TORONTO – TTC officials “don’t know” whether Glen Murray’s vision for a subway in Scarborough is a viable option for Toronto.
“The TTC has never operated an elevated subway before,” TTC Chair Karen Stintz said in an interview Friday.
Transportation Minister Murray announced a new vision for a subway through Scarborough on Wednesday that, he said, could be built for $1.4 billion and would serve two priority neighbourhoods ending at the Scarborough Town Centre.
Murray’s was the latest attempt to design a transit plan for the underserved eastern portion of Toronto that has shifted significantly since July when city council moved away from a fully-funded plan to build light-rail transit (LRT) through Scarborough. That plan was discarded in favour of a non-funded $2.8 billion plan that required a 1.1 to 2.3 per cent property tax hike, higher development charges, a $1.8 billion investment from the Ontario government and a significant investment from the federal government.
The federal government has yet to invest any money in the ever-changing transit plan for Scarborough.
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And the new subway plan may not be able to be built until 2023, according to Bruce Mccuaig, President and CEO of Metrolinx. McCuaig says Metrolinx, the provincial organization responsible for transit, believes the original LRT – before any revisions – was estimated to be finished in 2015, the revised LRT was to be built in 2020.
While the Murray claims his $1.4 billion project will be fully-funded by the province and additional stops can be built if the city can come up with the money, questions are being raised as to whether the project can actually be built.
Murray’s plan will require rebuilding and relocating Kennedy Station to accommodate the new plan.
“But there’s a number of questions that need to be answered as well in terms of whether this is technically feasible, what are the implications of moving Kennedy Station for GO Transit, for the Eglinton Crosstown Project and for riders on the Bloor-Danforth line,” Stintz said.
Stintz has written to Metrolinx asking for clarity on whether the plan can be built.
But she is also concerned about its impact on riders. When council decided to fund a subway rather than build the LRT in July, one of the main concerns raised by councillors in opposition to the LRT was the four to five years commuters would have to spend on buses while the LRT was built.
“I have a concern if the Scarborough RT is going to be shut down after the Pan AM games and then there’s no service for Scarborough until 2023 because that’s a seven year period where Scarborough residents have no service,” she said.
– With files from Jackson Proskow
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