The subway systems of grown-up cities typically have personalities that reflect the urban aura of their hosts. London’s “tube” is associated with early innovation, wealth and war. Tokyo’s system is super-fast, super-packed and super-efficient. Manhattan’s incomprehensible network embodies entrepreneurship, excess and danger.

What of Toronto? Despite an exploding metropolis, an historical 1960s decision to favour mass transit (Spadina Expressway, R.I.P.) and sturdy economic resources, Toronto has limped along with the most basic of subway systems for more than 50 years. Penny-pinching and weak civic government have long been the culprits.

Have you ever landed at Pearson International Airport — that fixed-link-free, “world-class” portal — in a terrible blizzard and wondered how the heck you were going to get downtown? Of course you have — and that’s the kind of outrageous service defect that has long relegated Toronto to the B-list of big-city stars. Toronto may be known for being tidy and polite, but it’s also famous for its halting, provincial approach to urban essentials.

In its own weird way, though, Toronto is starting to display an unlikely can-do attitude — even pluck — on the mass transit front. In 2000, the Toronto Transit Com-mission started up a service then noticed by few. The Airport Rocket (referencing the TTC’s ironically nicknamed “Red Rocket” streetcars) is an express bus service linked to the bare-bones subway system. For a mere $2.75 (the standard TTC fare), you can now get to the airport during rush hour in almost the same time as it takes a $50 cab ride.

Then there’s what I call the “entertainments.” What other transit system runs an avant-garde, mini film festival on its overhead monitors for the viewing pleasure of patrons? Or becomes the launching pad for the crucial nerd news that 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of modern astronomy?

Of course, the really big news is Transit City, the TTC’s remarkably ambitious plan to bypass comprehensive subways altogether. Without so much as a royal commission or a fight-to-the-death brawl in city council, the TTC, backed by the city, appears to be applying pressure to the top dogs (the province and the feds, who have yet to commit the necessary funding) and unveiled pragmatic new plans to link the long forsaken outer ’burbs with the increasingly busy core. The plan will use souped-up streetcars running on dedicated lines down the centre of existing surface routes. If built, the system may do more to lift Toronto into the economic big leagues than all of its gilt-edged bank towers combined.

So, what gives? Usually, Toronto waits nicely until someone upstairs says “Yea” or “Nay.” But the Transit City rollout seems precipitous in its speed. Any chance the city is pulling a fast one, strategically building public support for a project that’s then going to be very hard for other levels of government to nix?

With both inner and outer suburbs bursting with youth or new immigrants or young families, or all three — and who would argue they play a crucial role in the city’s future? — the need for extensive new mass transit has become a do-or-die proposition. Many at-risk youth are so trapped by their distant, dismal suburbs they are unaware they live beside a lake. Commuting parents are giving up jobs, unable to bridge the highway-clogged gaps between school bells and standard office hours. Not to mention the crisis conditions on the existing network: navigating the Yonge/Bloor subway station should not feel like dodging a herd of maddened moose.

Transit City, if it happens, will go a long way toward ensuring that Toronto has a peaceable and prosperous future, not one riven by crime and economic stagnation. It may also have another unlooked for but welcome side effect: a city known around the world for being harmonious, capable, a bit weird and nerdy — and not always polite. IE