How will John Tory get SmartTrack done? Compromise.

In what really wasn’t much of a surprise, John Tory was elected mayor of Toronto last week. His victory can be chalked up to a lot of things, but part of it, at least, was because of the transit plan he laid out to voters.

But here’s the thing: Now that he’s won, we’re going to need him to change that transit plan. I say this not because I’m rabidly opposed to Tory’s SmartTrack, but because I’ve realized that a mayor won’t get very far at Toronto City Hall if they aren’t willing to compromise. It’s simply the nature of needing to work with 44 councillors, the provincial government and the federal government. Compromising is job one.

Fortunately, SmartTrack could lend itself to compromise. Long before Tory’s campaign team gave it a rebrand, most elements of the plan already existed. Nerdy transit enthusiasts have been talking for more than a decade about the need to electrify GO Transit lines and provide more frequent service throughout the GTA.

The idea has always been a good one, earning support from Metrolinx, a gaggle of city councillors, some MPPs at Queen’s Park and, hell, even mayoral candidate Olivia Chow.

Where Tory ran into trouble was when he took that basic good idea and added some questionable elements.

I’m talking about things like the plan to tunnel along Eglinton Avenue at a huge cost, future capacity concerns at Union Station, the ridership implications of SmartTrack running essentially parallel to the new Scarborough subway and — most importantly — the actual math behind the tax increment financing scheme he says will pay for it.

Tory didn’t seem interested in explaining these issues during the campaign. And maybe that was good campaign strategy. Tory needed to take every step to avoid being seen as a flip-flopper. But now that he’s mayor, a little flip-flopping might be necessary.

We’ll know pretty quickly what kind of mayor Tory intends to be. If he really doesn’t understand city hall, he’ll attempt to push through his transit vision with minimal analysis and study, browbeating councillors and the public with talk of his mandate and a drumbeat mantra of SmartTrack, SmartTrack, SmartTrack.

We’ve seen that strategy before. It didn’t go well.

But if he’s smart about SmartTrack, Tory will open all aspects of the plan to review, including the alignment and financing mechanism. He’ll also commission reports weighing the benefits of SmartTrack versus other future transit projects like the downtown relief subway line.

Tory should take whatever expert advice he gets, then work with council to build a consensus on the best transit solution for Toronto. The result won’t look exactly like SmartTrack, but Tory needs to be okay with that. Remember: Compromising is job number one.