The GTA deserves better than a ‘hail mary’ on transit planning

Here’s the good news. At long last, it seems that most of the GTA’s political leaders, activists and advocates agree that the region is in desperate need of billions of dollars in infrastructure spending. Without fresh investment in subways, GO trains, light rail and roadways, soul-sucking congestion will seriously hamper economic competitiveness.

Here’s the bad news. Very few people ­— especially politicians — want to really talk about how to pay for it.

They prefer to cling to faint hopes and vague policy directions. Call it the Hail Mary transit strategy. Instead of looking to proven ways for raising cash, too many prefer to just shut their eyes and toss the ball way down the field.

Take the gaggle of candidates currently in the running for the provincial Liberal leadership spot. A policy scan of these could-be premiers reveals a distinct lack of detail in most of their transportation plans.

There’s some talk of shuffling around governance models and amalgamating transit agencies, but little about how any of that will lead to, you know, real transit service with trains and stuff.

Then there’s the other great hope: the national transit strategy. It’s an idea that’s been swirling around for decades, and makes an appearance in several of the leading Liberal candidate platforms.

A national transit strategy has always been a sensible idea. Canada is the only G8 country without one. Given the importance of thriving cities to our country’s GDP, it’s downright criminal that the federal government invests so little revenue in infrastructure. There’s nothing wrong with calling for more cash from Ottawa.

But it’s also, at least for the moment, an idea with virtually zero chance of getting off the ground. How many times must Prime Minister Stephen Harper shut the door in our collective face before we get the point? Unless we opt for hosting something like the Olympic Games, Harper is not going to come riding through with big bags of money for cities.

There’s no harm, of course, in keeping hope alive and continuing to push for a national strategy as part of the GTA’s long-term transportation vision. But it can’t be the lynchpin to that vision. The congestion crisis is real enough that we need an actionable plan that doesn’t involve waiting around for other levels of government to see the light at the end of the subway tunnel.

And that actionable plan isn’t hard to put together. But it does involve standing up and acknowledging that the GTA needs things like a sales tax or road tolls.

And, sure, that can be unpopular, but I don’t see any real alternatives. The Hail Mary strategy of shuffling around agencies, commissioning endless studies or waiting for other money to materialize is nowhere near good enough. Someone’s got to run the ball.