Mayor stands by subway extension
Tory says shrinking ridership data ‘misleading’ and 6-kilometre Scarborough project will be a ‘huge success’
Mayor John Tory is defending plans to build a onestop subway extension to Scarborough for more than $2 billion despite new numbers that show ridership for the six-kilometre stretch would see trains that are 80-per-cent empty at rush hour.
At a public consultation meeting at the Scarborough Civic Centre Tuesday night, city planning staff unveiled new projections that said by 2031, at its busiest hour in its busiest direction, 7,300 people are expected to ride the new subway.
That ridership number is half of the upper range of figures presented to councillors in 2013 when they approved the extension. At the time, city planning staff said that between 9,500 and 14,000 would ride the subway, but since then the projections have been revised downward to accommodate the effect of the planned SmartTrack line, and design changes that reduced the number of stops from three to one.
“I can’t speak to the numbers that were bandied around before I was here, but I can say that the numbers we’re looking at today make this a project that we should do and we must do and I continue to be very committed to it,” Tory said at a transit announcement at the TTC’s Greenwood yard Wednesday afternoon.
The mayor said he believes recent reports on the shrinking numbers have been “misleading,” arguing other terminal subway stations have similar ridership — an argument also being championed by senior city planning staff.
But when asked whether that ridership justified the more than $2-billion cost, Tory insisted they were planning for the future and predicted the extension would be a “huge success.”
At least one city councillor says new numbers are “a huge concern” and may warrant reopening the fractious debate about the transit project.
Councillor Paul Ainslie, who attended Tuesday’s meeting, said that the new projections barely meet the demand for a light rail line, let alone a subway.
“It’s a huge concern for me. The viability of a subway stop is supposed to be about 14,000 people, and that’s half. So we might have to have a conversation at city hall about, you know, what we’re doing with our transit dollars,” said Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East).
“Because my residents always say, we want the best bang for our buck.”
The councillor conceded however that there may not be the political will at city hall to reopen the debate about whether it would be better to build an LRT line in Scarborough funded by a $1.48-billion contribution from the province.
That dispute consumed much of the previous term of council, and Tory promised during his campaign not to revisit the issue.
Chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat did not respond to a request for comment on whether building the subway at a more than $2-billion cost with peak ridership of 7,300 was sound transit planning advice.
Asked the same question in a planned Twitter chat Wednesday, Keesmaat responded by saying the Scarborough Town Centre stop would have the third-highest number of boardings on the Bloor-Danforth Line.
Councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22 St. Paul’s), the most vocal opponent of the subway while advocating for the original seven-stop LRT plan that was fully-funded by the province, agreed the one-stop plan demands review.
“Studies show that Scarborough residents want to go downtown and travel locally. The one-stop subway’s low-projected ridership proves it won’t actually serve residents’ needs,” he said.
“However, the seven-stop LRT in its own corridor would rapidly serve more people and connect more Scarborough neighbourhoods for a fraction of the price.” On whether the LRT would be a better use of public money and better suit the ridership projected for that area, senior transportation planning staffer James Perttula told the Star Tuesday: “That’s a question for council . . . The mandate we’ve been given is to develop a plan to present to council, recommendations for council on a subway extension.”
At the packed public meeting Tuesday night in Scarborough, there was skepticism of the plan. One man was applauded as he questioned the wisdom of building the one-stop subway.
“The projected ridership in 2013 for the subway extension was14,000. Today you’re giving us 7,000 — that’s half the requirement that the politicians sold us on this extension,” he said.
“My first question is, why can you not simply upgrade the SRT? It has plenty of capacity (for) the future forecasted load. It doesn’t cost zilch.”