City to get six new SmartTrack stations

But mayor’s transit plan now includes fewer than half the stops he originally proposed

John Tory’s signature transit plan is moving ahead, with the mayor touting Tuesday’s announcement of six new GO stations to serve his SmartTrack line as a fulfilment of his pledge to bring a speedy, subway-free commute to thousands of weary TTC riders.

But his much-ballyhooed project has shrunk significantly from the 22-station vision he put forward on the campaign trail, and critics say it’s become virtually identical to the province’s pre-existing Regional Express Rail initiative.

The city and province jointly revealed plans Tuesday to build six stations that Tory said will be part of SmartTrack, the “surface subway” plan that formed the bedrock of his 2014 election platform.

Stations added to the Kitchener and Stouffville/Lakeshore East GO Rail corridors would be at St. Clair Ave. West, Liberty Village, the Unilever site, Gerrard St., Lawrence Ave. East, and Finch Ave. East.

At a joint press conference in rapidtransit-hungry Liberty Village, Tory said he was making good on his campaign promise to boost service quickly using existing rail corridors.

“SmartTrack is about connecting people to opportunity. It is about getting Toronto residents where they’re going on the rail corridors that already run through the city of Toronto and were, until this investment that we’re all making together, underutilized,” Tory said.

The six new stations are fewer than half of the 13 new stops Tory had proposed, and the 15 total stops now being contemplated for SmartTrack are fewer than the 22 he pitched during the campaign.

But the mayor said he was actually delivering more stations that he had pledged. That’s because, earlier this year, the western spur of SmartTrack that would have connected to Pearson Airport was deemed unfeasible.

It was replaced by plans for a westward extension of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT instead. The LRT could have up to 15 stops. Tory said those stations, plus his plan to expand the network in Scarborough, would result in “way more transit than I talked about, in terms of the number of stops and the number of neighbourhoods covered, than I had said when I was seeking election.”

But Gord Perks, councillor for Ward 14 (Parkdale-High Park), charged “we’re not getting anything close to what the mayor committed to.” Perks said Tory’s SmartTrack promises “change day to day and they never add up . . . The fact of the matter is that the proposal that was made during the election campaign said, using existing rails, 22 stops.”

The six proposed stations do not include a stop at Ellesmere Rd. that was included as part of the “optimized” plan for Scarborough that Tory and chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat championed in January.

Two SmartTrack stops, at Lawrence Ave. and at Ellesmere, were supposed to complement the onestop Scarborough subway extension and a newly added18-stop LRT to the Uof T Scarborough campus.

All the SmartTrack stations would be built as part of Metrolinx’s $13.5billion initiative to implement regional express rail service, or RER, along five GO corridors. The project involves electrifying the lines to allow more frequent, two-way service.

Metrolinx, in a report released Tuesday, proposes building 12 new stations for the RER initiative over10 years. Eight would be in Toronto, including the six claimed as part of SmartTrack, and two on the Barrie line: at Bloor St. W. and Lansdowne Ave., and Spadina Ave. and Front St.

All the new stations will be provincially owned. It’s not clear how service to the stations deemed to be part of SmartTrack would differ from service to others under RER.

Tory said “the service levels are quite likely to be different,” but the Metrolinx report envisaged SmartTrack stations being served by trains running at GO RER frequencies, every six to 10 minutes during peak periods, with travel times slightly increased for long- and medium-distance trips.

“There is still work that’s still ongoing between Metrolinx and the city with respect to exactly what the service concepts will look like,” said provincial Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca.

Transit expert Steve Munro said there is now little difference between SmartTrack and GO’s RER plan. “It’s quite clear that SmartTrack and RER are kind of merging with each other. This has been obvious for months,” he said.

Tory shot down suggestions that SmartTrack was indistinguishable from RER, and said his efforts had secured stations Metrolinx wouldn’t have otherwise approved.

“If SmartTrack wasn’t a reality, why did I have to go and get the money for it? Why did I have to have extensive discussions with Mr. Del Duca and (Metrolinx president Bruce McCuaig) and others about where we would get stations?” he asked. “And it was quite a long discussion, and we didn’t get absolutely everything that we might have wanted, but we sure got a lot for the people of Toronto. This is a very real project; regional express rail is very real.”

New details on the cost of SmartTrack were also released Tuesday. The province has agreed to pay for $3.7 billion in RER-related infrastructure considered “foundational” to Tory’s plan.

But incremental costs — including building the six new stations, at a cost of $700 million to $1.1 billion, and the Eglinton West LRT line, at $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion — would be paid for by the city, the federal government and other sources of funding such as development charges.

The city would also have to pick up the tab for operating the Eglinton West LRT line.

For SmartTrack to proceed, Metrolinx said the city needs to commit all necessary funding by Nov. 30.