LRT will keep SmartTrack on track
Re How city’s best transit option went off the rails, Feb. 7 Mayor John Tory promised voters he would cap property tax rises to inflation, and build SmartTrack. The Scarborough subway, which he had no part in, will force him to break one promise.
In 2013, council famously flip-flopped on the provincially funded Scarborough LRT, a surface subway separated from other traffic. Council is now raising your property tax 1.6 per cent — for 30 years — to pay for just the Scarborough subway: 0.5 per cent in 2014, another 0.5 per cent this year, and another 0.6 per cent in 2016. Tory is dedicating 22 per cent of his 2015 property tax increase to the Scarborough subway alone (same thing next year, too). Toronto can’t build the Scarborough subway without impacting other desperately needed infrastructure. And the Scarborough subway impacts Tory’s priority: SmartTrack.
Candidate Tory promised us he wouldn’t raise property taxes to fund the $2.7 billion he still needs for SmartTrack. He instead promised to exclusively use tax increment financing (TIF). Media and experts investigated and slammed this promise; based on worldwide precedent, his $2.7 billion TIF financing promise is untested, unrealistic and unlikely to happen.
The mayor should protect SmartTrack now by leading council to return to the approved Scarborough LRT and reallocate the $1.5 billion provided by Torontonians and Ottawa from Scarborough subway to SmartTrack.
Council can return to a province-owned LRT, sparing Torontonians another huge property tax increase for SmartTrack, saving TTC operating and capital costs for an underused, overpriced subway, and saving up to $85 million in wasted LRT “sunk costs” we owe Metrolinx in this year’s budget. Public support citywide would be there.
Let’s keep SmartTrack on track. Later Tory will need to ask us for up to $2.7 billion for SmartTrack, maybe more. Above is the way for him to need to ask us for $1.5 billion less.
Building both SmartTrack and the Scarborough LRT delivers great transit to all regions of Toronto at a reasonable price. It’s a chance for a new council to show a costly era of vote buying is over and that constituents come first. Jean-Pierre Boutros, former senior adviser to the TTC Chair (2010-14), Toronto