The Greater Toronto Transportation Authority has changed its name.

The agency still faces challenges, however, in helping people get around the heavily populated area.

For years, commuting times in Toronto have been growing. Whether in a private car, on a GO train or on a streetcar, the amount of time spent getting to and from the city is increasing.

But the provincially created GTTA, as of Tuesday officially known as Metrolinx, has ambitious plans to change that.
 
Paul Bedford, an urban planner who's on the board of Metrolinx, said the challenge is simple.

"Choice. Right now so many people don't have a choice. They have to own a car or two and they have to drive," he said.

Metrolinx is promising a huge expansion of GO, TTC, other transit systems, maybe even high speed train links between Toronto, Hamilton, Barrie and other cities.

"The regional economy is the level at which we need to start planning transportation infrastructure, and it's not something that's been happening. We've been planning it on the basis of smaller municipal lines and that's not the way people live their lives," said Metrolinx chair Rob MacIsaac.

What the transportation agency is contemplating will cost tens of billions of dollars. How to — and who will — pay for it is now the big question.
 
"I think we need more of everything: more subways, more light rail, more streetcars, more buses, more GO, all day service, east, west, north, south throughout the region, the whole ball of wax," said Bedford.

Tolls are being considered, and a decision is expected by spring. One idea that has some support is to slap tolls on all the 400-series highways in and around the GTA.

For MacIsaac, there is only one option.

"Be bold. Look around the world to see what other cities are doing," said MacIsaac. "In a couple of decades, we'll be as big as London is today. We should be thinking in those terms."