Still time to backtrack on subway plan

Re Scarborough subway will lead to longer bus rides: researchers, March 27 When it comes to public-transit expansion in Scarborough, it’s like John Tory has got a one-track mind with a bad case of tunnel vision. To be fair, the mayor is not the only politician to hold this hardline attitude, which flies in the face of professional transit planning that has always recommended the much-lower-cost LRT option for this part of Toronto.

To discourage his opposition on this controversial issue, Tory tries to present the Scarborough subway as a done deal that can’t be changed. In reality, he’s got to know that’s far from being the case.

The mayor and his like-minded cohorts might consider something once said to me by a station master at Union Station: “Always remember, if you get on the wrong train, you don’t have to ride it to the end of the line.”

Sometimes in life, you’ve got to backtrack to get to the track you should have been on in the first place. As things stand now, there’s a whole lot of politicians all aboard on the idea of a super-expensive transit line that is undoubtedly destined only for a deep hole of unnecessary public debt. Robert McBride, Thornhill Why bother with facts and research? It’s the folks that own shopping centres, construction companies and materials suppliers and a good dozen nice politicians that should have sway, not just mere bus riders. Hamish Wilson, Toronto