With all the attention on the Draft Regional Plan, another proposal lurks unnoticed in the agenda for Friday’s Metrolinx Board Meeting.

The agenda itself gives no indication, and the report of interest is called “CEO Report”, an innocuous title.  However, within that report we find a detailed description of the “Metrolinx Project Delivery Process” which the Board is asked to endorse.

First as a matter of process, substantive policy decisions should not be embedded in reports whose title implies a status update, unless the real desire is to hope that nobody will notice.  Second, the proposed process shows that Queen’s Park has no intention of letting Metrolinx operate as a truly independent regional authority, but instead will hold it very tightly under control by various Ministries.

Many have spoken as if Metrolinx would someday become the overarching authority for GTA transit planning, construction and operations.  Not true.  Even the proposed amalgamation of GO Transit with Metrolinx is sitting as unproclaimed sections of the GTTA Act, and my guess is that GO will fight every step of the way against being taken over by an agency that has never run a single transit vehicle.

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