It looks like Scarborough will get its subway after all.
In a vote of 24 to 20 on Tuesday night, council narrowly approved a plan for the city to pay its share of a short three-stop extension of the Bloor-Danforth line. The line will run up McCowan from Kennedy to Sheppard, and replace the aging Scarborough RT.
The vote means that the federal, provincial, and municipal governments have all committed to paying for a subway, seemingly putting an end to the convoluted transit debate that has seen council vacillate between competing rail plans for the past three years.
The decision was a major win for Mayor Rob Ford, who has been constant in his push for a Scarborough underground line since being elected in 2010. After the meeting, the mayor said he was “ecstatic.”
“I don’t know if I could do a backflip, but if I could I would,” he said, flanked by Scarborough councillors.
“This is a huge victory for the people from Scarborough,” said Ford. “They’ve been waiting a long, long time for it. And I said I would never give up, and I didn’t give up.”
TTC chair Karen Stintz also praised the vote, claiming that it proved Toronto was finally ready to pay its share of the transit bill.
“We’re building a model now that says that the province and the city and the federal government will work together,” she said, adding that she hoped the three governments would now try to partner on a Downtown Relief Line, the TTC’s number one priority.
But those who opposed the subway plan warned that it was an expensive mistake, and argued that the $1.48-billion LRT council approved last year was a much more cost-effective transit solution for Scarborough.
The Scarborough subway will cost at least $3.56-billion. Of that, the city is on the hook for at least $910 million. The federal government has offered $660 million for it and the province kept its pledge for $1.48 billion (or $1.99 billion adjusted for inflation).
Under the plan approved by council Tuesday, the city will finance its share by taking on debt and paying it off over the course of 30 years through a combination of property tax increases and development charge hikes. Mayor Ford, who generally opposes any tax hikes, had angled for a gentler 1-per-cent property tax increase phased in over four years, but council instead backed the city manager’s recommendation for a greater 1.6-per-cent hike phased in over three years starting in 2014.
In addition to the $910-million sum (which includes $85 million in sunk costs already spent on the scrapped LRT), the city is responsible for a significant number of unknown costs, including the price of cancelling the order for Scarborough LRT light rail vehicles and any overruns associated with building the subway.
The city will also be responsible for the subway’s maintenance costs, estimated at $30 to 40 million a year, as well as its operation. Under the LRT agreement council signed last year, the province would have been responsible for funding the light rail operations and maintenance.
Building the subway extension will also add more riders to the Bloor-Danforth line, requiring the early installation of a $450-million automatic train control system to increase capacity.
With no clear source of funding for the additional subway commitments, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, a fiscal conservative, said he couldn’t support the underground plan.
“This deal is the wrong deal. There are just too many questions,” he said.
“I support subways, but I don’t support self-immolation…That’s what we’re doing here today.”
Councillor Adam Vaughan called the pro-subway vote “beginning of the end of the transit system.”
He argued that TTC operations are already underfunded, and the subway will leave the city with little room to raise taxes to keep up with rising ridership demand on the overburdened network, let alone build much-needed transit lines.
“We’ve put all of our eggs and the chicken in the basket and tossed it out the window,” he said.
The road to Tuesday’s vote has been long and indirect. Ford cancelled the Scarborough LRT when he came into office and attempted to divert its funding to a Sheppard subway. Council revived it in February, 2012 as part of the Transit City resurgance, but in July of this year councillors decided to reverse that decision and go with a subway instead.
At the time, councillors attached several conditions to its approval, including a provincial contribution of $1.8 billion. Because the province only offered $1.48 billion, the issue came back to council this month, where concillors approved it anyway.
Assuming all the funding commitments remain in place, the Scarborough subway is expected to break ground in 2018 or 2019, and be completed by 2023.
