[URBAN NOTE] "Scarborough transit users, screwed again"

[rfmcdonald]

Chris Selley's National Post essay gets it right.

Only four months ago, the Scarborough Subway Wars had ostensibly drawn to a close. Some city councillors who in principle preferred the original, cheaper LRT option to replace the aging Scarborough Rapid Transit line seemed to have been mollified by a compromise: the subway extension would be one stop, instead of three, from Kennedy to Scarborough Town Centre, and the money left over would go to building an LRT from Kennedy to the University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus.

Coun. Josh Matlow, one of the subway’s staunchest opponents, credited Mayor John Tory with having placed “facts” at least “alongside politics” in his decision-making, and argued it behoved people like him to give the plan a chance — though he also wanted careful study of aligning the subway along the existing SRT corridor. Tory, naturally, was bullish: “It has the potential to transform a region of our city that is currently vastly underserved by transit,” the mayor enthused.

And now, away we go again. Torontonians learned last week that the one-stop extension is projected “only” to carry 7,300 passengers from Scarborough Town Centre to Kennedy station during the morning rush — not 11,100 and not 14,000, numbers which had been floating around beforehand.

And it was back to our regularly scheduled programming.