The fate of Transit City
The fate of Transit City has been the talk of Toronto today, as Rob Ford officially took up his post at the mayor's office. During a press scrum, the new mayor revealed that he had an early morning meeting with TTC GM Gary Webster in which he told him that the primarily LRT-based project was finished. "We just had a meeting about subways....I just wanted to make it quite clear that he understood that Transit City's over. The war on the car is over. All new subway expansion is going underground. That's pretty well it," Ford told reporters afterward.
But the question that's on many people's minds is whether or not Ford has the authority to single-handedly kill the project, which has already received some $130-million worth of funding from the province of Ontario.
He can't. But, he might be able to have the matter up for debate as early as the December 16 city council meeting. Although Ford has yet to meet with Dalton McGuinty, the premier did sound amenable to discussion of a new direction for Toronto transit, but also warned that "If there are changes to be proposed connected with the original plan -- and there are costs associated with that -- those will be visited upon the council and the people of Toronto."
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