Politicians put politics first in transit talks
Imagine a jury reaching a verdict in a high-profile murder trial right after the Crown’s opening statement and before the evidence was presented.
That’s what you have in the farce that passes for transportation planning in Toronto. Politicians vote to put projects where they best benefit politicians. And once the pre-emptive verdict’s in, city staff abandon impartiality before a single witness is called.
And the mayor-judge, planners-lawyers and entire political machinery-judicial system conspire to present data and “evidence” in such a way as to buttress the contemptible designs of their political masters.
Wish that were all cynicism. As Exhibit A, consider the contaminat- ed evidence, witness collusion, false positive tests and contortions bordering on fabrications used to prop up the proposition of this subway extension to Scarborough.
Many citizens willingly pay increased taxes for just about any transit project. (Even the unwilling are forced to pay a levy for the next 30 years to finance the Scarborough extension.) All they ask is the transit projects go where they are needed, at the scale they are needed, as soon as they are needed.
The Scarborough subway proposal was always on shaky footing. Latest ridership numbers, quietly released at a public meeting Tuesday night, suggest that city planners have removed all pretense of objectivity.
The sentiment is this: We are building this no matter what the numbers say, because the politicians promised it and too much political capital is riding on the outcome. City staff have gone as far as to downplay the importance of rider- ship as an indicator of where transit is needed.
Glenn DeBaeremaeker, the garrulous, easy-talking city councillor from the burbs, didn’t disappoint Tuesday night when confronted with the disastrous ridership numbers.
All he had to do is point to a long list of subway stops where ridership numbers are low. “Scarborough residents need the same access to a subway system that everybody else has,” DeBaeremaeker said, in studied persistence.
The one-stop subway extension from Kennedy to the Scarborough Town Centre will carry 7,300 people in the peak hour — an embarrassingly low number compared to capacity of more than 30,000.
Worse, it underscores how the projections change, fluctuate, are manipulated or massaged to fit the “verdict.”
Queen’s Park approved complete funding for an LRT line to replace the RT. Ridership projections were 8,000 peak-hour riders for the LRT. But some councillors argued a subway would attract 9,500 and council voted to switch mode, even though a subway isn’t contemplated until ridership starts at 15,000 with potential to rocket past 30,000 peak riders.
Confused, the province asked council to clarify its position.
Toronto was about to throw away $1.4 billion for a subway that cannot be justified. Within two months new ridership projections emerged, topping at 14,000 during the peak, and council voted “subways.”
Last year, new mayor and new council voted to continue the project, despite persistent requests from Councillor Josh Matlow who did not believe the jump in ridership projections to be “accurate and reliable.”
There was something to Matlow’s skepticism. Real evidence called on Tuesday, in the form of up-to-date figures from the U of T regional travel demand modelling centre, shows the ridership at 7,300.
That’s lower than even the original projections, half the steroidal estimates released in time for the first subway vote, half what the LRT can carry (the LRT that cost Toronto taxpayers nothing in extra levy) and nowhere near subway capacity.
But it matters not. The verdict’s already in.
Meanwhile, as constituents grow restless over this effrontery, the mayor and his new-found buddies in the Wynne government held a news conference to announce that Queen’s Park is going to help fund necessary studies on the downtown relief line.
It’s part of what the kids in the Twitterverse call “decision-based evidence making.” Verdict. Then, fake trial. Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca