Full speed ahead: Toronto council votes to move forward with Scarborough subway

Toronto city council rejected a controversial motion to revive plans for a Scarborough LRT and will instead go ahead with the one-stop subway extension championed by Mayor John Tory that would run east of Kennedy station.

That decision means that staff can now move forward with plans for a stop only to Scarborough Centre — officially abandoning the three stops that had been proposed.

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After the vote passed with a 28-15 majority, the mayor said that should signal debate on the issue of "subway versus LRT" is over.

"If people take the proper lesson from all this, it's that council has said to move forward," he said. "And the public wants us to get on with it."

Flip-flopping

It's taken decades to decide how to replace the aging Scarborough Rapid Transit line.

Just 10 years ago the city had explored replacing the RT's cars and refurbishing the line, but it chose to move forward with a light rail line in 2007. After former Mayor Rob Ford quashed Transit City and its LRTs in 2010, however, council distanced itself from the project.  

Council voted to shelve the $1.8-billion project — fully funded by Ottawa and the province — in 2013 and plan a subway instead.

More subways?

And the debate Wednesday triggered calls for other subway stops, too.

Council also voted to have staff explore three extensions on other subways lines; that could see a stop at Sherway Gardens, west of Kipling, as well as connecting the Sheppard Line to the proposed new stop for Scarborough Centre.

While there were no timelines attached to the proposals, Tory told reporters that it makes sense to look at those options in what he called "phase two" of transit development — projects that might be built after 2031.

Coun. Josh Matlow, who brought the motion to council to revive the LRT project, said he didn't have time for an interview following the debate.

His proposal, however, would have seen the projected $2.9 to $3.2 billion cost of the Scarborough Centre subway station be shifted to two other transit projects, he said.

A portion would have gone toward building a seven-stop LRT along the existing RT track, while the remainder could have been used for the 17-stop Eglinton East LRT extension, currently pegged at between $1.3 to $1.9 billion.

City staff, however, questioned the LRT's figures.

In a TTC briefing note leaked Thursday, the Scarborough subway extension's project manager, Rick Thompson, said the LRT's cost would now be closer to $2.7 billion. Thompson said the rising costs would come from having to redesign Kennedy station and to order new environmental assessments.

Matlow, however, told reporters earlier in the day that he believed those inflationary costs of the LRT "are based on assumptions."

He argued that the LRT makes better fiscal sense for the city in the long run, because the province, through Metrolinx, would shoulder the capital maintenance costs.

Council also voted to approve other major transit projects proposed for the next 15 years, including: 

• The Pape-Eastern-Queen alignment for the downtown subway Relief Line
• To undertake environmental assessments for the proposed SmartTrack stations
• To immediately start negotiating with Metrolinx to create a discounted fare for riders who use the GO train and then transfer to the TTC

Read through our recap of today's debate below or by tapping here on your mobile device.