NDP’s Andrea Horwath gets close-up of Scarborough’s transportation woes

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath flags long TTC rides from northeast Scarborough as major issue in Sept. 1 byelection campaign

TheStar.com
Aug. 8, 2016
By Rob Ferguson

There has to be a better way to get downtown from northeast Scarborough, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Monday after a TTC trip of almost two hours while campaigning in the Sept. 1 byelection.

Horwath said it included 40 minutes on a bus from a stop near candidate Neethan Shan’s home before they transferred to the Scarborough RT line and two subway lines.

“It was pretty amazing how long it took us,” she told reporters after emerging from the subway at Queen’s Park, shaking her head at the length of the trip from the hotly contested riding of Scarborough-Rouge River.

“I don’t know how these folks do it day in and day out,” Horwath added. “There needs to be serious improvements to the transit system.”

Their journey began at 9:30 a.m. near the corner of Morningside and McNicoll, where Horwath heard that buses are sometimes too full to get on during rush hour.

Despite 13 years of Liberal government, the riding represented until March by Liberal MPP Bas Balkissoon hasn’t enjoyed much in the way of transit improvements, said Shan.

“We in Scarborough have had enough of being neglected and ignored,” he told reporters. “We are tired of being taken for granted.”

In July, Toronto city council endorsed a one-stop subway extension from Kennedy to the Scarborough Town Centre to replace the aging RT line and rejected a plan to revive a seven-stop light rail line that would serve more residents for less money.

The province has committed money to the subway project and city council has pledged to extend the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, now under construction, to the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, but that line is south of Scarborough-Rouge River.

Meanwhile, Elections Ontario says it will not investigate an NDP complaint that Liberal candidate Piragal Thiru got an “unfair” head start in the campaign by issuing a press release on its official start before Elections Ontario did.

Neither the Election Act nor the Election Finances Act contain provisions on the announcement of an election, Elections Ontario said.

Horwath said she remains concerned that the Liberal campaign had advance notice of the election call by Premier Kathleen Wynne, which could have been anything from a few minutes to a few weeks.

“Our campaign was ready,” said Shan, who had been campaigning for two months in anticipation of a byelection call. “What bothers me … is more about ethics.”

The Liberals blamed the early press release on a campaign staffer who hit the “send” button too soon.

Veteran city councillor Raymond Cho is running for the Progressive Conservatives.