🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Josh Matlow’s transit plan
🔗 LINK: votematlow.ca/waterfron…
🔧 DOABLE? Yes.
💰 COSTED? Yes.
✨ OVERALL: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½ (4.5 out of five)
Josh Matlow has spent a lot of time over the last decade thinking about transit — especially transit in Scarborough — and his transit plan is better for it.
This is a thoughtful, comprehensive and costed plan that would do a whole lot to help the city.
The latest piece is the announcement of his support for the Waterfront East LRT.
This is a badly-needed project. It is ridiculous that it is not already funded and under construction.
Businesses and organizations like Corus, George Brown College and others moved to the eastern waterfront with the promise that they’d get a timely connection to higher-order transit. In addition, the absolute cheapest and most efficient opportunity to build transit is when new communities are being constructed. But instead of making sure the Waterfront East LRT was and will be in place from day one for these new waterfront neighbourhoods, the City has dithered about with a series of reports and studies.
Matlow has said he’d put up $1.25 billion — about half the total cost — funded via his commercial parking levy. He argues that this would “allow Matlow to negotiate from a position of strength with the federal and provincial governments to cover the remaining funds required.”
Cynics could suggest that’s magical thinking, but the reality is that the provincial and federal governments are always going to be asked to contribute to major transit projects. Negotiations have generally gone better when City Hall has skin in the game. I think this is a reasonable assumption for Matlow to make, though it’d be nice if he also offered a Plan B.
Matlow’s previous transit announcements include a very cool Scarborough Moves plan. It comes complete with a map showing how the Eglinton East LRT, Sheppard East LRT, and Scarborough Busway — and later the Scarborough Subway — will all come together to improve connectivity for east-end transit riders.
He’s thrown in a neat-looking trail network for cyclists and pedestrians. It’s a nice cherry on top.
Matlow is also pledging to reverse recent TTC cuts, which is a good move to avoid the whole “transit death spiral” thing where service cuts lead to ridership drops which lead to more service cuts which lead to more ridership drops, and so on, and so forth.
PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.