So tell me: do you want to see public transit in Toronto spiral into irrelevance, and live in a city where the best option for getting downtown from northeast Scarborough without a car is hitchhiking? Or do you want to pay a little bit more taxes?

That’s the choice that the Toronto Transit Commission is offering the public in their just-announced public consultation over the very detailed list of proposed cuts to the TTC.

Those cuts, as you may remember, included the removal of a whack of bus routes that aren’t used by many transit riders, and more notably, the complete closure of the Sheppard subway.

The TTC was looking at those cuts in the wake of council’s decision to hold off debate on two big new taxes, on land transfer and vehicle registration. The TTC has to come up with about $100 million in annualized cuts - $30 million this year. At the time, it looked like pretty serious stuff, and the commission didn’t want to go ahead with any of it until they’d heard from the public.

The 10-point online and paper survey is to be that consultation. No public meetings. No discussions with residents along the routes that might be slashed. Just a 10-question survey that asks people if they’d be all right losing some bus routes, paying higher fares and having a generally less useful transit system.

All of which points to a conclusion that many critics of the mayor have drawn: that the cuts to service that drew so much attention in July and early August were simply that: attention-getting devices to shore up support for the new taxes when they come up for debate in October.

Given that, it seems very unlikely that the TTC will approve any service cuts when it meets September 12 (so far, all the commissioners have done is held back on any expansion of service).  More likely, TTC Chair Adam Giambrone and his fellow commissioners will deliver a case for voting for those new taxes at council.

This is a very political move, but not necessarily a bad one. The cuts being contemplated in July were nothing but a bad idea; Toronto has significant gridlock pressure already, and closing off the one means we have to reduce that pressure would be a huge step backwards in the midst of a budget crisis that while very real is more than likely a temporary one.

Still - the one thing we have all learned is that when it comes to promising massive cuts to public transit, Mayor David Miller and TTC Chair Adam Giambrone are exactly as threatening as they appear.

Which is to say, not at all…