Scarborough subway: Route makes immigrants, students and poor the losers

As with any transit decision, there are winners and losers. In Scarborough, where city council has decided to scrap plans for an LRT and endorse a subway, new immigrants and lower-income residents stand to bear the brunt of the decision.

Demographic data from the 2011 census shows how the seven-stop LRT plan would have run through lower-income neighbourhoods and serviced a greater number of newly arrived immigrants.

The new subway extension, which will take a different route and include only three stops, bypasses two of the four priority neighbourhoods serviced by the proposed LRT and puts stops in low-density, higher-income residential neighbourhoods.

While politicians at all levels of government have endorsed a new subway because it will run faster and eliminate a transfer at Kennedy Station, city planners have argued for an LRT, which in addition to being cheaper would have more stops and reach a greater number of people.

“The proposed extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway would pass through largely stable residential areas,” says a staff report comparing the two projects prepared last week. “Conversely, the LRT line will operate in an established corridor of proven transit demand that is currently being underserved by the at-capacity RT line.”

With low potential for growth around the subway stations, city planners worry that ridership levels will never justify the extra $1 billion to $1.5 billion it would cost.

“Because the subway’s design capacity exceeds 2031 forecast ridership levels, a robust program to attract significant employment growth (and to a lesser extent residential growth) to the Scarborough Centre will be required to increase ridership,” they write.

Meanwhile, 10,000 Centennial College staff and students, whose hopes had been raised an LRT station on their doorstep, will instead be trekking more than 2 kilometres from the new subway to class.

“People are disappointed to hear that the LRT is not going to be coming directly to Centennial College, and the convenience has been taken away. They’re still able to get to the college, but having to connect to a bus adds anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes in additional commute time,” said Rosanna Cavallaro, Centennial’s associate vice president for marketing and communications.

About half of the college population uses public transit, Cavallaro says, “but if there was better public transit, that number would probably go up.”

On the other hand, patients at the Scarborough Hospital will be able to step off the train and right into emergency.

“One of the big issues we’ve had with the hospital was the impact on Scarborough residents that don’t have personal vehicles,” said Pat Sherman, a member of the Friends of the Scarborough Hospital organization.

“The fact that there is going to be high-speed transit with easy access to the hospital is going to be a major benefit to those people,” he said. “Door to door, it’s going to be a lot less difficult to access the health services they need.”

Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Marco Chown Oved