We need to depoliticize the process.
Based on the information found on the project website it looks like tunnelling was completed almost a month ago.
http://www.ttc.ca/Spadina/Project_N...e/2013/November/Tunnelling_100%_Complete!.jsp
What? That's rather a retcon isn't it.
The NDP shelved the Peterson governements plans for subway expansion, until right at the end of their mandate. Then suddenly when they realised they weren't going to be on the hook for the deficit any more, they funded Eglinton and Sheppard - which the Conservatives quickly cancelled when they came to office. Toronto continued to fund Sheppard itself, and the Conservatives eventually came to the table with some money for it.
NDP was a huge disaster for transit. Not a surprise given how hard Layton fought, and managed to sink the DRL line.
All the parties are responsible for the mess we are in. What scares me is one of them still thinks cancelling most of the plans is the way forward, and a second is still not committing to anything, and seems likely to once again shelve much of the plans.
We need to depoliticize the process.
TTC looking to sell the tunnel boring machines:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tra...ng_machines_that_tunneled_spadina_subway.html
Here are some potential customers:TTC looking to sell the tunnel boring machines:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tra...ng_machines_that_tunneled_spadina_subway.html
I dunno if that's feasible or even desirable.
We are talking about (tens) of billions of dollars of tax money that will be invested (or not) in ways that will fundamentally change communities. It's somewhat incredulous to assume these decisions could ever be purely technocratic or non-political.
Rather than politics per se, the issue seems to be the lack of functioning accountability mechanisms for politicians.
Most obviously, it's not clear who exactly is even responsible for transit/transit expansion.
At the municipal level, you could say the Mayor is. But Toronto's Mayor is fairly weak institutionally. Other than greater publicity, the Mayor's often just one vote on council. Councillors could be held responsible, but individually none of them are really responsible at all. And even though the City is responsible for the TTC, it's never had the fiscal ability to fund major capital works.
The Province has the money to fund capital works, but largely washes its hands of operations. And even if it has the resources to fund transit, it doesn't have any institutional responsibility to do so. It's not even practical to hold the Legislature or Premier accountable for transit in one city when they're meant to represent the entire province.
Federal officials are the same, only worse. So both Feds and Queen's Park approach transit planning as, essentially, gifts rather than core responsibilities. They reap all the credit of cutting ribbons and announcing n-billion, but at the end of the day they don't have to be responsible for when transit doesn't work or isn't there (people will credit Queen's Park for building a subway to Scarborough, but not hold it responsible for the absence of all day GO service elsewhere, even though that's basically what's happened).
Finally all of this is compounded by the fact that transit expansions tend to have timelines longer than electoral mandates. If government X comes in on a promise to seriously reorient transit, and inherits a bunch of projects it disagrees with from government Z, isn't it democratically appropriate to change them? Of course Schumpeterian accountability tends to be premised on the ability of voters to judge the outcome of incumbent policies before holding them accountable, yet a government would be lucky to have shovels in the ground before the next election was called.
Out of curiosity, what is the issue with opening the Spadina Extension and just opening the Pioneer station later?
They have, but they were talking about not having two different phases. The terminal is on schedule. I don't think anything TTC has said, precluded any intermediate stations opening later.They've said all along they're going to open the whole thing at once
They have, but they were talking about not having two different phases. The terminal is on schedule. I don't think anything TTC has said, precluded any intermediate stations opening later.
The question is, is the station so far behind, that it would delay the installation of track, power, and other systems?
Or at least it's, how long will it take TTC to actually tell anyone if it is?
(I watched that station box fill up for months before the story finally broke in the press and they made Ellis Don go to fix it.)
In theory, it makes sense. It would probably annoy York, given their desperation to get the buses off the campus but by any logical measure, it's not worth holding up an otherwise-complete subway (for a few months?) because of the delays.