There aren’t that many good-news stories these days, and we need to take all the silver linings we can get. I drove right up to one yesterday. I pulled into a parking lot not far from my house to deliver my daughter to an athletic event and saw that some fencing had recently sprung up around what will soon be a construction site. It might be an equipment-storage site, actually. But for our purposes, that doesn’t matter, because the construction project in question is the Ontario Line subway. It’ll function as a larger version of the Downtown Relief Line subway, which Toronto has been considering building since before I was born.
Don’t worry, readers. I am not totally cured of my cynicism. Far from it, as you’ll see below. It takes more to get me misty than some signage boasting of a construction project. And I did snort at the signage for Ontario Line construction popping up when we still don’t have a frickin’ projected date for the Eglinton Crosstown beginning service. I don’t have the emotional strength to tackle that long-running fiasco again; suffice it to say that I have noted with interest that, at least to my eye, more test trains than usual have been running along the line, which is quite near to my home. I suspect things are actually going well there, despite the official silence. So, that’s nice. It’ll be nicer when the damn thing opens, but, like I said, we’re looking for the silver linings today.
So let’s talk about the good news. Despite the agonizing wait for all Torontonians and the self-inflicted humiliation for the government that the Crosstown and its endless delays represent, it’s going to open eventually, one supposes. And when it does, it’s going to be a game changer for commuters in a rapidly densifying path through Canada’s largest city. As any regular rider of Eglinton buses could tell you, Eglinton needed higher-capacity transit a long time ago — the buses often end up getting stranded in the very traffic they’re supposed to help mitigate. I’m not here to give anyone a pat on the back for the Crosstown, the struggles of which will no doubt one day be discussed in full books. But when the damn thing finally opens, it’ll be a good thing. Let’s hold on to that feeling.
And there is more. As noted, we’re getting started, though only just barely, on the Ontario Line, which is also badly needed and long overdue. If finished in line with current plans, it’ll bring good transit access to parts of the city that are currently underserved and relief to other parts of the city’s transit network. I have been surprised over the past year or two by how little remarked upon the beginnings of the Ontario Line have been. Like, guys, this is the Downtown Relief Line — and more. It’s actually being built. Shovels are in the ground. Does no one else find that mind-blowing?
And there’s yet still more! Though it’s hard to get too optimistic about anything involving the Crosstown, work on the western extension of it remains ongoing. One day, way in the future, I should be able to throw a backpack over my shoulders, walk to my local Crosstown station, and ride it all the way to Toronto Pearson Airport (assuming we aren’t just beaming places by the time the extension actually goes that far, something that cannot be ruled out). Also, there’s a new federal fund that will help lower orders of government with, among other things, replacing aging vehicles that are already part of their transit fleets. That won’t help staff or operate them, as critics have already noted, but that’s billions of dollars that the transit agencies won’t have to worry about, and that ain’t nothing.
A keen reader may note that the search for silver linings we’re embarking on today has some caveats. Sorry, but… I’ve been hurt too many times before. Overt optimism just isn’t possible on this file. We have to take the good news with the necessary doses of weary resignation. To that point: Are we going to screw all these things up? Probably. Are they all going to open late and overbudget? Almost certainly. Are they all going to end up being lemons like the Ottawa LRT, which I hesitate even to mention lest my friends in Ottawa feel picked on? Extremely possibly.
But, still. Gosh. We are actually doing things on transit. That’s something! And it’s something that, for long periods of my life, we really weren’t doing at all.
Anyway, my plan today really was to write something a little bit more cheerful and optimistic than the norm as a way of rolling into the upcoming long weekend with as much good cheer as I could manufacture. Alas, we are still left to deal with reality, and the Canadian transit reality is not amazing. If I’d spent this column writing about all the things that are bad or going wrong, it would’ve been a lot longer. I’ll write that column — or columns — eventually. I’ve written some of them already.
But if only for a change of pace, let’s be glad that, after decades of doing way too little, we’re now trying to do a lot more. It isn’t always going great, and it’s been a frustrating process (to put it mildly), and there’s undoubtedly much more frustration to come. But it’s progress, of a kind. And as we head into this long weekend, I’ll take that. And maybe one day I’ll take the Crosstown and the Ontario Line, too. Dare to dream, right?
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