Pair of Scarborough transit meetings set for Thursday
TTC chair Stintz expected at civic centre meeting
MIKE ADLER
Mar 07, 2012 - 5:40 PM
With two weeks left until Toronto Council settles the Sheppard Avenue transit question, both sides are campaigning furiously in Scarborough, knowing the one favouring a light-rail transit line is winning.
"There's an anger out there," Scarborough-Agincourt Councillor Norm Kelly said Tuesday, March 6, a day after he was replaced on the TTC board by Raymond Cho and Glenn De Baeremaeker, Scarborough councillors now as much in favour of a Sheppard East LRT as he is against it.
On Sunday, the anger Kelly says comes from a feeling that support for a Sheppard Subway extension is getting "short shrift" appeared at the back of a room in the Malvern Public Library.
Eric Miller, a civil engineer and director of the University of Toronto Cities Centre, had spoken there about light-rail on Sheppard, suggesting it was the only practical option and the city-wide debate had been "debased" by calling light-rail vehicles streetcars. "It's not an old-fashioned technology or a second-best solution," Miller told around 100 people at a session called by Respect Scarborough.
The LRT for Sheppard "is not Spadina or St. Clair; this is a higher level service, higher capacity, higher speed," he said, arguing it makes sense for Scarborough and is coupled with another light-rail extension to Sheppard and Markham Road and, eventually, Malvern Town Centre.
The planned route to Morningside Avenue, cancelled by Mayor Rob Ford and revived by a council vote last month, would be "nowhere near capacity at 2031" and even then, extra LRT cars and signal priority could be added, he said.
In contrast, said Miller, a leading member of the council-appointed expert panel that will report on transit options for Sheppard on March 21, a proposed subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre is "well short of any funding."
A third option, building the subway to Victoria Park Avenue and continuing east with light rail, isn't viable either, he said. When it came time to answer questions, though, several were from people demanding to know how surface light-rail and its stations could compete with "the comfortability of the car" or a subway.
"We waited 30 years. We can wait 30 years more," Francis D'Almeida shouted, later leaving the meeting convinced a subway station could be built for the extension every few years and that Sunday's presentations were one-sided.[/B]
"They did not have one negative thing to say about the LRT."
D'Almeida may find what he's seeking at a forum hosted Thursday, March 8, from 7 to 9 p.m. by Toronto Taxpayers Coalition at Scarborough Civic Centre.
The group's president Matthew McGuire is inviting people who signed his group's pro-subway petition and has a line-up he says includes Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Anne Levy, Gordon Chong - who wrote a proposal for the subway extension - former Toronto city manager John Morand, and Karen Stintz, the re-elected TTC chairperson.
At exactly the same time Thursday, Cho will be hosting a "very important transit plan meeting" with TTC staff at Blessed Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School to provide his residents with facts "on how the council-approved transit plan will affect our communities and address the future transit needs of Scarborough."
Kelly, who sponsored the Taxpayers' meeting and may serve as a moderator, said Cho's been getting flack from pro-subway constituents.
He said he doesn't have faith in the panel's impartiality of the panel, but Miller should have resigned from it after giving his opinions in Malvern. "It's like a juror saying to the audience (in a courtroom) 'he's guilty.'"
Pressed on one of his side's weak spots - the current lack of ability to pay for a subway - Kelly said subway supporters had two weeks to answer the question and predicted a lot of chatting with the mayor, who has already rejected revenue-raising suggestions, including one from Kelly, a City of Toronto sales tax.
Kelly is still willing to sell his idea, saying every major U.S. city has such a tax to help pay for transit and Toronto homeowners won't have to "do all the heavy lifting" because suburbanites commuting to Toronto, young people living at home and tourists will contribute too.
When Ford made an appearance last month at Malvern Town Centre, he was followed by a dozen people with a petition saying Scarborough residents want, need and deserve subways. "Councillor Stintz did not ask us what 'we' wanted for Toronto when she brought back" the Transit City plan for LRTs, it said.
McGuire, whose organization wants a free vote in the legislature to "set a direction" for transit in Toronto, rejects discussion of any new taxes to pay for the extension. "We don't have to pay everything up front," he said when reminded his group professes "prudent fiscal planning, budgeting and spending" yet supports subways which as of now have no confirmed funding scheme.
McGuire said contracting out municipal jobs, more staff layoffs at city hall and getting rid of the city government's Fair Wage policy are part of the answer.
In the audience Sunday, Ron Moeser, a Scarborough councillor regarded as a centrist, said he does not think Sheppard can get a subway extension by 2025.
"I love subways but if we wait 20 years is that fair to the community?" he asked, adding the most likely plan for an extension leaves people east of Midland Avenue "completely out of the picture."
Though Moeser signed a letter last month in support of keeping Scarborough-Eglinton Crosstown LRT underground, he said council made a decision to run it above ground in Scarborough. "I have to respect that."
