Councillor reconsiders LRV site.
Sandra Bussin, who represents Ward 32, is reconsidering a decision to put a new light rail vehicle storage facility at Ashbridges Bay.
A local councillor wants to reconsider the decision to put a new light rail vehicle storage facility at Ashbridges Bay - and use the lands owned by the former Toronto Film Studios on Eastern Avenue instead.
"The TTC is more logical in that location," said Sandra Bussin, who represents Ward 32, and the south-eastern corner of Leslie Street and Lake Shore Boulevard East where the TTC is planning to build a new $345 million facility to maintain and store new light rail vehicles coming online in 2012.
Bussin had grudgingly supported locating the light rail facility there last year, as council and the TTC considered a number of sites in east end Toronto.
At the time, the TTC was considering several sites, having narrowed it down to two. One, on Eastern Avenue just west of Leslie Street, was the site of the former Toronto Film Studios.
The community there had recently won a long fight at the Ontario Municipal Board to prevent the site from being converted into a SmartCentres retail complex, and were opposed to now turning the film studio into a maintenance facility.
The site at Leslie Street and Lake Shore Boulevard, on a corner of land adjacent to the Ashbridges Bay Sewage Treatment Plant, was the other option - and the one supported by council at the time.
But as the TTC's plans for the site are firming up, so too, said Bussin, are the problems in locating the facility there.
"I said from the beginning that Leslie Street is extremely busy and to introduce more tracks - the movement of vehicles through there is going to prove over time to be very problematic. So I've asked the mayor to reconsider."
Bussin said the film community's desire to maintain the Toronto Film Studios as a film production site was "a pipe dream", and the city should just purchase the land and build the structure there, running cars directly up Pape Avenue to Queen Street, rather than Leslie Street.
Her skepticism is shared by Paula Fletcher, who represents Ward 30 on council.
In a letter to the Toronto Transit Commission's General Manager Gary Webster and its Chair Adam Giambrone, Fletcher clearly outlined her various concerns, which include "extreme" noise and the lowering of property values around the facility and the connecting route to Queen Street East.
Fletcher said during a phone interview that she feels the TTC hasn't fully considered the implications of its plan to route streetcars on Leslie Street from Queen Street East to the new facility and back.
"I want them to look at something that does not run up such a busy street. The TTC has seriously underestimated the number of residents and the level of traffic on Leslie Street with the businesses," she said.
Alternatively, Fletcher said she'd like the streetcar route to the facility to cut through 'employment areas' east of Leslie Street near the TTC's Connaught Yard.
"I don't know why that route wasn't seriously considered."
Fletcher also expressed her unease with the physical impacts of the facility on aesthetics of the Leslie Street and Lake Shore Boulevard area.
"I'm quite concerned as well that the design they have and the number of cars they have on that site will seriously compromise Leslie Street as a gateway to the waterfront," she said, adding the TTC has removed any plans to 'green' that area.
Noting that residents would benefit from the city's 204 new low-floor streetcars, Fletcher underlined the community must be consulted before any decisions are made pertaining to the local LRV facility and the streetcar route to reach it.
"While we are in love with improved transit, we would really like a good healthy respect from the TTC. This is a very knowledgeable, active and educated community," she said.
TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster said the commission would be coming forward with a more detailed report to the community at the Thursday, April 8 community meeting - and that would include analyses of alternate routes.
But he said that moving the facility to Eastern Avenue at this date would create an unacceptable delay.
"This whole project has been through council - there was council support for the Ashbrdiges Bay site," he said. "I think the sensitivity is indeed about the access on Leslie Street. There is a public meeting and we've agreed to assess Leslie and report out publicly. But we don't see going back and revisiting the Eastern site. We've been through that... We would lose two years if this got undone."
Webster pointed out the city has already gone so far as to purchase access to the land in a wide-ranging legal settlement with the Toronto Port Authority. And he said the lands the TTC needed on Eastern would need to be assembled.
A public consultation on the proposed route for streetcars travelling from Queen Street East to the yet-to-be-built Ashbridges Bay light rail vehicle (LRV) maintenance and storage facility is set to take place on Thursday, April 8 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the EMS Academy, 895 Eastern Ave. All are welcome to attend. Call Lito Romano at 416-397-8699, email lito.romano@ttc.ca, or visit http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/LRV for more information about the project.
-With Files from Joanna Lavoie