As someone who has lived car-free since Sept. 22, 2002, the health of the Toronto Transit Commission is of urgent importance to me.

This Globe and Mail article tells about some of the pressure to cut the commission's capital budget -- so they can't buy luxury items like replacements for 24-year-old buses.

But some say the TTC is a gluttonous cash-gobbler that's almost as insatiable as medicare is for the provinces.

Some excerpts:

... City council budget chief David Soknacki said he believes there are spending cuts that have to be made, blaming the TTC for already causing the doubling of the city's debt -- now at $1.3-billion -- since amalgamation.

"The TTC tail is now wagging the entire City of Toronto," Mr. Soknacki said, adding that "astronomical" increases in the TTC's projected capital budget in the next few years could make it almost impossible for the city to borrow to build anything else, even threatening the city's credit rating and making future borrowing more expensive.

The transit agency's "capital requirements are such that it is squeezing out not just one recreation centre, but has the potential of squeezing out all recreation centres; not one library but all libraries," Mr. Soknacki said. ...

TTC commissioner David Shiner, a former city budget chief, said that if the $91-million in provincial gas-tax money the city is getting this year were applied to the capital budget, then both sides would be happy. But instead, the city is "misappropriating" that money, and using it to offset what would otherwise be a decrease in the TTC's operating subsidy from the city, which is more than $200-million.

I don't pretend to understand the numbers. What I do know is there are too many cars on the road in the GTA. Those cars usually have one person in them. The cars sit there all day until the person goes home from work.

That doesn't make sense in a city this size. But the only way to reduce the number on the road is a decent transit system. If the politicians and bureaucrats can't make the transit system work, Toronto is going to become one horribly unliveable city in the coming years.

Addendum:

On Jan. 19, the Toronto Star editorialized on this topic: A telling TTC tussle

In keeping with a promised "new deal," federal and provincial officials are sharing money from their taxes on gasoline. But the impossible choice facing Toronto and its transit lifeline is an urgent reminder that upper governments are falling far short of providing the required help.

Delivery of gasoline tax money must be speeded up. Currently, it will take almost five years for the federal government to fully pay its promised share. Beyond that, Ottawa and Queen's Park should each pay one-third of the TTC's capital budget, as they have in the past.

Actually, the Star editorial is a more lucid break-down of the problem (and the solution) than the Globe news story. Click on it and read the whole thing before it's best-before date (seven days, so probably Jan. 15 or 26).