[URBAN NOTE] "The Scarborough subway and the climate change agenda"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc looks at, among other negative consequences of the Scarborough subway extension, the environmental ones.

What will future residents of Scarborough think, 30 or 40 years hence, when they cast their minds back to the craven transit decisions being made today by the likes of Mayor John Tory and his deputy, Glenn de Baeremaeker?

I’m guessing those voters — some not yet born, others not yet living in Canada — will be mightily pissed at us for putting political self-interest and short-term calculation above their needs.

After all, what they’ll see is a city with three major LRT corridors — the Eglinton Crosstown Phase One, the Crosstown Phase Two from Mt. Dennis out to the airport, and the Finch West line — extending deep into the western reaches of Toronto. Not to be overlooked: an important new GO/Smart Track transfer at St. Clair West, and the UP Express stops – 39 stations in all, on a multi-modal, integrated grid.

As for Scarborough? They’ll have the single-stop Scarborough subway extension (SSE), which will soak up pretty much all of the $3.56 billion of available transit funding for that part of the city, plus two or three Smart Track stations and, maybe, an unknown number of stops on the hopelessly mired Sheppard East LRT. In the best case scenario, 14 new stations (or a net eight, if you count the eliminated Scarborough RT stops), with nothing that even faintly resembles an integrated network.

He gets to it, don't worry.