City planner begs to differ on ridership

Toronto’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, wrote me in response to Friday’s column about the process our city used to make an allegedly irrevocable decision on the Scarborough subway.

I wrote that a series of episodes where questionable information formed the basis of the debate, and procedural rules were sidelined, taken together, made it look to me like the “game was rigged.” Most frustrating, I wrote, is that Mayor John Tory and Premier Kathleen Wynne and other key power brokers just keep saying the decision is behind us and it’s time to start building, and so on.

Keesmaat offers some objections and clarifications.

Specifically, she wanted to clarify what she meant when she told my colleague Jennifer Pagliaro that questions about the ridership numbers used in the earlier debate are “irrelevant.” Are they? We’ll come back to that.

But first, her other complaint, which is significant and justified. I wrote, as part of a summary of recent reporting by Pagliaro on the ridership projections of up to 14,000 riders in one direction during peak times that the planning department produced at the time, “Keesmaat says that estimate was ‘problematic,’ though no one is explaining who came up with it or what logic went into it.”

It turns out that this statement — mine — is problematic. Keesmaat correctly points out that she and her department have explained the logic of the estimate, including in recent correspondence with the Star:

“The morning peak hour, peak direction ridership forecast of 14,000 riders was prepared based on a population forecast of 3.08 million people and 1.83 million jobs within the City of Toronto by the year 2031,” which is significantly higher than the estimates that led to earlier, lower, predictions.

“The terminus station was assumed to be at Sheppard Avenue. It assumed that the frequency of service on the subway extension would be the same as the frequency of service on the Bloor-Danforth line west of Kennedy station.

“The forecast was prepared using the same modelling framework being used in conjunction with work underway for the transportation component of the city’s fiveyear review of the Official Plan, known as ‘Feeling Congested?’ It assumes a transportation network that includes funded rapid transit proposals (Toronto York Spadina Subway Extension, Eglinton Crosstown LRT, Sheppard LRT, Finch LRT and 25 other transit initiatives contained in either Metrolinx’s Regional Transportation Plan or the city’s current Official Plan.”

Now, there are plenty of legit questions about that explanation, including (as the Globe and Mail’s Oliver Moore has written) that the TTC said it was likely to provide service only half that frequently on the extension (which might change the number by a few thousand) and whether we can confidently expect the Sheppard LRT to be built.

Councillor Josh Matlow wonders how it’s possible that similar modelling could produce a lower number for a more densely populated area on the proposed downtown relief line.

You could certainly look at Keesmaat’s own characterization of the political process that took those numbers to council as “problematic,” “very, very chaotic” and “com- promised,” or her reference to the then-city manager’s warning that the process had been rushed by politicians, and raise your eyebrows.

But the reason you can ask those questions about the explanation is precisely because it has been offered. What you cannot reasonably say, and what I did say, is that no explanation or logic had been offered.

I am glad to be corrected and am sorry to have misled readers on this point, especially because I think so much honest debate on it is worthwhile.

Now, on the question of relevance. “The numbers were irrelevant to the decision-making going forward — and there are many decisions yet to be made — because the landscape for analysis has changed, which fundamentally changes the rider- ship analysis/numbers,” Keesmaat writes.

“When this decision was made, there was no SmartTrack on the horizon. SmartTrack is now the base case scenario, and its ridership has an implication for the Scarborough subway extension ridership numbers. That’s why the numbers are not relevant to the analysis moving forward.”

Here’s the thing: that makes perfect sense if the decision on the Scarborough subway extension is still ahead of us. If the past vote that was based on preliminary, rushed numbers and estimates is interpreted as a decision to study the thing properly in the changing context of other related projects, and that further study is going to give us more solid information on which to make a permanent decision, then maybe that’s fine.

But our highest-ranked decisionmakers on this file, the mayor and the premier, keep insisting that is not the case. They say, as I wrote Friday, that “the train has left the station,” and we should “move forward rather than relitigate decisions we have already made.” Stamped it, taxed it, no erasies.

In that context, the reliability of the numbers that informed that decision is very relevant.

So which is it? Are we preparing to make a decision, or are we analyzing how we made a decision? How relevant old reports are depends very much on the answer to that question. So does a big part of the transit-building future of the city. Edward Keenan writes on city issues, ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire