Hipster:
While nice, I highly doubt that a "global city" is predicated the general presence (or absence) of subway lines.
Alvin,
I don't think I could name one important city in world history that didn't evolve simultaneously with its transportation infrastructure - indeed, because of it.
Even in the very poorest of global megacities, the transportation infrastructure is impressive for the region: Mumbai has a web of electric suburban railways streaming out of it; Lagos has three parallel freeway bridges that criscross its lagoon. If it isn't a show-stopper by first world standards, it at least sets these cities apart from others in the region.
The most successful of world cities stopped at virtually no obstacle to knit transportation networks to feed their growing ambitions. That's why, perhaps, the most dynamic cities evolved despite being located on some of the least logical plots of land: Manhattan a granite island, Hong Kong a mountain in the sea, Tokyo an alluvial plain hemmed in by the hills, Los Angeles a desert plain, Venice a dismal swamp, Rome seven hills jutting above the malarial Tiber.
In Toronto, our big city ambitions were asserted twice: once during the 1920s when RC Harris spanned the impossible ravines with his bridges, thus bumping the population above the 500,000 mark and then during the heady days of 1949 to 1977, a time when Toronto went from a middling town on Lake Ontario to the economic powerhouse of Canada. A time when virtually the entire transportation infrastructure that our city travels on today was built. It was remarkable for its time and we rested on our laurels without much effect. Now that the population of the region is twice what it was at the end of our great infrastructure boom, things are starting to get strained. However, none of that would be a problem if we rolled up our sleeves and started digging and building again. Instead, we have sunk into this culture of timidity where everything is about cost and nothing is about opportunity. Transit City is the best symptom of this current malaise, a severely compromised plan that saves a couple of bucks but doesn't serve the transportation needs of a region and is not an adequate plan for growth.
If Toronto had the mentality we do today at that pivotal point after the second world war, we would have built a Yonge LRT that would have probably maxed out at 150,000 daily riders and a ride from Eglinton would probably take 30 minutes. It would have been the limiting reagent to growth and development along this busy corridor. Similarly, the 401 would be something similar to Lakeshore Blvd., a surface road with a 70 km/h speed limit and priority signaling, but not the main transportation funnel of Ontario.