Politicians put transit where it benefits politicians

The Scarborough subway proposal was always on shaky footing. The latest ridership numbers suggest city planners have removed all pretense of objectivity.

Thestar.com
June 1, 2016
By Royson James

Imagine a jury reaching a verdict in a high-profile murder trial right after the Crown’s opening statement; and before the evidence was presented.

That’s what you have in the farce that passes for transportation planning in Toronto. Politicians vote to put projects where they best benefit politicians. And once the pre-emptive verdict’s in, city staff abandon impartiality before a single witness is called.

And the mayor-judge, planners-lawyers and the entire political machinery-judicial system conspire to present data and “evidence” in such a way as to buttress the contemptible designs of their political masters.

Wish that were all cynicism. As Exhibit A, consider the contaminated evidence, witness collusion, false positive tests, and contortions bordering on fabrications used to prop up the proposition of this subway extension to Scarborough.

Many citizens willingly pay increased taxes for just about any transit project. (Even the unwilling are forced to pay a levy for the next 30 years to finance the Scarborough extension.) All they ask is the transit projects go where they are needed, at the scale they are needed, as soon as they are needed.

The Scarborough subway proposal was always on shaky footing. Latest ridership numbers, quietly released at a public meeting Tuesday night, suggest that city planners have removed all pretense of objectivity.

The sentiment is this: we are building this no matter what the numbers say, because the politicians promised it and too much political capital is riding on the outcome. City staff have gone as far as to downplay the importance of ridership as an indicator of where transit is needed.

Glenn DeBaeremaeker, the voluminous, garrulous, easy-talking city councillor from the burbs, didn’t disappoint Tuesday night when confronted with the disastrous ridership numbers.

All he had to do is point to a long list of subway stops where ridership numbers are low. “Scarborough residents need the same access to a subway system that everybody else has,” DeBaeremaeker said, in studied persistence.

The one-stop subway extension from Kennedy to the Scarborough Town Centre will carry 7,300 people in the peak hour - an embarrassingly low number compared to capacity of more than 30,000.

Worse, it underscores how the projections change, fluctuate, are manipulated or massaged to fit the “verdict.”

Queen’s Park approved complete funding for a LRT line to replace the RT. Ridership projections were 8,000.

But Rob Ford came along with a “subways” verdict and more-friendly projections pushed ridership to 9,500. So, council did an about face in May 2013.

Confused, the province asked the city to clarify its position. Toronto was about to throw away $1.4 billion when, even at 9,500 riders, a subway is not justified.

Within two months new ridership projections emerged, topping at 14,000 during the peak, and council voted “subways.”

Last year, new mayor and new council voted to continue the project, despite persistent requests from Councillor Josh Matlow who did not believe the jump in ridership projections to be “accurate, and reliable.”

There was something to Matlow’s skepticism. Real evidence called on Tuesday, in the form of up-to-date figures from the U of T regional travel demand modelling centre, shows the ridership at 7,300.

That’s lower than even the original projections; halved the steroidal estimates released in time for the first subway vote; and half what the LRT can carry (the LRT that cost Toronto taxpayers nothing in extra levy); and nowhere near subway capacity.

But it matters not. The verdict’s already in.

Meanwhile, as constituents grow restless over this effrontery, the mayor and his new-found buddies in the Wynne government, held a news conference to announce that Queen’s Park is going to help fund necessary studies on the downtown relief line.

It’s part of what the kids in the twitterverse call “decision-based evidence making.” Verdict. Then, fake trial.