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This past week, Toronto City Council approved a motion from Mayor Chow to provide an additional $10 million in funding to move forward the "Scarborough East Rapid Transit" line, while designating it a top priority within the City’s transit expansion plans. Formerly known as the Eglinton East LRT, Chow has shown renewed interest in reviving long-stagnant plans to build a light rail line through Scarborough, following its initial proposal in 2007.
The Scarborough East Rapid Transit (SERT) line is planned to be a street-running LRT, akin to similar operations seen on the 510 Spadina streetcar and the Finch West LRT. It would run a total of 18.6 kilometres from Kennedy station on Danforth Line 2 to the University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus, before crossing the 401 to run along Sheppard Avenue, branching at Neilson Road to reach both Malvern Town Centre and the McCowan-Sheppard subway station now under construction. The proposed alignment would form a rough crescent, connecting to Line 2 at either end while travelling primarily on Eglinton Avenue East, Kingston Road, Morningside Avenue, and Sheppard Avenue East.
While recent documents from City Hall indicate that City staff will explore the potential for grade separations along the line, the SERT is currently planned to run primarily in a dedicated right-of-way in the median of the various suburban arterials along which it will travel. This at-grade alignment will necessitate frequent stops at signalised intersections and render transit service vulnerable to disruptions from on-street collisions — two issues which have plagued the Finch West LRT since its opening last December.
The width of the various streets that the LRT is set to run down varies drastically along its route. On streets such as Sheppard and Eglinton Avenues, the City-owned vehicular right-of-way stretches over 25 metres wide, allowing for the relatively simple insertion of light rail tracks and platforms while maintaining a similar number of general traffic lanes as currently exist.
On narrower streets, such as Morningside Avenue and Neilson Road, a street section more similar to the dedicated streetcar alignments seen in downtown Toronto would be implemented. General vehicle lanes would be removed to make way for the dedicated tracks, while significant alterations to boulevards would facilitate the delivery of a "complete street" featuring wide sidewalks, cycle tracks, and planting boulevards.
The $10 million dollar sum recently approved for the project is intended to advance these preliminary designs to a state of 30% completion. This will allow City staff and consultants to determine in greater detail the requirements for implementing such a project, such as property expropriation and utility relocation. Additionally, the funding announcement comes at a time as the municipal government is attempting to garner provincial and federal support for the project. Those two governmental bodies have historically shown limited interest in the idea of a LRT for Scarborough, with provincially-run Metrolinx even failing to protect for a future integration of service on the SERT with the Eglinton Line 5 during the construction of the Crosstown.
Part of the higher levels of government's hesitancy to become involved politically or financially with the SERT may be that, by the City of Toronto's own admission, the new line would run slower than the bus service it would replace. In the Eglinton East LRT: Initial Business Case, the actual projected speed of the LRT is heavily underemphasised; where it is addressed, the business case states "bus travel speeds [would be] higher than the LRT," and that due to this failure to reduce travel times, "the project as currently defined [would have] a negative user impact."
It is also worth noting that LRT business cases have a precedent for dramatically overestimating actual speeds during revenue service. The recently opened Finch West LRT was projected to complete its 10.3-kilometre route in 28 minutes, according to Metrolinx’s Sheppard-Finch Rapid Transit Benefits Case. On opening day, it actually travelled that same distance in 55 minutes—nearly half the projected speed on which the justification for the entire project was predicated. In the face of the ensuing embarrassment, City Hall enacted traffic signal changes to speed up LRV operations, a move which still saw the line running between 45% and 65% slower than its promised speed.
With the City of Toronto unable to shoulder the multi-billion-dollar cost of building the SERT, and provincial transit interests shifting toward expanded commuter rail, the future of this nearly two-decade-old LRT concept remains uncertain. Nevertheless, with a mayoral election approaching and both incumbent Olivia Chow and likely contender Brad Bradford taking strong stances on the project, it will undoubtedly be a major campaign issue.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development. If you'd like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Eglinton East LRT Forum thread, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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