Toronto has 61 questions about province´s transit plans
(The Star Fashion & Style)

The city has plenty of unanswered questions about the province’s new transit plan. Sixty-one to be exact. In an unusual report released midway through a council meeting Tuesday, city and TTC staff laid out all the things they still don’t know about the Ontario government’s $28.5-billion transit proposal a week after Premier Doug Ford unveiled it. They include such basic queries as “who prepared the cost estimates?� “what is the province’s plan for public consultation?� and “what are the impacts on the city/TTC transit network resulting from these projects?�Municipal officials plan to put to the list of questions to the province as part of ongoing negotiations over the Progressive Conservative government’s proposal to take ownership of Toronto’s subway network.“I’m open to any proposal that is going to fund and build transit in this city faster, but I’m not convinced what the province has presented us with is necessarily a plan to do that,� said Councillor Brad Bradford (Ward 19, Beaches-East York).“What we have today is 61 questions that need to be answered.� The province has asked the city to contribute billions of dollars to its plan, which would make significant changes to projects council has already endorsed and spent years designing, including the downtown relief subway line and Scarborough subway extension. But the list of questions underlines the extent to which the city remains in the dark about the proposal. In particular, little is known about the details of the province’s proposed replacement for the downtown relief line, which Queen’s Park has dubbed the Ontario Line, including the type of trains that would operate on it and exactly where stations would be located. The province says it would complete the 15-kilometre, $10.9-billion project by 2027. That date is two years sooner than the earliest target for the city’s version ...