Metrolinx and TTC must build better relationship

Big number: $110 million, the estimated initial full-year cost for the TTC to operate the muchdelayed Eglinton Crosstown LRT and Finch West LRT.

- MATT ELLIOTT

As freshly appointed interim TTC CEO Greg Percy settles into the top job his priority list should be clear.

Especially if, as he's said, he's seeing this interim appointment as "an audition" for getting the permanent gig sometime next year. Job one? Hashing stuff out with Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency.

Ideally, it should be a productive relationship. Metrolinx makes the train tracks. The TTC makes the trains go. But lately the two agencies have had a very strained and dysfunctional dynamic. It's time for some serious relationship counselling.

To be clear, Metrolinx should shoulder most of the blame here.

Under CEO Phil Verster, Metrolinx has been acting like a bad boyfriend: keeping secrets, providing only vague responses to questions and sulking whenever their bad behaviour gets called out.

About a year ago, in one of the most absurd press conferences I've ever seen from a public official, Verster literally asked the public to "give us some space" while defending his refusal to provide an opening date for the long-delayed Eglinton Crosstown transit project.

Plenty of space has since been given - it's not like anyone had a choice, really but an opening date has somehow still not yet arrived.

Further north, the Finch West LRT also languishes in mystery. Reports from the Construction Liaison Committee updating the local community on the project show the 10.3kilometre line was considered 98.89 per cent complete in February. So close you could almost taste it.