Although Rob Ford continued to proclaim that "taxpayers want subways" the folks on city council proved they don't buy that theory, earlier today adopting a motion put forward by Karen Stintz to return to a LRT-focused transit plan that looks a lot like the first phase of Transit City. After a marathon special meeting at City Hall today, the final tally was 25-18 in favour of the TTC Chair's transit strategy, which includes light rail on Finch Avenue, an at-grade section on Eglinton East and a proposal to investigate the best course of action for Sheppard Avenue East.

City Council has assembled for a special meeting to quarrel about the future of Toronto transit. The City has $8.4 billion worth of provincial dollars to play with, and naturally, there are conflicting ideas on the best way to spend it. While Ford et al. are, of course, touting subways, TTC chair Karen Stinz and a host of other councillors are backing a compromise solution that includes would bring LRT to streets like Finch currently lacking such infrastructure.

We'll periodically update this post as the meeting continues.

The meaning of Toronto street names often comes to mind when my subway train pulls into the station, and I make up stories about the scenery above my head à la Bill Bryson in his book Notes from a Small Island. At Pape there's a community of solemn Catholic nuns; at Donlands I imagine vast grass plains inhabited by the wild Don tribe. Greenwood, my stop, is buried below an beautiful but treacherous forest of towering pines.

It's showdown time at City Hall today, as council convenes for a special meeting to debate the merits of Rob Ford's vision for underground transit versus the wider-reaching, primarily above-ground plan first put forward by the previous administration. In the lead up to what will surely be a closely monitored session, it's worth asking how exactly we got here. Few would have imagined that David Miller's LRT plan would be back on the agenda when Ford declared Transit City dead on his first official day in office — even if he never had the unilateral authority to do so.

Rob Ford's vision for transit in Toronto has come under fire from a variety of important sources over the last 24 hours, the most important of which is surely city council itself. TTC Chair Karen Stintz, who had previously called for a compromise plan on transit development in Toronto, announced via Twitter early this morning that she'd move to call a special meeting of city council to address a letter from Metrolinx asking for clear direction from the City of Toronto on its favoured use of the $8.4 billion in transit funding provided by the province.

It's deja vu, to be sure — but will Mayor Ford's plans be undone once again? Roughly 120 urban planning and transit experts — many of whom criticized the Fords' redevelopment vision for the Port Lands last September — have released an open letter that urges Toronto city councillors to put a stop to a plan that would see the Eglinton Crosstown LRT buried in its entirety. Noting that the current policy would "inflict punitive social costs on large numbers of our citizens who will receive no relief from unacceptably poor transit service and unremitting congestion," the authors outline a three-step plan to get Toronto transit planning back on track.