By July 9, staff had a working draft of their report to council. A copy obtained by the Star shows that language warning against the perils of a switch to a subway was toned done significantly in the final report.
For example, a line that said: "At present, there is insufficient information available at this early stage on the net cost of maintaining and operating a proposed extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway" was removed entirely.
There were also several additions to the final report.
An entire section on ridership projections, focusing on the 14,000 figure, was added.
Importantly, this line was included in summary: "TTC staff have identified that either an LRT or subway can effectively serve the Scarborough RT transit corridor. Each technology option offers distinct advantages."
On July 10, Keesmaat emailed Pennachetti with the subject "Subway vs LRT" to offer more evidence of the LRT's benefits.
"Are you aware that the LRT travels through 3 priority neighbourhoods and the subway travels through one?"
"Are you aware that this will double the city's debt — the cost is 3 billion?"
Pennachetti appears to not have responded by email.
The next day, Keesmaat emailed Councillor Josh Matlow's senior policy adviser, Andrew Athanasiu, who had asked for information to support an opinion piece he was drafting to send to the Toronto Star. Matlow had been strongly opposed to the push for a subway from the beginning.
Keesmaat told him they were still working on the report to council, due the next day, and that it had been a "significant negotiation around the table." She wanted to know what kind of material he needed.
Athanasiu responded that the piece had already been submitted. "That's fine," he said. "There's an embarrassment of riches as to why this is a bad idea."
"It is an embarrassment of riches," Keesmaat replied. "It is a significant overbuilding of the needed infrastructure."
She also noted the cost for a subway, as spelled out in the report, would be "mind boggling" — much higher than anticipated.
"Has this changed Joe P's mind at all?" Athanasiu asked, inquiring about the city manager.
Keesmaat didn't answer that question in her subsequent email.
Emails also show that in July staff were monitoring Keesmaat's tweets and printing them out for her superior, Livey, to see.
In an email this week, Livey said: "Since I did not access Twitter regularly, I asked staff to print them for me. Staff regularly receive media and social media updates/clippings from strategic communications to help better inform us of the coverage on topics of high interest to the public."
When the report was finalized, the recommendations were not at all what Keesmaat had earlier envisioned.
Instead, it gave council a choice, presenting the subway and the LRT as potential equals, with some caveats. In doing so, staff told council to choose instead of making a firm recommendation as the original outline had done.
The 45-member council convened on July 16 to discuss the report and make a choice.
It wasn't even close. Council voted instead to build a subway, 28-16 (one councillor was absent).
The subway was again confirmed in a subsequent vote in October, which approved a tax increase to help cover the more than billion-dollar increase in costs. In the years that followed, Keesmaat worked to create a compromise that Mayor John Tory, who campaigned on building the subway, and his allies could support.
It involved reducing the number of stops from three to one and pitching that the savings could be used to build an extension of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT to the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus.
In presenting the idea she argued an "express" subway — a favoured term of Tory's — could be beneficial in the context of a network plan.
But since that plan was unveiled, mounting costs related to the subway have meant the funds already set aside may not even cover the cost of the subway, let alone the LRT.
And a recently published study on the subway estimates that in 2055, trains will still be two-thirds empty at rush hour — which would mean steep costs for the city to operate it.
Announcing she'll decamp from her post at the end of September this year, Keesmaat will be long gone before any of it is hashed out at council and construction green-lighted.
At that July debate, Matlow, fighting to keep the LRT plan in place, asked Keesmaat to address the bigger question directly, out in the open. Which would be better for the city?
Keesmaat, on her feet in the cavernous council chamber, tried to make it clear.
"Based on the criteria that we have for great city-building, looking at economic development, supporting healthy neighbourhoods, affordability, choice in the system, the LRT option is, in fact, more desirable."
"I just want to make sure that my colleagues heard that," Matlow said as his time to question ran out. "So, you're saying that all of the evidence-based criteria that you're using, the LRT for this specific route is the preferred option for Scarborough and Toronto."
"That's correct," Keesmaat said.
Toronto Star
