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.”