Transit boondoggle unfolding before our eyes
It’s difficult to stomach anything the mayor says on the transit file.

thestar.com
June 24, 2016
By Royson James

How do you trust a mayor who looks you in the eye to say he’s saving you money by backing a new subway that just went up in cost by a billion dollars, or more than 30 per cent?

Do you scream at the prospect of paying $3 billion to extend the subway just one stop?

What do you say to him, considering this boondoggle will cost you and your neighbours $1,300 each in a special levy lasting 30 years?

Do you break down and cry when you recall the $3 billion subway is to replace the aging Scarborough RT that could have been made state-of-the-art, like Vancouver’s Canada Line, for less than $1 billion?

Do you lose it when you remember that the Ontario government offered the full $1.48 billion cost to replace the RT with a brand-new LRT, with seven stops serving three priority neighbourhoods - and also pick up the maintenance and operating costs in perpetuity?

How do you muster the courage to say anything when the mayor admits he backed the subway even though, in his words, the cost estimate was done on a napkin, with no financial study.

Or that he continues to support the subway, at the inflated cost, calling it a bargain.

And it is a bargain, the mayor says, because the original subway plan, with three stops between Kennedy Station and Sheppard Ave., would have cost even more, seeing the costing was flimflam-ery, so, really, you should be thanking the pickpocket for leaving you some change.

And do you just give up when he says he can’t predict if the sun will come up tomorrow - in answer to a question about the possibility the subway’s $1 billion price tag increase will escalate further? ’Cause, you know it is going up; the mayor knows it’s going up; and the very staff report to the mayor already outlines $300 million in costs not yet accounted for in the bargain of a subway the mayor supports without knowing the cost.

Do you think the mayor mad when he goes from news podium to news camera backing a subway extension that will capture only 4,500 new riders. This means each new rider on this one-stop subway will cost you more than $700,000.

How do you trust a mayor who got you in this pickle precisely because he promised voters a fast new surface subway in seven years - knowing it would run so close to the planned subway that each line would cannibalize the other?

And how do you stomach anything he says on this file when, instead of accepting the obvious that he must choose either the subway or his preferred SmartTrack scheme, the mayor insists on SmartTrack. And then he is forced to back the subway to secure the votes of pro-subway Scarborough councillors for his SmartTrack scheme.

How does it make you feel - the obvious political back-scratching at play to prop up dubious projects that are the political calling card of one city council faction or the other?

Do you scream at city staff who work overtime to dress up the mayor’s transit plan and rebrand it as “optimized” when it is clearly compromised?

And do you flagellate when the saving grace of the “optimized” plan - it allows for an LRT extension of the Crosstown out to the U of T campus in Scarborough - is now at risk because the subway cost overrun gobbles up $3.2 billion of the available $3.56 billion in available funding.

What do you think when a staff-generated ridership forecast for the subway jumps suddenly on the eve of 2013 city council’s vote to 14,000 per hour in the peak travel direction, not 9,500? And do you call in the forensic guys when, now that the subway is approved, ridership forecast drops further to 7,300?

Do you throw your shoes at the mayor when he says, with a straight face, that a ridership forecast isn’t the key element critics make it out to be?

How do you keep from going insane when you realize the subway will cost around $18 billion to operate and maintain over the 60-year life cycle - money you didn’t have to spend, if council stuck with the fully-funded LRT plan, maintenance and operating costs included?

And just when you feel the nightmare is over, the city manager says Toronto has some $29 billion in unfunded projects and the city needs new revenue tools.

In the face of such obvious waste on a subway while there is such obvious need all around, what, then, do you do as a citizen who never begrudges a dollar in taxes, but is now being played for a fool?

Why is this scandal not on the front page of every newspaper every day in this city, and the lead item on every newscast every hour until common sense returns to city hall?

Bring in the forensic accountants, the auditors, the investigative reporters, anyone intent on turning the whole contemptible process upside down so the cockroaches are exposed.