[URBAN NOTE] "How a bid to resurrect Scarborough LRT was killed"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Jennifer Pagliaro reports on how the idea of rapid transit in Scarborough was killed off in the name of the politically popular subway extension.

It took more than three years of political standoff on transit in Scarborough just for council to arrive back at the beginning again this July.

Should the city build a subway — revised as just a single stop and defended by Mayor John Tory even as costs ballooned past $3.2 billion — or a light-rail line, with capital costs covered 100 per cent by the province, that could be built in less time and serve more residents?

It took only two pages and 800 words to secure the vote in favour of the controversial subway, killing a move to return to the original LRT alternative to replace the aging Scarborough RT.

Documents obtained by the Star through freedom of information requests and interviews with those involved show how a misleading briefing note produced by the TTC just two weeks before a crucial vote became central to the mayor’s and allied councillors’ successful push for a subway, and how senior city and TTC staff discredited the LRT while advancing the subway option.

At the same time, the provincial Liberal government, which had politically endorsed a subway, refused to weigh in and ignored an internal report that found building the subway was “not a worthwhile use of money.”