This post was written by Scarborough Committee member Shaun Cleaver.
In today's Toronto Star, Professor Margaret Kohn has written an opinion piece that a subway is only "fair" for Scarborough.
We agree with much of what Professor Kohn has written. We especially agree with this statement:
"Low-income people who cannot afford car ownership are priced out of walkable, transit-oriented neighbourhoods and forced to live in less dense, peripheral areas."
Yes. Exactly. So let's intensify the peripheral areas in ways that they stay affordable. Let's increase transit to these areas, which is precisely why the Scarborough Subway Extension is a bad investment. We shouldn't keep the periphery in a transit-hostile, low-density form, while expecting people in high-density areas to pay for it. We shouldn't watch overcrowded transit vehicles strand riders, with no other options, in the cold. We shouldn't frame transit as a war between "Scarborough" and "downtown." Nobody wins a war, and the biggest loser of this fight has been people who want to get around by transit.