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Thompson, Duguid to lead provincial task force on Scarborough subway’s benefits

Local residents given chance to weigh in on route of subway extension from Kennedy station

Brad Duguid and Michael Thompson - politicians representing the same area - will lead a provincial task force to “maximize the business return” of the Scarborough subway.

“We need to recognize the job opportunities and economic opportunities that come from building better transit in Scarborough,” Thompson, Toronto’s economic development chairperson, said Monday, Feb. 2.

As residents looked over possible corridors for the proposed Bloor-Danforth subway extension from Kennedy station to Sheppard Avenue at a public meeting, the Scarborough Centre councillor was telling some that Scarborough, which failed to share much of the city’s building boom over the past decade, will soon be growing faster than the downtown.

“This is the area where growth is going to go,” he said.

Thompson’s co-chairperson on the task force, Duguid, said the extension, an idea that survived the latest provincial and municipal elections, is the “missing link” which will let the Scarborough Town Centre area grow much faster and be all it could be.

“We now have stability, the project’s moving forward, and now’s the time for us to maximize the public benefit,” as well as its “business return,” said Duguid, Scarborough Centre MPP and Ontario’s minister of economic development and infrastructure.

Both men were asked to co-chair the group - whose other members haven’t been chosen - by Glen Murray while he was infrastructure minister, a portfolio since handed to Duguid.

Duguid, who is a former Scarborough councillor, confirmed he spoke to Thompson and Mayor John Tory about the task force on Tuesday, Feb. 3.

Scarborough has plenty of vacant industrial buildings and available office space near possible extension routes. Tory last month said ridership projections for the extension (9,000 to 14,000 a day) make the project “barely justifiable,” but added attracting jobs along the future route would improve the numbers.

Thompson said the task force could examine opportunities not just along the subway corridor but in Scarborough in general.

Tory’s SmartTrack surface rail line, the Eglinton Crosstown light-rail line and the Sheppard East LRT would also be built, at least partly, in Scarborough.

“We are ready from the city perspective,” said Thompson, adding, “right now, there’s a lot of work that’s going on” in finding options to promote Scarborough’s development and growth.

Many of the 150-or-so residents attending the Monday meeting at Scarborough Civic Centre, one of two information sessions to start the extension’s long planning process, gazed at nine grey display maps on which blue lines represented possible corridors and yellow splotches areas for possible stations.

The map showing the corridor on McCowan Road got the most attention. An extra station around Eglinton Avenue and Danforth Road - suggested by Scarborough Centre Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker - was not on it, but some attendees suggested it anyway with sticky notes, one calling it a “no brainer.”

Tim Lapsa, city’s transportation planning director, told people they can expect to suggest exact alignments and station locations within a corridor in May or June.

People can also comment on the project through its website, scarboroughsubwayextension.ca

Lapsa said the extension, which may be built by 2023, will have its own stakeholder advisory group, whose first meeting is next week.

There were dissenters Monday who argued the city’s previous plan for a light-rail line to replace the aged Scarborough Rapid Transit should still be considered.

“We are spending so much money for so much less stops (than were on the LRT).” said Steven Lam, a resident of the Scarborough Centre area.

De Baeremaeker, made a deputy mayor by Tory to “champion” the project, defended the subway, saying candidates who ran for mayor supporting the subway last fall got a much larger share of the votes.

“The democratic vote has been taken,” he told Lam, not knowing Lam had also run for mayor and taken an anti-subway stance.

Lam, who only got a few hundred votes, later refused to accept De Baeremaeker’s arguments. “The subway will be a loser. If I have money to develop real estate, I love subways,” he said.

Earlier, Brenda Thompson, a Scarborough transit advocate, had said she still thinks Scarborough would be better off with a light-rail line, but she added the city would be wiser to build a subway along Eglinton “because that’s where you have the ridership.”

SmartTrack, which may run north to south close to the extension, could take riders away from the subway, she added. “I think we have to be aware of where the riders are coming from and where they want to go.”

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