Subway in Scarborough would be a transit mismatch

Never mind that old adage, Not In My Back Yard.

In Scarborough — and now at city hall and Queen’s Park — there’s a new rallying cry that has everyone running for political cover:

Subways In My Back Yard.

Not NIMBY but SIMBY (s.v.p.).

While NIMBYism is based largely on fear, SIMBYism is driven by pure envy. Subway envy.

If Scarborough can’t have a full-fledged subway to call its own, politicians worry their careers will be on the line at election time. That’s why they are taking the route of least resistance, and highest cost, by pandering to Scarborough voters — and passing the buck right back to taxpayers.

Let me put my cards on the table: I love subways. I also revere Nanaimo bars and chocolate ice cream.

But there’s such a thing as having too much of a good thing. Especially if it comes at the expense of other vital needs that make for a balanced and healthy diet.

A subway in Scarborough would be a transit mismatch and a budgetary overreach, getting in the way of what the GTA really needs. That’s why city council and the legislature decided long ago, after extensive debate, that an LRT is a better fit — fiscally and operationally — than a throwaway subway.

The subway-LRT tradeoff holds true at every level:
Contrary to Mayor Rob Ford’s propaganda, a Scarborough LRT wouldn’t chew up any traffic lanes to exacerbate gridlock, because it retraces the overhead route of the aging SRT (Scarborough Rapid Transit);
Despite the sex appeal of a subway, it wouldn’t move at faster speeds than a modern LRT. But it would stop at more stations, serving people who have long depended on the old SRT, in a part of the GTA where population densities don’t merit more expensive subways. Remember the suburban subway mismatch on the Sheppard line to nowhere?
Why do people in Scarborough feel left out, when residents of Leaside are expected to make do with an LRT (the cross-town Eglinton line)?
The myth of seamless subways is misplaced. Yes, extending the subway beyond Kennedy would eliminate the need to transfer; but the new LRT platform would be mere steps away from the Bloor line (an improvement over the clunky SRT), just like the numerous transfer stations on other world-class subways.
Unplugging the LRT would throw $100 million down the drain, perhaps much more. After securing a deal with city hall, the provincial transit agency Metrolinx has already spent $85 million on so-called “sunk costs,” not counting the “tens of millions” more that would be identified in any final accounting.

“Sunk costs” has a special resonance, because it’s the same loaded phrase used by the governing Liberals to explain away their costly pre-election promises to cancel two gas plants in Mississauga and Oakville.

The Liberals claimed “sunk costs” would be within a couple of hundred million dollars. But the knock-on effects, hidden costs and unforeseen clauses have brought the bill to nearly $600 million so far.

The government has taken a lot of heat for its political opportunism — the “seat-saver” plan was to hold on to several Liberal ridings in the 2011 election. But I’ve always argued that there was plenty of guilt to go around — the NIMBY groups that objected to perfectly safe gas-fired power plants in areas zoned industrial; and the opposition parties that indulged in fear-mongering and pandering.

Now fast forward to the subway debate that keeps going around in circles. It’s a rerun of the gas plant boondoggle — with a similarly high admission price (“sunk costs”) and lowbrow political pandering by all parties.

Tory Leader Tim Hudak echoes the Ford vision at every opportunity, insisting that world class cities must settle for nothing less than subways. He doesn’t tell you that other grownup cities benefit greatly from LRTs, nor does he tell you how he’ll pay the higher costs.

I expect better of politicians who know better — notably the city councillors who fought the good fight to keep the Eglinton cross-town line as an LRT.

Yes, it’s poetic justice that Ford has belatedly embraced taxes — although his plan remains far below what’s needed, and relies shamefully on unfunded borrowing. And yes, it’s sweet irony that federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty rushed to meet his tax-and-spend friend Ford over the weekend to discuss extra money from Ottawa. (Would that be the same fearless Flaherty who refused to meet his provincial counterpart, Charles Sousa, after Metrolinx proposed transit tax increases?)

But as my conservative friends like to say, there is only one taxpayer. With municipal elections around the corner, and two byelections underway in the GTA, our politicians are being blinded by tunnel vision. The new Ford tax, and any Flaherty gift, would still be money down the drain.

SIMBYism over realism.

Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Martin Regg Cohn