(This post has been crossposted to Transit Toronto and Bow. James Bow)

It’s strange how the prospect of a plan to significantly improve and expand public transportation infrastructure in the Greater Toronto Area leaves me more discouraged than hopeful. But that’s the tone of the little voice that’s starting to speak at the back of my mind as I hear that Metrolinx, the regional agency set up by the McGuinty government to study the future transit needs of the GTA, is set to release a $55 billion plan chalk full of ambitious transit expansion proposals.

The problem is, this is the second grand plan to be released by the provincial player in two years. In July 2007, McGuinty shifted the political landscape with his ambitious MoveOntario 2020 proposal. This plan called for $17 billion in spending between 2008 and 2020 to build LRT lines, busways and subway extensions across the Greater Toronto Area and in Kitchener-Waterloo. The great advantage of the plan is that it implemented proposals that various cities had had on their books for a while. McGuinty promised that Queen’s Park would cover the municipal third of the capital cost, and it promised to fasttrack various environmental assessments to get shovels in the ground as soon as 2009.

(more…)