Economic spinoff arguments for transit can be complex, wrote NOW Magazine April 29 in a story about efforts by Toronto Mayor David Miller to save the Transit City plan:

If people use their cars less, for example, they may have more cash to spend on clothes or theatre tickets, but there might be less work for those doing car and road repairs.

So if that’s the promise of building Transit City, what’s the flip side if we don’t complete it? More social dislocation in the suburbs and less equity in a city where poverty is racialized and located around the outer edges.

"We will have another generation growing up in poverty,” says Roger Keil, director of the City Institute at York University. “The racialization of poverty is not a snapshot; it’s a slow and grinding film.”

. . .

Even if Smitherman plays the progressive card to get the plan back on the rails, says Keil, the genie is out of the bottle. “Public transit is under such a barrage of criticism right now that it may be difficult to defend Transit City in the mayoral election. This is an incredible position to be in.”

Republished courtesy of YFile– York University’s daily e-bulletin.