner working under him as mayor. Perhaps it’s fitting, given Tory’s famous on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand political positioning, that when he isn’t characterizing Keesmaat’s plan as a reckless rubbishing of years of hard work, he’s claiming that it is essentially the same as his plan (he sometimes makes both criticisms in the same statement). And as long as we’re pointing out rhetorical dissonance, it’s worth noting that for all Keesmaat’s trashing of SmartTrack, her own plan keeps all but two of the “new GO stations” in place.One way of looking at this is that both leading mayoral candidates — and a majority of the outgoing city council — all seem to agree on the broad strokes of the transit network plan we should proceed with. The similarity, in this regard, is actually encouraging. No one is suggesting throwing everything out and starting from scratch yet again. And both look something like a complete network across the whole city. Read more: Poll says John Tory has big lead, but Jennifer Keesmaat is gaining Mayoral challenger Jennifer Keesmaat vows to cancel parts of Smart ...
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