This is what I wrote on the DRL situation in another thread:
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Call me optimistic but the biggest obstacle to the DRL right now is the incomplete data (real cost, route, maintenance etc...).
Once the full study on the DRL is completed and goes back to city hall, I can totally see councillors ganging up on Tory and force the DRL past Smarttrack. At the end of the day and it's safe to assume that a majority of councillor would prefer the DRL over Smarttrack at a similar price.
The province isn't thrilled about it and the Feds just wants to spend on good infrastructure based on data. Trudeau said in his new year interview that it must be the provinces and cities picking the projects to be funded. So the Federal part of it is:"give us a project and we'll pay our share of it".
With the Province not really high on duplicating Go RER for $8 billion for smarttrack, while they had made the pledge for the DRL during the last provincial election, all that's needed now is the DRL data to come out. Let's not forget Metrolinx did the preliminary work stating the best route must go all the way to Sheppard via Don Mills.
I expect a majority of councillors along with the Province and media get behind it once the city report comes out supporting Metrolinx data. Don't forget public opinion with this!
Wouldn't be the first time council killed a project that the mayor championed...right?
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I too believe that DRL and Sheppard will pass as some sort of package deal... Just like Vaughan subway was forced upon the city as condition to get the extension to York University. So yes, the Liberals could pull one of those again. sigh...Politics. Make no mistake about it, the Province has all the leverage here. The city cannot bypass the province to get to the Feds infrastructure funds so this scenario is totally plausible and I'd be surprised if the Ontario Liberals were not already working on this as we speak.
Besides, when will we ever have 2 level of governments dedicated to spend that much in infrastructure again? Seems like the stars are aligned for this to happen