The Toronto Region Board of Trade should be commended for kick-starting an informed debate about transit

governance in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. In response to a recent review of Metrolinx’s Big Move, a
regional transportation plan completed in 2008, the Board suggested a bold idea worthy of serious consideration.
Indeed, recent attention on overcrowding across Toronto’s subways underscores the urgency for transformative
change.

Instead of continuing to build, operate and maintain transit systems on a fragmented city-by-city basis, the Board
proposed uploading the region’s 11 municipal transit systems to a new provincial agency. Mayors and local officials
would participate through a formal Advisory Committee, but assets and liabilities would be uploaded to the province,
freeing up fiscal capacity for cities to address other priorities. In its proposal, the Board called the idea “Superlinx”, an
homage to Metrolinx, the current government agency mandated to assist local transit planning.

Like most ambitious policy proposals, a chorus of experts raced to be first to identify the challenges. Ironically most
called on the Board to slow down, as if transit development has proceeded too quickly in recent years. While time will
tell who emerges on the winning side of any debate, the Board raised the bar for campaign commitments aimed at
addressing traffic congestion in a year when Ontarians head to the ballot box in June and Toronto voters follow
closely behind in October.

Much attention has been paid to the election cycle as it relates to the Board’s proposal. However we also need to
look at how the so-called Superlinx fits into the macroeconomic business cycle. The Canadian economy and the
global economy have enjoyed upward momentum since the depth of the Great Recession, but economic growth will
eventually contract. When that happens, governments of all stripes will pursue stimulus measures focused on
infrastructure. Institutional investors will also prioritize infrastructure in jurisdictions they deem stable.

Now is the time for municipalities across the Toronto-Waterloo corridor to recognize that another free-for-all, mad
dash for stimulus funding and infrastructure dollars will not deliver better results than rallying behind a common
regional body with the responsibility, authority and accountability to deliver on what constituents want most: progress
on regional mobility. When prospective deal professionals evaluate Toronto region transit projects, will they continue
to see the revolving carousel of subway, light rail and bus rapid transit proposals for the same exact routes, or will
they find robust business cases for a stable pipeline of projects? Indecision will be worse than a bad decision.

The regional level is the local level. The Board’s Superlinx proposal recognizes this reality as it relates to the mega-
region stretching from Waterloo to Oshawa. From a transportation infrastructure perspective, the more we talk “local”
and focus on individual LRT projects, bus routes and separate transit authorities, the more distant we sound from
global trends and capital markets. While the Superlinx model appears unconventional to some, it is in good company.
Similar global cities like Paris, London and New York use regional authorities to manage transit. Moreover, there are
numerous capital-intensive infrastructure programs and services that citizens recognize are better delivered through
agencies at higher levels of government. Examples include power generation, aviation and health care, to name a
few.

There is reason to be optimistic. Toronto is a world-leading financial services and infrastructure-delivery super cluster.
International delegations routinely visit Infrastructure Ontario and the Canadian Council for Public-Private
Partnerships to learn our best practices. The new Canada Infrastructure Bank headquartered in Toronto will only
accelerate innovative infrastructure development. Canada’s pension funds, life insurance companies and institutional
investors already invest billions in transportation projects across the nation and beyond. A major advantage of
Superlinx is that it proposes to move transit to funding as opposed to stale debates around moving funding to transit.
In the current context, municipalities in Ontario simply do not have the debt capacity or revenue tools to pay for the
scale of investment required.

The time is ripe for fresh thinking in transit governance. Superlinx is a practical solution to an intractable problem. A
provincial agency would be uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between strong cities across the region and the
federal government, private sector and international investors.

Let’s stop sitting in traffic and truly move forward by making Superlinx a reality.