Jury’s still out on subway’s impact on immigrants
Mayor John Tory's suggestion that Scarborough subway opponents are giving short shrift to the poor and newcomers isn't borne out by the city’s own studies.

thestar.com
June 28, 2016
By Ben Spurr

In an effort to win over hearts and minds for the controversial Scarborough subway extension, Mayor John Tory has suggested that a major benefit of the project would be its ability to deliver transit to underserved immigrant communities.

But the city's own analysis shows the $3.2-billion, one-stop subway would directly serve only a small number of residents in disadvantaged neigbourhoods that have high populations of newcomers.

In an op-ed published by thestar.com and by the Toronto Star on Tuesday, Tory laid out his case for extending the Bloor-Danforth line 6 km to the Scarborough Town Centre.

Tory wrote that the subway would “promote social equity,” and charged that “many of the subway’s loudest critics do not live or work in Scarborough, where more than half the population is born outside of Canada. When they say this is too much to spend on a subway, the inference seems to be that it’s too much to spend on this part of the city.”

Tory told reporters Tuesday his column had been “mischaracterized,” but the statement provoked an angry backlash from some of the mayor’s colleagues. Councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul’s), who opposes the subway plan, accused Tory of trying to “smear” the project’s critics “as not caring about immigrants.”

Providing disadvantaged communities with better transit access was one of the measurements city staff used to evaluate transit projects in a major report released last week.

City planners determined the Scarborough subway “would directly serve very few” disadvantaged residents, which they defined as people living in Neighbourhood Improvement Areas - designated areas that are economically marginalized and often have high immigrant populations.

The proposed one-stop subway extension running along McCowan Ave. would bring only 1,700 additional residents of NIAs within walking distance of a transit station, the report found.

Of all the alignments considered for the extension, the one being backed by the mayor and chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat would serve the fewest additional NIA residents. A proposal for a three-stop line along McCowan, which the city abandoned in January, would have served 3,100 additional NIA residents. One-stop alignments along Midland Ave. and the current Scarborough RT corridor would have served 2,800.

Councillor Gord Perks argued that the seven-stop LRT line council scrapped in 2013 and replaced with the subway extension would have better served disadvantaged parts of Scarborough. The LRT, originally priced at $1.48 billion, proposed stops in three areas designed as priority neighbourhoods at the time.

Perks said the LRT, still favoured by some councillors, was specifically designed to bring transit to underserved areas as part of the Transit City plan.

“The difference here is that nobody ever designed the proposal to build the Scarborough subway to Scarborough Centre . . . to serve marginalized communities. It’s just an argument that got grafted on at the end when other arguments were failing,” Perks said.

Asked Tuesday whether the subway extension was the best way to promote social equity in Scarborough, Tory stressed that he was putting forward the extension as part of a package that included an eastward extension of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and a SmartTrack station at Lawrence Ave. East.

“Those three taken together represent a significant investment, yes, but also a significant opportunity to do the most for people,” Tory said.

Tory noted the 17-stop, $1.7-billion Eglinton East LRT would serve several NIAs as well as the University of Toronto Scarborough campus.

In last week’s transit report, city staff determined the Eglinton East LRT would put stations within walking distance of almost 26,000 residents of five NIAs - West Hill, Morningside, Scarborough Village, Eglinton East, and Kennedy Park - where immigrants make up as much as 60 per cent of the population. The LRT would also increase the number of jobs accessible to NIA residents by 4,200.

“East Scarborough is an area that has been extremely underserved in many areas, particularly in transit. The Eglinton Crosstown East LRT will be monumental in addressing the needs of Scarborough residents which have been historically ignored,” Sitharsana Srithas, vice-president (external) for the University of Toronto Scarborough students' union, told Tory’s executive committee on Tuesday.

But while Tory has promised to build the Eglinton light rail line, the project has been in limbo since it was revealed earlier this month that the price of the Scarborough subway had jumped by more than $1 billion. The cost for both the subway and the LRT is now roughly $4.9 billion, about $1.3 billiongreater than the $3.56 billion that had been set aside by the provincial, federal and city governments to build the entire Scarborough network.

With the subway extension eating up all but $360 million of the available money, how the city would pay for the Eglinton East LRT isn’t clear. Tory has promised to hire a private consultant to find ways to reduce the subway extension’s cost to fit both projects within the funding envelope.

On Tuesday, the mayor described the Eglinton East LRT as “partially funded,” and reiterated his pledge to build the entire Scarborough network.

“We’ve got a very substantial down payment available (for the LRT) even after the increased cost of the Scarborough subway, and I intend to go out and find the rest of that money and get it done,” Tory said.

While serving NIAs was the primary measurement planners used in the report to evaluate transit projects’ equity impact, Keesmaat stressed that the subway would have other benefits for disadvantaged residents.

“Access to employment is a critical part of lifting people out of poverty,” Keesmaat said, adding that “the express subway is a critical component” of creating a new urban centre in Scarborough.

Last week’s report predicted that the subway extension would generate approximately 130,000 square metres of transit-oriented employment development within 500 metres of its single stop.

With files from Jennifer Pagliaro

A POINT-FOR-POINT COMPARISON

Scarborough subway extension

Ridership estimates: 31,000 per day by 2031

Cost estimates: $2.9 billion, plus roughly $300 million for extending the life of the Scarborough RT, and then decommissioning it

Number of stations: One

Length of line: 6.2 km

Residents of neighbourhood improvement areas served: 1,700

Funding: Portion of $3.56 billion already committed by federal, provincial and city governments

Eglinton East LRT

Ridership estimates: 37,600 per day by 2031

Cost estimates: $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion

Number of stations: Up to 17

Length of line: 10.5 km

Residents of neighbourhood improvement areas served: 25,900

Funding: Unfunded