On Sheppard Avenue East, it's deja vu for hundreds of local businesses who painstakingly prepared over three years for construction of a light-rail line at their front doors, only to see it disappear.
Now, suddenly, the Sheppard East LRT from Don Mills Station to Morningside Avenue is possible again after a Toronto Council vote this week overwhelmed Mayor Rob Ford's plans to build a Sheppard Subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre instead.
And the Sheppard East Village Business Improvement Area will be part of an expert panel that must determine by March 21 the "most effective means" of delivering rapid transit to the area with the money available.
Members of the BIA, which collects dues from 530 businesses from Midland Avenue to Markham Road, had gotten more comfortable with the LRT plan before Ford was elected in 2010 and immediately declared it dead.
The TTC and Metrolinx had worked closely with the merchants to streamline construction and avoid mistakes from past surface rail projects.
"We thought those questions had been answered," Ernie McCullough, the BIA's executive director, said Thursday, Feb. 9.
"People could at least accept (the plan), where at the start we were opposed."â?¨Still, there was a range of reaction when Ford announced the LRT wouldn't be built.
Some BIA members "were happy because it sounded like there wasn't going to be any construction," McCullough said, adding others were disappointed after looking forward to around $10 million in street furniture, sidewalks and other improvements the light-rail line would have brought.
While Ford's supporters tried to engineer funds for a subway extension, talk in Sheppard East Village about rapid transit quieted down. There seemed to be a lack of solid information on the new project, McCullough recalled. "I didn't see any informed debate about this."
Some merchants thought the subway extension would benefit them even though it was to turn south before Sheppard reached Midland.
If it isn't feasible, McCullough said, "somebody better figure that out so we can all move on."
The merchants, under the plan voted on this week gain another benefit: The Scarborough Rapid Transit line, instead of dead-ending at Scarborough Town Centre as in Ford's plan would continue as an LRT to meet Sheppard at Markham, forming a loop.
Scarborough-Rouge River Councillor Chin Lee is a vice chair of the BIA and voted with TTC Commission Karen Stintz to support her plan, as did another councillor along the proposed LRT route, Raymond Cho.
A third councillor, Ron Moeser, was absent from the vote because of a medical issue but has said he also favours reviving the Sheppard East LRT.
Scarborough-Agincourt Councillor Norm Kelly, however, supports the mayor's subway plans and said council did not have the information it needed to make the right decision during this week's debate because experts from Metrolinx and planning firms weren't invited to speak.
"It wasn't a fair fight," a disappointed Kelly said, maintaining "very strong supporters of the previous administration" at council "saw an opening" and exploited it to derail the mayor's transit agenda.
Stintz, instead of calling a special council meeting, should have gone to the commission first with her doubts about the subway plan, he said.
"We could have reviewed everything. In the end, you might have had the same results," Kelly said, though he and other TTC commissioners had recently voted down a motion from Stintz asking TTC staff to report on options for the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT line.
He added he had no faith the panel, with Metrolinx and TTC officials, will be impartial.
The group includes University of Toronto professor Eric Miller, and former Toronto mayor David Crombie.
Kelly suggested he still had hopes a report by Gordon Chong, due for release at Ford's executive committee next week, may be able to convince the province to support the subway option for Sheppard, noting the LRT plan still "has to run the gauntlet of provincial politics."
Kelly also urged opponents of surface LRT lines to make their opinions known.
Glenn De Baeremaeker, the third Scarborough councillor to vote with Stintz, said the plan council approved will provide greater service to greater numbers of people in Scarborough than the mayor's plan.
De Baeremaeker bristled at the name-calling directed at Stintz and Scarborough councillors siding with her on the vote, especially the suggestion they had "sold out Scarborough."
"If you live north of the 401 you should be clapping today," said De Baeremaeker, adding drivers who lose some left turns from side streets should see taking 40,000 more vehicles a day off Scarborough roads - his estimate of the added benefits of the LRTs - as a good exchange for a little inconvenience.
Ford hasn't told anyone how he'd pay for a subway, and has shot down ideas - a parking tax. a vehicle registration tax, road tolls - that could make up the billions of extra dollars required, De Baeremaeker said.
"I would like a subway. We all want a subway. But the province has only given us $8.4 billion. How do you spend it?" he added.