^ And why is that? Because it's so close to downtown, the millionaires can take a 5 minute subway ride to their King & Bay jobs. The suburb is auto-dependent but not all of the residents are.
"But the auto-dependent suburbs have, um, autos. The inner-city areas don't have universal auto ownership."
Tons of suburban households have only 1 car for 3, 4, 5 people...that's not exactly universal auto ownership and it forces some people to embark on epic commutes every day.
"I think that the suburbs are much more deserving of new transit funding than the inner city."
Especially since 90% of people live in the suburbs. All day GO service everywhere, a DRL up to Don Mills & Finch, Sheppard over to Downsview, etc., would not only improve suburban trips for tons of people and get lots of cars off the road, it would help more people get downtown easily, which would then trigger inner city projects.
A Queen or King subway (or tunneled whatever) would be nice, but such a waste of money since most people only ride these streetcars for a couple blocks. Other than that, really, how many more projects in the inner city, aside from some streetcar projects, are needed?
"The amount of revenue per kilometer that is generated is going to me much lower in the suburbs though when you are serving lower densities."
Density doesn't matter when you rely on a vast network of feeder bus routes. If we're limited to building new rapid transit only where densities are high enough to support it without getting there by local buses, we're screwed - even the Yonge line would be deserted without the buses. Yes, it costs a lot to run the buses, but tons of people use the buses to get everywhere else in the city so it's not like they're not needed. The main reason transit routes downtown are so crowded (and thus generate revenue) is because they're full of suburbanites and they're slowed down by suburban cars on the road.
"The fact that cityplace + the new fort york communities will have what, mixed traffic streetcar service only without any rapid transit screams out a lot more than the business parks and endless subdivsions (with some higher density along one major road) in Markham."
What kind of rapid transit do you propose for CityPlace? It's already a 10 minute walk from the subway. When they build the DRL, there'll be a stop at Spadina & Front. And no one is proposing rapid transit for Markham right now. Viva is nothing more than two express bus routes.