From a glass half full point of view we can at least take comfort in the fact that Rob Ford is about to stumble upon billions of dollars in public transit funding, a legacy from the imaginative era of David Miller he certainly wouldn't have gone about procuring this money on his own and we can be grateful he didn't punt the money back to Queen's Park in the name of taxpayers.

Pound for pound, an underground streetcar and kilometers of new subway tunnels are an extravagantly wasteful way to spend this money, the money about to be poured into two transit projects could have provided light rail to every corner of the city, but at least a couple of population corridors will see some fruit ripen for them.

The most interesting development here is the stealth application of Essential Service to transit. This could be the beginning of free fares for everybody, since work to rule will be one of the only means of production left available to the workers. It will be a nice break to ride what's left of the transit system for free while salary disputes drag on for decades.

This multibillion dollar funding turdball reminds me of the old bait and switch tactic Mayor Miller used to pass the latest installment of the city bike plan, distracting the guardians of the taxpayer councilors with a meaningless bike lane on University Avenue while implementing the rest of the plan on behalf of the citizens. Lose a lane, win a bike plan. This last outcrop of forward thinking city building isn't a terrible legacy to leave. Transit City seemed too simple and too innovative and too brilliant to be implemented at any rate. It seemed too perfect, it almost felt like we didn't deserve it. Now the dream of a transit system plan to bring us out of the 80's bites the dust alongside the Eglinton subways and downtown relief line projects of yesteryear.

Rob Ford's days will eventually pass, his lines of deconstruction will eventually cross somewhere, his Adam's Mine will begin when his emboldened agenda tries to take out the garbage. Already in the works. And when those days are done, I wonder if the next mayor will be lucky enough to inherit a turdball of transit funding, and if she or he will be smart enough to make proper use out of it.