“But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water… And there they stand–miles of them–leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues–north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue in the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?” –Ishmael, Moby Dick

The Gardiner Expressway–an eight lane waterfront highway keeping Torontonians disinclined from enjoying our shore, where, as Melville correctly states, humans naturally prefer to be–was a terrible idea. It is a disgusting and expensive blight from a misguided car-centric era of city planning, but what to do with it now is complicated. City officials announced yesterday that they’re postponing major repairs to a two-kilometre stretch of the Gardiner east of Jarvis because they might eventually decide to tear it down, and pouring money there now makes no sense. In the meantime, the west side of the Gardiner from about Strachan will undergo the deck replacement instead. The cost is about $200 million, a $20 million increase from the original plan. Life support for this awful highway is expensive, but so is pulling the plug.

The Gardiner’s service life is about six years from now, though various engineering concerns make it impossible to make this number firm. In what will surely become an election issue, a year from now council will decide whether or not to dismantle the eastern part of the Gardiner altogether in order to revitalize the waterfront. But even if they choose this course, it probably won’t begin until 2020. In the meantime, millions are required to keep the Gardiner safe. There is a great, tragic irony here–getting funding for the wrong kind of infrastructure is much easier than doing it properly.

Though in principle everyone agrees it’s necessary to repair both dangerously crumbling roads and to expand our transit system, priority is given to roads. To put things in perspective, The Gardiner is seen by many as a vein into downtown for carrying up to 180,000 cars a day, yet the Yonge subway line carries 734,900 on the average weekday. I’m not suggesting the Gardiner be ignored, it’s just that getting the will from council to repair something that’s already in use and is dangerous to neglect requires no political risk. It’s easy, and funding is granted automatically. What’s harder, and therefore more what’s impressive, would be seeing from council the same urgency for TTC expansion. That the money will arrive should also be a forgone conclusion, the way it is for the Gardiner. Everyone agrees that huge TTC expansion is a must ($6 billion a year is lost in the economy due to gridlock), yet, because it has a much less palatable pitch, its funding is anything but automatic.

Indeed, to certain people transit funding is positively emetic. Yesterday, in what is being hailed as an instant classic, Mayor Ford pretended to vomit in reaction to different proposals of new “revenue sources” (taxes… this is a particularly disgusting euphemism) for “The Big Move,” the name given to the GTA’s comprehensive transit expansion strategy. Though the city needs $2 billion a year, Ford proposed using the casino would pay for it. Under OLG’s current funding formula, the city stands to make $20 million a year from the casino, making Ford’s suggestion that a casino will fund The Big Move outlandish. This is like bulking up on goaltending talent and experience for the Leafs’ long upcoming playoff run by signing Johnny Bower, the antique Cup hero of ‘67. As Matt Gurney noted in National Post, it would take 1000 years for a casino to pay for The Big Move. Nobody can actually believe that this will work.

But our mayor is far from the only leader bereft of inspiration on this file. Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath have both stated that it’s essential to eliminate waste and close loopholes before creating new taxes for TTC expansion. Taken at face value this is impossible to disagree with, which makes it completely meaningless. This is perhaps the quintessential example of a politician saying nothing despite the use of words. No citizen or politician anywhere is pro wasteful spending. Parting with one’s own money for no reason is not a hobby like stamp collecting. That the Conservatives and the NDP appear to be aligned should indicate that they aren’t actually divulging their opinion, or any opinion, at all. Meaningful statements weigh the particularities and nuances of a unique situation, balancing all its accompanying priorities, obstacles and requirements. These Conservative and NDP statements are consciously vacuous because there isn’t a circumstance when they do not apply.

Think about it. Right now our provincial and municipal politicians feel it isn’t expedient for them to be publicly in favour of the only possible solution for TTC expansion, even though everyone agrees it’s a requirement. This is proof that sometimes the best course of action for the city is diametrically opposed to the interest of politicians. Is this not the counterintuitive tragedy of politics in a nutshell? However many millions the Gardiner sucks up, this is something to puke about.

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Jeff Halperin is a Toronto-based writer. You can follow him on Twitter @JDhalperin.

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