Concerns could derail Lawrence East SmartTrack station

Analysis of whether station is needed, need to remove existing SRT station could be serious hurdles to mayor's plan.

Thestar.com
Oct. 15, 2017
By Jennifer Pagliaro

Mayor John Tory's signature transit project moved a step forward last week when the city took plans for new rail stations under his SmartTrack proposal to public consultations.

At a news conference in Scarborough on Tuesday to mark the launch of the sessions, Tory promised that "transit users in Scarborough will have access to SmartTrack service at two completely new stations... The people of Toronto want that choice. They want that convenience when it comes to their commute."

But despite the mayor's proclamation, uncertainty hangs over at least one of those stops: Lawrence East.

Like all six of the new stops proposed under the mayor's plan, Lawrence East would be a SmartTrack-branded station added to the GO network as part of the province's wider regional express rail expansion program and would be served by GO trains.

As the Star has previously reported, concerns have been raised about why the board of Metrolinx, the provincial agency in charge of GO, approved the $23-million station last June despite analysis that recommended it should not be built.

After a Star investigation uncovered that the ministry of transportation pressured the board into endorsing the stop, the Metrolinx board chair ordered a review of the station to conduct further analysis and determine whether it's warranted.

If the station is found to be justified however, constructing it could pose logistical challenges for Metrolinx and political headaches for the mayor.

The new Lawrence East station would replace an existing stop on the Scarborough RT, a line that Tory promised to keep operational until the city completes the contentious one-stop extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway to the Scarborough Town Centre.

But to build the SmartTrack stop, the SRT may have to be decommissioned. According to a business case Metrolinx commissioned, building the new Lawrence East station "would be contingent on the removal of the existing Scarborough RT system, including the existing Lawrence East SRT station" and SRT tracks.

The report also assumed Metrolinx would have to acquire the SRT station site and use it as a staging area.

Tory has promised SmartTrack stations will be done in the "early 2020s" while the Scarborough subway extension isn't scheduled to open until midway through 2026.

As it stands, meeting Tory's timeline for SmartTrack stations to enter service would require shutting down the SRT before the subway extension opens, which would force transit users to take the bus.

Not needing to tear down the SRT while the subway was being built was a key selling point used by supporters of the Scarborough subway to argue against the alternate proposal of building a seven-stop LRT. Building the LRT would have required closing the SRT.

The city and Metrolinx are in talks to figure out how the SRT might be kept open while Lawrence East station is constructed. But so far the issue remains unresolved.

In an email, Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins said the agency is working with the city to "determine a construction schedule/staging so as to keep the SRT operating during construction," but "no final decisions" have been made.

Don Peat, a spokesperson for the mayor, said Tory "is confident that the city and Metrolinx will work to build this SmartTrack station in a way that keeps the Scarborough RT operational until the Bloor-Danforth subway extension is completed."

Should the station be built, questions still remain about whether Lawrence East would be beneficial to the transit network.

The station location, situated under an overpass on Lawrence Ave. midway between Kennedy Rd. and Midland Ave., is surrounded by largely stable, lowrise residential neighbourhoods to the south as well as several apartment complexes cut off by the hydro corridor. To the north are commercial and industrial uses.

"While there are a number of redevelopment opportunities nearby, the area is poorly situated relative to current and future office, industrial, residential and retail demand," the Metrolinx business case found.

The study projected that by 2031, the area around the station would have a density of 86 people and jobs per hectare. That's far below the threshold that Metrolinx has set as the minimum requirement to justify an express rail station, which is 150 people and jobs per hectare.

The analysis found ridership demand at Lawrence East would be relatively low, and insufficient to offset the number of existing "upstream" passengers who would stop taking GO due to the longer stopping time at the new station. That would result in a net loss of transit use.

A separate report commissioned by Metrolinx ranked all the potential new stations being considered for addition to the GO network and screened each one to determine whether other factors might offset low ridership numbers.

It found that allowing passengers to board at Lawrence East for the same price as a TTC fare would lead to a "small increase" in ridership, but not significant enough to warrant building the stop.

It concluded that while Lawrence East met some important objectives such as serving a nearby low-income neighbourhood, it was less beneficial than other stations being considered for the same line and should not be built for at least another 10 years.

Based on this analysis, the Metrolinx board met behind closed doors in June 2016 and decided not to build Lawrence East. But the Star, through a freedom of information request, found the board reversed that decision under pressure from the ministry of transportation.

The review Metrolinx has ordered won't examine the role political influence played in the approval process at the arm's-length agency. It's expected to be complete by Metrolinx's February board meeting. The agency plans to launch the procurement process for new GO stations in the spring.

Presented with the Metrolinx reports, Tory and the city have countered that a city analysis has shown better results.

When the Star requested that analysis in August, a city spokesperson sent a two-page report, which determined Lawrence East would still cause a net loss in GO ridership, although a smaller one than that projected by the Metrolinx analysis.

On Friday, a city spokesperson said the two-page report was "based on a ridership analysis provided to Metrolinx in the summer of 2016."

The spokesperson said city staff have since conducted additional work that determined the station would have a positive impact on ridership. She could not immediately provide details of what led to the newer projection but said it was based on council scrapping plans for a three-stop Scarborough subway extension in favour of a single-stop option.

Unlike the Metrolinx reports, the city argues that allowing commuters to use a TTC fare would significantly boost ridership at Lawrence East. However, the city and province are currently in negotiations over fare alignment. It is still unclear what SmartTrack GO stations fares will be.

The city's analysis also projected significantly more development for the area around the station.

"We feel the (Metrolinx) analysis relies heavily on the market analysis saying that future demand for new development will be low" and "does not properly reflect the incentive this station will have on future development," the city report said.

However, even at double the growth rate expected by Metrolinx, the city's projection of 95 people and jobs per hectare by 2031 is still well below the threshold set by the provincial agency for an express rail stop.

The city and mayor's office have said the city plans to encourage denser development by enacting supportive land-use policies.

But Shoshanna Saxe, an assistant professor of civil engineering and a member of the University of Toronto's Transportation Research Institute, said there's only so much the government can do. She noted the area has had a rapid transit stop in the SRT station for more than three decades and development remains low.

"Demand is something that the city and the province can try and nudge, they can try and inspire, but if the market isn't there, that's not within the city's control."

Steven Farber, a transportation geographer and assistant professor at U of T, agrees it's difficult to predict how much the area will develop. But he said that's not necessarily an argument against building the new station.

"I think it's way more important to do what's right in terms of providing a high level of service that's accessible from a cost perspective and that gets people moving around the city in a much faster way than what's possible from that part of the city right now."

Peat, the mayor's spokesperson, said "city staff believe there is a strong case for Lawrence East Station" and the stop will be "an important part of the Scarborough transit network plan."