Today in Bad Ideas: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s Subway to Suburbia

Toronto readers, today's Globe & Mail has everything you need to know about Mayor Rob Ford's dream of building expensive subways under low-density suburbia, thereby spending billions that could be spent expanding actual mobility (and access) where it's most needed and demand is highest. The article is about the crucial Eglinton corridor, an obvious grid-element that could help thousands of travellers get where they're going without having to go through downtown, thus adding to capacity problems there. But the same logic applies to an underground extension of the Sheppard East line toward Scarborough, which the mayor has also mooted. Reporter Adrian Morrow has done his homework (not just by talking to me) and he carefully sets aside all the main talking points of the suburban-subway advocates.

Bottom line: Going underground is expensive, so we do it only when we really need to! Responsible planning fights hard for space on the surface -- especially in space-rich low-density suburbs -- before sacrificing millions just to get transit "out of the way" of cars.