New light rail vehicles will travel down Leslie Street to a storage facility at Lakeshore Boulevard and Leslie, Toronto Council decided Wednesday evening.
Only three councillors - Case Ootes, Rob Ford and Doug Holyday - voted against approving the Leslie Street route. The route will mean that about 200 empty light rail vehicles will travel between Queen and Lakeshore early in the morning and late at night, to the new storage facility on the southeast corner of Leslie and Lakeshore.The vehicles will run past 177 homes according to the Toronto Transit Commission - several hundred more according to residents on the street, many of whom have made it clear they wanted the service route along another route further to the east.But according to TTC staff at Wednesday's council meeting, that route, which would go through the existing Russell car barns, along Eastern, and down Knox Avenue, would present too many difficulties.It would displace existing TTC plans for the Russell site when the new cars come in, would interfere with Canada Post's operations on Russell and would cut through the Martin Goodman Trail, creating bicycle safety problems.Local Toronto Danforth Councillor Paula Fletcher tried to convince council to go east anyway."Really this is a busy traffic corridor," she said. "There are only 17 houses on the Knox route - there are 177 homes on Leslie. Going up from Lakeshore, 140 feet later there is a light. The light rail vehicles are 90 feet long. I think this is an issue for traffic on Leslie Street. The other route from Queen is shorter and less expensive."Fletcher voted for the Leslie Street route after council approved TTC vice chair Joe Mihevc's motion to provide mitigation to the community.Mihevc said Leslie was the only place to go. But he admitted that residents on Leslie Street would be taking a hit."Hopefully, the local community can get something out of this," he said. "I think we owe that community and we need to figure out what to do for it."Sandra Bussin, who represents the Beaches-East York side of Leslie Street, also supported the Leslie option. But she moved a motion to assist homeowners who might be affected by noise with certain renovations.But she pointed out that the community near the Russell car barns will already be heavily impacted by changes to that site, when the new facility is in place at Lakeshore."That community is truly being heavily impacted by this decision," she said. The plan was finally approved - to the chagrin of not just homeowners. Nick Javor, senior vice president of Tim Hortons, was in the gallery during the debate. He said that the light rail vehicles would create problems for the popular donut and coffee shop on the northwest corner of Leslie and Lakeshore."We're an early morning business - if the area is congested because of these light rail vehicles, people will avoid it," he said. "We'll have to wait and see - see how the community responds. We're at the mercy of the community's comfort zone and driving patterns. The question is how bad it will be. We know it will be bad."