TTC didn't deliberately mislead council with Scarborough transit briefing note: auditor general

City's auditor general Beverly Romeo-Beehler said she found no evidence TTC CEO Andy Byford and his staff deliberately misled council ahead of a July 2016 vote on the Scarborough subway.

Thestar.com
Oct. 13, 2017
By Jennifer Pagliaro

The city's auditor general found no evidence TTC CEO Andy Byford and his staff deliberately misled council with a controversial briefing note that influenced a debate on the Scarborough subway last year.

But her investigation found the briefing note, which cast doubt on whether council could return to a less expensive, fully-funded light rail plan instead, misstated the construction timeline for the LRT - which would significantly impact costs.

That was a key aspect of the briefing note that was successfully pushed by Mayor John Tory and subway advocates on council ahead of a crucial vote in July 2016, a Star analysis showed.

The investigation followed a complaint by a group of concerned residents and transit advocates associated with the activist group TTCriders.

Auditor general Beverly Romeo-Beehler also found the briefing note was not properly disseminated and recommended the TTC develop a protocol and online repository for future briefing notes.

She did not find any evidence of political interference concerning the briefing note.

The investigation did not analyze all the contents of the briefing note, nor was a value-for-money analysis conducted to determine whether the subway is a good use of public funds.

In a statement Friday, Byford said the report "exonerates the TTC and dismisses any suggestion that I or my staff misled council or were compelled to draft a briefing note to fit a political agenda." He acknowledged distribution of briefing notes could be improved.

"The contents of the briefing note, as recounted in the auditor general's report, were based on calculated assumptions made on the information available to staff at the time the note was written - assumptions rooted in interactions with Metrolinx, but also assumptions rooted in years of experience by engineers and project managers working on complex transit projects."

TTC staff prepared the briefing note in June 2016 in anticipation of a July council debate where a motion to return to the LRT plan was expected, the auditor general found.

Council was in the midst of considering whether to move forward with a single-stop extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway line to the Scarborough Town Centre after learning it would cost at least $3.35 billion.

The briefing note was provided by the TTC to the mayor's office and that of Tory-picked TTC chair Councillor Josh Colle. It was never distributed to all councillors.

Significantly, it estimated the cost of a seven-stop LRT had escalated by $1 billion, based on having to wait until construction of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line was completed at Kennedy Station - expected in 2021.

The TTC did not verify that key assumption with the provincial transit agency, Metrolinx, which is in charge of Eglinton Crosstown and was in charge of the original LRT plan.

But after contacting Metrolinx in the course of the investigation, the auditor general found that assumed construction timeline was wrong. Metrolinx told the auditor general's investigators that re-incorporating the LRT into the design of Kennedy station "likely could have been accommodated."

The auditor general wrote "construction would not be delayed until the (Eglinton Crosstown LRT) construction at Kennedy was completed."

In calculating costs, the TTC assumed a 2021 start date and a five to seven year construction period, rather than a shorter period of three to five years, as stated earlier in the note.

Because construction would not have to wait until 2021, the auditor general found costs would have been reduced by as much as $250 million, which does not include cost savings achieved by taking the existing Scarborough RT out of service sooner.

Considering other reductions in how the cost was calculated and additional costs related to the redesign of Kennedy Station, the auditor general concluded the cost estimate for the LRT would have still fallen within an early design phase cost range that is accurate within 30 per cent to plus 50 per cent of the stated cost.

But at that range, the LRT could actually cost $810 million less than estimated in the briefing note - or essentially the originally estimated cost of the LRT, what is $1.5 billion less than the estimated cost of the one-stop subway.

At council earlier this year, top bureaucrat city manager Peter Wallace dismissed the key cost finding in the briefing note saying: "The TTC did do a very quick briefing note to indicate that, but frankly, those costs are not known."

The auditor general wrote the TTC provided "supportable reasons for proceeding as they did" but noted "in hindsight, engaging with Metrolinx may have better informed the calculations." She recommended Byford "provide more clarity in relation to assumptions being relied on when the information is used in briefing notes."

Some misleading aspects of the briefing note were not investigated by the auditor general.

For example, the briefing note referenced the possibility that provincial GO rail expansion plans would conflict with the LRT in the corridor where both lines were planned to run. But Metrolinx confirmed to the Star in 2016 there was no conflict.

Brenda Thompson of Scarborough Transit Action, part of the group that filed the complaint, said they don't fully accept the report, noting a value-for-money analysis was never done.

"The report says it 'may form part of a future audit.' But it should be performed and should be done right away," she said in a statement. "Huge sums of public money have already been spent on this, and the costs are multiplying quickly."