Dream of Scarborough subway truly dead

Dream of Scarborough subway truly dead. Construction has begun at Sheppard and Progress Ave. for the Sheppard LRT. Staff photo/DAN PEARCE

The Sheppard East Light-Rail Transit line, is expected to break ground in a few weeks, the first part of a city-wide light-rail network plan Scarborough councillors have accepted.

Those councillors concede whatever happens with the obsolete Scarborough Rapid Transit line from Kennedy to McCowan, it will stay mostly on the surface.

And that on Sheppard East, the foreseeable future is light rail.

But there are still some people - in Agincourt, in West Hill - confronted with a planned or proposed LRT in their neighbourhoods, who say a subway is what they actually deserve.

"Scarborough is being sold short," Patricia Sinclair, part of a group calling itself Save Our Sheppard, declared this week. "None of the politicians are standing up for us."

Despite everything stacked against a success - the environmental study already approved, funding given, contracts signed, work begun - Sinclair argued residents and business owners can stop the Sheppard East project if they object loudly enough.

More than that, they believe a Sheppard Subway extension into Scarborough Town Centre is something they can have instead.

"We have always been the priority for subways," said Sinclair, who will try to make these views known at a Scarborough Community Council meeting Tuesday.

The group circulates the words of K. Alan Fenton, who alleges the city's LRT plan is an expensive mistake, rooted in "the anti-automobile ideology of the activist left," because light-rail may at some points leave less room for cars.

The TTC says ridership on Sheppard East two decades from now, even if double what is projected, is far short of what would justify a subway or pay to keep it running, but Sinclair counters the commission is saying whatever serves its purposes.

"They feed us garbage because they're only backing up their version of what they want to do."

TTC Chairperson Adam Giambrone said different parts of the city fought each other for years to get the next subway, and failed to get anything.

"We'd all like to see subways," he said, but they cost five to six times what an LRT route does - which is unaffordable for the city - and would take twice as long to build.

Now that work on Sheppard East has started, the question is irrelevant, Giambrone suggested. "The train, so to speak, has left the station."

Scarborough-Rouge River Councillor Chin Lee, who represents residents along part of the route, agreed the city and the province aren't going to spring for a subway.

"The LRT is not as good as a subway, I agree, but it's also much cheaper," he said. "A lot more people are looking forward to it than are opposing it."

Lee also said he sees no "war on the car" being directed from downtown.

"If we want to fight for the subway it will take a good 30, 40 years. People have to be realistic," he added.

- Mike Adler