A week before John Tory officially becomes Toronto’s mayor, everyone around him likes Smart Track.
That’s the message served up Monday, Nov. 24 by the mayor-elect at the Ontario Investment Trade Centre, a provincial office high above the Eaton Centre where foreign investors are welcomed and deputy ministers have working lunches.
So far as he knows, Tory told reporters, Smart Track, the surface-rail transit plan he ran on, can still be finished in seven years and paid for without property tax hikes.
Everyone’s "on the same page," and wants to see Smart Track built, Tory announced after meeting with his hand-picked transition advisory council, plus TTC General Manager Andy Byford and Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig at the OITC, which offers impressive views of Toronto’s cityscape.
Of course, Tory’s team of advisors doesn’t include independent transit experts or – apart from David Soknacki, who dropped his own bid for mayor – anyone who ever said Smart Track or its funding scheme are half-baked ideas.
Those advisors, he said, agreed people want him to "really move things forward" while a sense of urgency remains, and put decisions on Smart Track in front of provincial and city governments soon.
Details of the plan and a schedule have to wait until Metrolinx and others study how Smart Track would affect development in the city and the rest of its transit system, but Tory said such research has started already. "There’s work being done right now."
He made clear he won’t waste time while the city is "strangling itself" with traffic and made a subtle pitch to the federal government for financial help.
Tory, after being elected last month, said he didn’t want to get "involved" in the federal election campaign next year – that is, endorse one party because it offers Toronto the most assistance on transit.
But on Monday, Tory said he’d start an "open discussion" with the Conservative regime in Ottawa, "knowing their very strong focus on the economy," about Smart Track.
The federal vote is less than a year away and Smart Track’s end points, Tory said, are in Mississauga and Markham – giving the government a chance, he suggested, to accomplish something meaningful in the vote-rich "905" regions around Toronto.
Tory continues to propose tax increment financing, or TIF, to help fund Smart Track through development around its stations, a choice criticized during the campaign by Soknacki and other rivals.
But he said, so far, there’s been "no significant debate" generated by his advisors on whether TIF will work. Like Uber, the "ride-sharing" phone application the mayor-elect defended last week, Tory said TIF is a "newer way of doing things" people in the city should welcome.
And though he said he hasn’t met all 44 members of city council, Tory said he’s talked to a "solid majority" from across the city. None said they were "unalterably opposed" to Smart Track, he said.
"All of the comments have been positive."
Planning for a line to relieve pressure on the Yonge Street subway – previously considered the TTC’s most important major project – is already moving forward and will continue in 2015, Tory said.