The TTC board is set to torpedo the province’s subway plan next week.
On Wednesday morning, TTC chair Karen Stintz told reporters at Queen’s Park that at its September 24 25 board meeting, the commission will debate a report highlighting cost issues and “serious technical flaws” with Transportation Minister Glen Murray’s preferred subway option.
At a press conference held by opposition leader Tim Hudak, Stintz said she hoped the commission report would finally put an end to the roiling controversy over transit for the eastern suburb.
“When the TTC tables its report and outlines in detail the technical flaws and the financial shortfalls of this plan, I think it will become obvious to my colleagues, to Queen’s Park, and to all parties, that there’s only one feasible plan,” Stintz said.
In stead of Murray’s proposal, the TTC chair is backing the four-stop extension of the Bloor-Danforth line council voted for in July. It would go all the way to Sheppard, where it would link up with a planned LRT line. Murray’s plan, released at a surprise press conference two weeks ago, is shorter, and would run only as far as the Scarborough Town Centre along the current route of the Scarborough RT.
Hudak told reporters that he supports council’s plan, and described Murray’s proposed line as a “billion dollar boondoggle.” He accused the Liberals of misleading voters in last month’s Scarborough-Guildwood by-election, which they won on a pro-subway platform.
“The Liberals actually said in the by-election, they’re going to go [with] the city plan,” he said. “Now a few weeks later they flip flop and say they’re going to build a subway nobody wants?”
Stintz had been expected to appear with Hudak at the press conference, but instead she avoided a potentially incendiary photo op by lingering behind the pack of reporters, and taking to the microphone only after he had headed for the legislature doors.
Nevertheless, her public link with the opposition leader is the clearest indication yet of how divided the provincial government and TTC are over the Scarborough subway issue.
TTC spokesperson Brad Ross would not reveal details of the report that will go before the board next week. He said it’s still being worked on by the transit authority’s expansion department and won’t be released until Monday at the earliest.
But it’s likely to depict Murray’s proposed alignment as highly problematic and potentially costly. TTC CEO Andy Byford has publicly expressed doubts about whether Murray’s line is feasible because subways may not be able to handle the tight curves of the RT route he wants to run them along. Murray’s option would also require a major redesign of Kennedy Station, which could be expensive and risk hindering completion of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.
Although the minister has made clear he’s determined to forge ahead with the province’s shorter subway, the government would need substantial cooperation from the commission to build it. If the TTC board decides to formally vote it down next week, it could kill the plan off, for all practical purposes.
That would not necessarily guarantee that Stintz’s line would be built, however. Her longer extension would cost at least $2.8 billion, and require $660 million in federal funding as well as $1.8 billion from the province.
According to the July vote, council’s approval of the longer subway is also contingent on several conditions, including a funding commitment from both upper levels of government by September 30 and a guarantee that the city would not have to pay out of pocket for any additional costs.
On Wednesday, Stintz said that those conditions “are in the process of being met.”
