Let's get the facts about this subway:
The Harris government also killed off the Metropolitan Toronto level of government and merged its constituent parts, including Scarborough, into what is now the City of Toronto in 1998. The hugely unpopular move meant the province was off the hook for replacing the Scarborough RT when it began to show its age.
As it currently exists, the RT runs from the eastern terminus of the Bloor-Danforth subway to Scarborough City Centre — a distance of about four miles. It has six stops, some of them in sparsely populated industrial areas with some of the lowest ridership figures in the city. It's also now beyond the end of its life expectancy.
In 2007, the city announced plans to convert the RT to LRT, extend it north, purchase new trains, and eliminate some of the underused stops.
In 2009, the province agreed to fund construction of the Scarborough LRT, but the proposal became a political football during the 2010 mayoral election, when the conservative candidate Rob Ford campaigned passionately against it.
Once in office, Ford cancelled the LRT and six other light rail lines packaged with it under the banner of Transit City. In its place, the controversial mayor pushed for a nebulous and unfunded subway extension. His rallying cry of "subways, subways, subways!" was repeated so often a local radio station made it into a ringtone.
Ford established enough opposition to LRT technology, especially among Scarborough city councillors, that the possibility of resurrecting the idea became increasingly unlikely as time went on. Eventually, council decided part of the cost of building the subway—about $910 million—would be covered by a 0.5 percent Toronto property tax increase, which was passed under Ford.
Tempted by the promise of a potentially powerful election talking point, the provincial and federal governments also agreed to chip in and cover the remainder of the cost.
Ford's successor, John Tory, likewise campaigned on maintaining the subway proposal, despite an eye-watering and rapidly escalating $3.2 billion price tag.
Trouble is, no one really knows precisely how much the subway will cost. Though Toronto has now committed to the project, the figure is only an estimate, and is likely to rise. The city also has to reimburse the province for money it spent on the LRT proposal before it was nixed.
Tory's passionate subway advocacy might be due, in part, to the fact LRT may have conflicted with his own separate regional express rail plan, dubbed SmartTrack.
Now, transit riders in Scarborough rely heavily on diesel bus routes that mostly connect with the old RT or existing subway infrastructure. It's not clear how the network will look once the subway reduces the number of available stations.
Low ridership is another concern. Projections suggest when it opens some time in the 2020s, about 7,300 people would ride the new section of subway per hour—a figure that barely justifies the use of heavy rail. By comparison, the seven-stop LRT now in the trash would have attracted about 8,000 riders per hour for much less money.
https://www.citylab.com/transportat...able-plan-to-add-a-single-subway-stop/491687/
In other words a waste of taxpayers money by the Ford project.
The Harris government also killed off the Metropolitan Toronto level of government and merged its constituent parts, including Scarborough, into what is now the City of Toronto in 1998. The hugely unpopular move meant the province was off the hook for replacing the Scarborough RT when it began to show its age.
As it currently exists, the RT runs from the eastern terminus of the Bloor-Danforth subway to Scarborough City Centre — a distance of about four miles. It has six stops, some of them in sparsely populated industrial areas with some of the lowest ridership figures in the city. It's also now beyond the end of its life expectancy.
In 2007, the city announced plans to convert the RT to LRT, extend it north, purchase new trains, and eliminate some of the underused stops.
In 2009, the province agreed to fund construction of the Scarborough LRT, but the proposal became a political football during the 2010 mayoral election, when the conservative candidate Rob Ford campaigned passionately against it.
Once in office, Ford cancelled the LRT and six other light rail lines packaged with it under the banner of Transit City. In its place, the controversial mayor pushed for a nebulous and unfunded subway extension. His rallying cry of "subways, subways, subways!" was repeated so often a local radio station made it into a ringtone.
Ford established enough opposition to LRT technology, especially among Scarborough city councillors, that the possibility of resurrecting the idea became increasingly unlikely as time went on. Eventually, council decided part of the cost of building the subway—about $910 million—would be covered by a 0.5 percent Toronto property tax increase, which was passed under Ford.
Tempted by the promise of a potentially powerful election talking point, the provincial and federal governments also agreed to chip in and cover the remainder of the cost.
Ford's successor, John Tory, likewise campaigned on maintaining the subway proposal, despite an eye-watering and rapidly escalating $3.2 billion price tag.
Trouble is, no one really knows precisely how much the subway will cost. Though Toronto has now committed to the project, the figure is only an estimate, and is likely to rise. The city also has to reimburse the province for money it spent on the LRT proposal before it was nixed.
Tory's passionate subway advocacy might be due, in part, to the fact LRT may have conflicted with his own separate regional express rail plan, dubbed SmartTrack.
Now, transit riders in Scarborough rely heavily on diesel bus routes that mostly connect with the old RT or existing subway infrastructure. It's not clear how the network will look once the subway reduces the number of available stations.
Low ridership is another concern. Projections suggest when it opens some time in the 2020s, about 7,300 people would ride the new section of subway per hour—a figure that barely justifies the use of heavy rail. By comparison, the seven-stop LRT now in the trash would have attracted about 8,000 riders per hour for much less money.
https://www.citylab.com/transportat...able-plan-to-add-a-single-subway-stop/491687/
In other words a waste of taxpayers money by the Ford project.
