I would not trust a single word that comes out of Kouvalis' mouth. The man is a political spin genious but that pretty much discounts there being an honest bone in his body.
There is no plan. The way Metrolinx publicly came out and told Ford to go screw himself with his Sheppard line suggests there is a lot more of that going on behind the scenes.
My own gut feeling is that Metrolinx is trying to save Transit City and Ford is being his usual uncooperative self - or more likely, Ford simply stopped playing the Transit Planner game when it became clear his strategy and rhetoric wasn't convincing anybody in Metrolinx. His strategy thus far has been to use soundbites and leverage ignorance into emotional responses, it's how he got elected and it's how he's been running council, but such strategies fall apart when you're dealing with a rational, educated adversary. I don't think his emotional pleas about taking away traffic lanes matter one bit to transit planners who actually understand the LRT plan, and of course when the planners point out the EA documents or the road cross-sections etc, anything that contradicts Ford's innate biases, he just shuts down.
Hence, the deadlock.
Give it a few months. It's been discussed elsewhere that Ford runs a very high risk of losing the balance of power on council, and we might well see resumption of the original proposal go before council. Even failing that, Metrolinx pretty much has a provincial mandate to just start building whether Ford likes it or not - and I doubt Council would vote to block it at this point, given how tenuous Ford's alternative plan really is.
The central part of Eglinton is invariable no matter what happens. They'll start on that as planned, launch the TBMs as originally planned, and that gives a couple years to discuss the outer ends of the line. The central part, Jane to Don Mills, will be built.
