Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack plan is facing its first major challenge at City Hall, with some councillors arguing a portion of the transit project should be an LRT line instead.
At the mayor’s executive committee on Thursday, councillors voted to spend an additional $1.65 million studying SmartTrack, the $8-billion express rail scheme that was the centrepiece of Tory’s election campaign. Council approved an initial $750,000 in December, but more funds are needed to study the three-stop section of the project along the Eglinton corridor, between Mount Dennis and Pearson Airport.
But Councillor Gord Perks says he’ll vote against the funding request when it goes to council for final approval next month. He argues it would make more sense to extend the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, which is already under construction, all the way the airport instead of laying heavy rail for SmartTrack along the route.
Metrolinx is currently building the 19-km first phase of the Crosstown LRT out to Mount Dennis. A 14-km westward airport extension was approved as part of the 2010 environmental assessment of the Crosstown and is technically still part of Toronto’s long-term transit plan, although it’s not funded.
“We already have an approved transit project going out west on Eglinton. We should just do it,” says Perks, who supports the rest of the SmartTrack plan.
Perks likens Tory’s plan to former mayor Rob Ford’s attempt to scrap the Sheppard LRT in favour of a subway in 2010, which has caused years of delay on the project.
“We’re about to tell the staff to go spend millions of dollars studying how to cancel one already approved transit project,” Perks says.
Tory’s mayoral rival Olivia Chow warned during the election that building heavy rail through the Mount Dennis area would require part of the neighbourhood to be bulldozed.
Those concerns were echoed Thursday by Judith Hayes, executive director of the Mount Dennis Community Association. She told the committee that Tory’s plan “threatens the stability” of the neighbourhood.
She worries that building SmartTrack through Mount Dennis would require the expropriation of properties and threaten area homes, the local library, a historic church, and parkland. She recommended that SmartTrack stick to existing rail corridors and that an extension of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT further west be considered “in the long term.”
Tory, however, dismissed the criticism in a scrum after the vote, telling reporters that he had won a mandate to pursue the entirety of SmartTrack during the election. He said the Eglinton portion of the plan “connects people to an immense number of job opportunities in Mississauga and will help to develop the west end of the city.”
“Here’s the bottom line: SmartTrack is proceeding to be given the careful study that it deserves,” he said.
If council approves the motion that went to executive Thursday, city staff will work with the TTC, province and Metrolinx on the results of a feasibility study for the Eglinton portion of SmartTrack in the fall. They will also draft a service concept for the other two portions of the project, and produce high-level cost estimates for the entire proposal.
Tory is promising to complete the 53-km, 22-stop “surface subway” project in seven years.
bens@nowtoronto.com | @BenSpurr
