Some SmartTrack stations could lower transit use and create more drivers, Metrolinx report says
Findings appear to undermine Mayor John Tory's key transit proposal and raise questions about council’s plan for a network in Scarborough.

thestar.com
By BEN SPURR
March 16, 2017

Some new stations planned as part of Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack project have so little anticipated demand that they could cause a drop in public transit ridership, leading to millions more kilometres driven on the region’s roads, according to new government reports.

The initial business cases were published Thursday by Metrolinx, the provincially-owned organization responsible for transit planning in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and could undermine the case for SmartTrack while raising fresh questions about council’s plans for a transit network in Scarborough.

In an email, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office dismissed the reports as “year-old information,” most of which had “already been released in various forms through city and Metrolinx reports.”

“SmartTrack will connect people to opportunity. It is about getting Toronto residents where they're going on the rail corridors that already run through the city and were, until this plan, underutilized,” wrote Don Peat.

A city spokesperson said the Metrolinx studies of individual stations were “helpful” but “do not fully capture” the benefits of the “network approach” that the city is taking towards transit planning.

The reports were part of a wider review of potential new stations to be added to the GO network under Metrolinx’s regional express rail (RER) initiative. As part of RER, the SmartTrack plan would add up to six new stations on GO lines within Toronto.

The reports determined that the three SmartTrack stations planned for outside the downtown core would have low or even negative ridership.

By 2031, the proposed stop on the Stouffville GO line at Lawrence Ave. East would attract 495 new passengers during the morning peak period. That works out to 1,405 new riders per day.

But because the addition of the station would increase travel times on the Stouffville line, some GO passengers would opt not to take transit, leading to a net loss of almost 490 riders per day.

Some of the lost riders would drive instead, which over 60 years would lead to 181.7 million additional kilometres of car travel in the region.

A second station on the Stouffville corridor at Finch Ave. East, would have a small net loss of passengers, while a proposed stop on the Kitchener line at St. Clair Ave. West would lead to a “modest’ ridership increase of only 460 net new riders a day by 2031.

The combined effect of the three stations, which would cost about $160 million to build and maintain, would be to add more than 350 million kilometres of car travel to the region over 60 years.

Councillor Gord Perks said that the reports show that SmartTrack isn’t viable.

“The evidence we have now is that this actually makes transit in the city of Toronto worse,” said Perks, who represents Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park and is a vocal critic of the mayor.

“We should be spending public money to move more people on transit, not spending public money to move fewer.”

The Lawrence SmartTrack station could also have implications for other Scarborough transit plans. The station is supposed to replace an existing stop on the five-stopScarborough RT line, which council has voted to replace with a $3.35-billion, one-stop subway extension to the Scarborough Town Centre.

The business case found that among Lawrence station’s “limited benefits” would be helping to offset the loss of transit as a result of the removal of Scarborough RT.

But it determined that the surrounding area’s “low employment and population densities and limited real estate market demand may not support RER service at this time.” According to the analysis, “virtually no passengers” would get off at the station during the morning rush hour.

If the Lawrence station were removed from the SmartTrack plan, it would be a blow to current transit plans in the suburb. The subway extension, which was originally supposed to have three stops, has already been whittled down to a single station.

Rising costs of the subway project have also eaten up funds for a $1.6 billion, 17-stop extension of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT that would run to the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus. The city is asking the province and federal government to pay for the line, but neither government has committed any funding.

Critics say that the money being spent on the subway project would be better used building a network of LRT lines in Scarborough that would include the Eglinton extension and a previously cancelled seven-stop light rile line along the current route of the Scarborough RT.

“Torontonians who live in Scarborough have been sold a bill of goods,” Perks said.

Peat suggested the mayor would stick by the existing plans. “The SmartTrack stations in Scarborough along with the subway extension and the Eglinton East LRT form a network that help address local transit and long-distance travel needs in that area,” he said.

Importantly, the Metrolinx reports assumed that passengers would be charged GO transit fares to board at SmartTrack stations. The documents noted that ridership might increase if they were charged TTC fares, which are lower.

The mayor has pledged that SmartTrack would operate with TTC fares, but the province hasn’t confirmed that will be the case.

In an email, Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins said the agency is “working towards a regionwide fare strategy” but she didn’t say how much service at SmartTrack stations would cost.

The three new SmartTrack-branded stations planned closer to downtown - at Liberty Village, Gerrard St. East and Pape Ave., and east of the Don Valley - all had more positive ridership projections.

The Liberty Village stop, which would be at King St. West and Atlantic Ave., would add more than 112 million riders to the GO network over 60 years, while a station at Gerrard would add 74.4 million.

Ridership for the third station would vary depending on its exact location. There are three sites on the Stouffville line under consideration: the Unilever site, the Don Yard, and between Queen St. East and Eastern Ave. The Don Yard had the highest projected ridership of 59.8 million new riders.

SmartTrack was the central plank of the mayor’s 2014 election campaign, and Tory pitched it as a fast and cost-effective way to increase public transit.

Since his election, it has been pared down from a plan with 13 new stops to one with just six. A heavy rail spur to Pearson Airport was scrapped because it was deemed technically unfeasible, and replaced with a western extension of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.

Last November council approved an agreement with the province that committed the city to paying the entirety of the $3.7-billion SmartTrack capital costs. Key issues that will influence how SmartTrack stations perform, such as fare levels, weren’t included in the deal.

Some councillors argued that the city needed more time to gather details about SmartTrack before committing to paying for it, but the province demanded an answer by Nov. 30.

The Metrolinx reports estimated that cost of building and maintaining the six proposed SmartTrack stations would be between about $560 million and $690 million, depending on the location of the downtown east stop.