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Development division. "At the posted road speed or faster it would not be possible to do safely. The potential to strike a pole with an apparatus is high; to strike a pole with a mirror is inevitable."

The report goes on to describe a litany of mishaps. If the pumper truck slides off the right-of-way, it could cause a crash "with potential for serious injury." And if it snows too much on a particularly combustive day? "Adverse climatic conditions will only make the TTC (right-of-way) more perilous. The TTC (right-of-way) on St. Clair Avenue is without doubt unsafe."

This is bad news for residents on and around St. Clair; at best a grim vindication for those, like Palacio himself, who fought a bitter losing battle to stop the right-of-way. It raises troubling questions for residents of other streets that have been earmarked for surface light-rail transit lines in the rather more ambitious Transit City plan. It's not so much that we can expect side-view mirrors to be flying off fire trucks along Sheppard as on St. Clair - no doubt this week's black eye will make the Toronto Transit Commission and city transportation officials more mindful than ever about emergency service providers' needs.

It's the single-minded process that led Council and the TTC in the case of St. Clair to approve a plan that seems to have simply ignored the warnings of professional firefighters - apparently in favour of what amounts to an aesthetic decision to locate posts supporting the streetcar wires in the centre of the right-of-way. Objections, coming as they did from councillors like Palacio and Ward 11 (York South Weston) Councillor Frances Nunziata (neither members of the left-of-centre majority on council), were dismissed as obstructionist prattle on behalf of anti-transit interests. You can't entirely blame the empowered majority for doing so - the St. Clair debate, like so many at city hall these days, was mired in partisanship on both sides of the issue.

But here's the thing. Over the next few years, there will be literally billions of dollars worth of dedicated surface track laid on streets across Toronto - according to a plan that was unveiled just over a year ago. Some political reputations, notably, of Mayor David Miller and his allies, will hang on how quickly those new lines are put in place; other reputations will be measured by how much trouble they can make during the hurried implementation.

In the ensuing fracas, it will take a lot of watchful eyes to make sure the new lines get the crucial details right along with the broad strokes.