Toronto has rolled out a proposed $5.1-billion 15-year plan to construct 120 kilometers of six dedicated streetcar lines that will stretch to all corners of the city and link with other regional transit systems. The centerpiece, a $1.7-billion Eglinton line, would extend across the city and connect with Pearson International Airport. It’s designed to relieve gridlock, contribute to the environment, provide equitable service to suburban areas and meet the objectives of the city’s public transit-oriented Official Plan, which calls for no major road construction projects.

Details were announced March 16, barely a week after Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged that the federal government would provide $595 million as its share toward the $1.7-billion extension of the Spadina subway line in the northwest part of the city.

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While the subway money has been promised, the light transit plan would require 75% federal and Ontario government funding—and there’s as yet no indication that will be forthcoming. A federal government budget delivered March 19 made no specific mention of transit funding, although it did extend by four years an existing program that shares federal gas tax revenues with municipal governments for roads, transportation and other infrastructure work.

“We have to start somewhere,” says Toronto Transit Commission chair Adam Giambrone, pointing out the light transit plan has to be in place before the city can ask for money. Four years of detailed planning were invested in the Spadina subway before Harper’s funding announcement, he adds.

Light rail lines are considerably less expensive to build and operate than subways and can provide a level of service and fairness not currently available under Toronto’s grid-like subway system, he adds. Although the downtown-oriented subway lines are filled to capacity, ridership on buses in Toronto’s suburban areas is sporadic and low.

To push the light rail transit plan along, Toronto will be ask for changes to both the federal and provincial government environmental assessment process which can take two to three years per project to complete, says Giambrone.