Rethink new GO stations

Politics rather than good policy has determined transit decisions

The revelation this week that the provincial transportation ministry pressured Metrolinx leadership to approve a new $100-million GO station in the minister’s riding, despite overwhelming evidence that this was a very bad idea, should no longer surprise us.

For too long, politics rather than good policy has determined transit decisions in this region. Politicians, with little or no regard for the evidence, declare what’s to be built, often in a crass effort to garner votes, and city staff scramble to do their bidding.

But while it should not surprise us, it should trouble us profoundly. This is among the key reasons our traffic congestion crisis continues to deepen, costing the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area upwards of $6 billion a year in everything from traffic delays to increases in accidents and pollution. It’s time we demanded better.

Plans to build this and another questionable GO station should be halted until the province can make a compelling case that carrying on is in the public interest. The province says more analysis is necessary. That is for sure.

And Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca should fully explain his role in the decision and his reasons for pushing these stations if he hopes to restore the public trust.

As the Star’s Ben Spurr reports, Del Duca’s ministry pressured Metrolinx leadership to approve two new GO Transit stations, Kirby and Lawrence East, at a combined cost of $123 million, despite an independent study that showed building these stops would actually worsen traffic congestion and pollution.

The evidence of political meddling uncovered by Spurr through a freedom of information request is overwhelming and ugly.

At a closed-door meeting in June 2016, on the advice of agency staff, the board of Metrolinx, the province’s arm’s-length transit agency, approved a list of new stops as part of its expansion program that did not include Kirby or Lawrence East.

A day later, Metrolinx officials were shocked to receive copies of draft press releases from the ministry indicating that the following week Del Duca would announce that the Kirby and Lawrence East stations were going ahead.

This news was met with confusion within the agency. After all, Metrolinx had not only rejected the stops; they had done so roundly. An independent analysis recommended neither Kirby nor Lawrence East be considered for at least 10 years, in part because they would lead to a decreased ridership on the GO network.

Building them, the report suggested, would increase travel times for many riders on the network, encouraging some to drive their cars instead. And neither stop would attract enough new riders to offset the passengers lost.

Meanwhile, the social costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions and traffic congestion over the next six decades resulting from building the two stations would total around $750 million.

What possible reason could the ministry have for pushing these stations? In the absence of a compelling story, it’s hard to ignore the fact that one of the stops, the $100-million Kirby station, happens to be in Del Duca’s riding. The other, the $23-million Lawrence East station, has been championed by Mayor John Tory as part of his “SmartTrack” plan.

While Del Duca has rightly promised further analysis, this time it should be conducted transparently and free from ministerial interference so Ontarians can be assured choices on transit will finally be based on evidence, not politics.

At the very least, the optics are disastrous — and Del Duca isn’t helping matters. Asked a number of questions by Spurr, including whether Del Duca overstepped his authority in his dealings with Metrolinx, the minister responded with a generic statement in which he suggested, among other things, that the population density around Kirby justified a station. Yet the Metrolinx analysis strongly disagreed.

This province cannot afford to waste yet more infrastructure money on politically motivated projects. If Del Duca can’t demonstrate to Ontarians that that is not what’s going on here, he will have left no doubt not just that these projects are wrong-headed, but that he is unfit for the job.