Consider this bold prediction: a new transit plan for this city will become such a fiasco of missed opportunity and unbelievable waffling, the two-decade ordeal to redevelop the Congress Centre will pale in comparison.

Already the cracks are showing around the city council table, raising ghosts of boondoggles past and making one wonder if there is something tainting that coffee served in the Green Room.

Three years ago, downtown businesses were pressuring former mayor Bob Chiarelli to ditch a transit plan that would have seen light rail sharing the street with cars and city buses. "Bury the train with a tunnel," they said, to which Mr. Chiarelli replied, "no," adding that if the extra money were available for such a project, it would instead be directed to expanding the east-west transit system.

Fast forward past the months of acrimonious debate that saw the old light-rail plan in its various permutations finally crushed by a vote of city council after Mayor Larry O'Brien took office. Four new options are now on the table, all of which propose some kind of downtown tunnel. "It's the right transit choice," Mr. O'Brien said, by addressing Ottawa's key transit choke point – the downtown – and building out from the core. The number of buses passing through the core has reached critical mass, he said, and is too vulnerable to traffic accidents or severe weather events.

The four options are supposed to have resulted, in part, from public consultation, something the previous plan was criticized for lacking. Additional community feedback on which of the four should be the final choice is being sought before city council gets down to making the final decision next month. Mr. O'Brien even took to the bus last week to garner first-hand feedback from commuters from various ends of the city. A nice photo-op to be sure, but it at least demonstrates he's willing to meet residents on their own terms. Many commuters, of course, pined for rail service to Kanata and Orleans, no doubt under the false belief that such a service could come right into central Kanata along the 417 corridor.

Train or not, the overwhelming demand is that service be improved to get downtown faster. Various city bureaucrats and councillors have latched on to this idea and are now favouring quick and dirty ways to improve transit service from points east, west and south. This, they say, should come before a long and costly dig to bury transit downtown. We need solutions now that will ease the commuter flow from the 'burbs, they say, emphasizing there are a number of smaller projects that can be initiated in the short term.

These are all valid suggestions. But what happens when all that commuter flow converges on the downtown core? The faster the flow of people and traffic into the downtown, the more severe the logjam that will result – unless there's a bigger and better pipe to handle the pressure. The downtown core is the keystone of any long-term and comprehensive plan that best serves the entire region. It's the opinion of this naïve journalist that building a downtown tunnel first is the way to go and the rest of the system will follow more smoothly as a result.

But this isn't about the viewpoints of one journalist. It's about what the community as a whole wants and we have been led to believe that a downtown tunnel was top of mind for residents of Ottawa during the city's public consultations. Why else is a tunnel a key part of all the proposals on the table? Even an informal poll on CFRA.com last week demonstrated a severe bias in favour of a downtown tunnel as the first step. What message does it send if a group of councillors decide to ignore the weight of public opinion in favour of their own personal preferences, or to cater to their individual ward constituents? Or are these men and women ready to stand up and admit public consultation is nothing more than a hollow exercise in PR to be ignored when they don't agree with the results?

If council ends up divided on this issue despite a clear preference from a majority of Ottawa residents, we're no further ahead than we were three years ago. This plan too will jump the tracks and end up another casualty of in-fighting, pushing off any kind of action on improving transit service far into the next decade. It's time for council to show some solidarity, some leadership, and muster the courage to make a final and firm commitment, guided by public opinion. Yes, there is less risk in putting off a tunnel in favour of a series of smaller projects and maybe doing so would yield more immediate benefits, but we have to look beyond short-term gain. If the majority of residents want to start with a tunnel, then let's just get it done.