TORONTO – The TTC board should support city council’s plan for a subway through Scarborough rather than the condensed plan championed by transportation minister Glen Murray, according to a newly released TTC report.
The report compares two competing plans for extending the Bloor-Danforth line further into Scarborough. The first, approved by city council on July 17, threw out the fully-funded Light-Rail-Transit option and would extend the subway line from Kennedy Station to Scarborough Centre and Sheppard Avenue.
The second subway plan, announced unilaterally by provincial transportation minister Glen Murray on September 4, would have used some of the current transit infrastructure for the SRT to build a subway extension.
During the announcement, Murray said the plan would be fully funded by the provincial government at a cost of $1.4 billion.
But Monday’s TTC report suggests it would cost at least $1.7 billion and upwards to $2.9 billion. It also suggested a number of items were unaccounted for in the provincial budget including the cost of vehicles, storage facilities, traction power substation, cost of interim bus service routing and associated infrastructure, HST, signal system upgrades and bus bridges. The cost of these excluded items, according to the TTC report, would be approximately $585 million.
The report claims additional funding is needed. And some of the funding was provided Monday after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the federal government would invest $660 million.
However, he would not state whether the money would be available if the plan, already on its third incarnation, changed again.
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