Man, all these complaints!
First, the TYSSE is not the REASON we don't build enough subways. At worst, it's a symptom because we build things in fits and starts and even projects that make sense are not slotted in their proper place in the priority queue.
It's all fine and good that China and wherever builds em faster - how long did it take NYC to build the 2nd Avenue line? We're just comparing apples to oranges. It takes us forever partly because of all our regulations (safety, environmental and whatnot) but mostly because we are operating with an 1867 political system and a funding system that's not much better.
There's no real regional plan (apologies to toothless Metrolinx), no prioritization and no constant flow of money. It's the difference between a family sitting down around the table every night for dinner and a bunch of starving prisoners being thrown a loaf of bread once a week.
We STOPPED building subways, effectively, for more than 20 years and that has nothing to do with the EA process or Serbia. It has to do with our entire governance system, from the compromises of Confederation in the 1860s, through the creation of regional municipalities in the 1970s. Cities are incapable of building this sort of infrastructure on their own which means they have to rely on a province, which has its own priorities in any given year/election cycle, and an even wealthier federal government that has even less general inclination to get involved on a regular basis, and no legal reason to do so beyond sheer generosity.
The subway will be great for York U and it will be great for Vaughan. Even in terms of York Region priorities, it arguably should have been behind the Yonge extension but that's simply not how we do things here for better or worse (definitely mostly for worse) so griping about how some autocratic regime on another continent is able to build a greater quantity isn't helping. Nor are the people complaining (not necessarily here, but elsewhere) about how the nice-looking stations are the suburbs trying to pretend they're cities or whatever.
It would be nice if we did everything else we need to do first but this line WILL serve a major city-building purpose in Vaughan - one that is already very visible - and making transit a literal landmark around which the community is built seems to me an entirely reasonable thing to do.
We've got bigger problems to fix than the fancy architecture in Vaughan; a decade later the same mistakes - and worse - are being made because the system hasn't been fixed and, frankly, isn't likely to be any time soon.
