Because, for the 11 Billionth time, connecting the SRT and ECLRT would’ve come at the cost of canceling FWLRT, SELRT, ultimately moving fewer commuters.
That plan had the best Benefit-Cost ratio. It was obvious that it should have been considered the base case, and ways looked at to improve the benefit side (i.e. extension to Malvern*) and reduce the cost side (i.e. elevate the line from DVP to Kennedy, and south side through Leslie, maybe eliminate a station or 2).
FWLRT could easily been fit into that budget (if someone would have actually wanted to build it), and SELRT appears that it was cancelled either way. If you add the $1.5B into the budget (from tax hike and Feds), then all (connected SRT/ECLRT, FWLRT, SELRT) could have been built (again, if they wanted to).
* - I should add elevation as a benefit as well, because I fear that this trend to continually build deeper and deeper subways is counterproductive. It takes much longer to construct a station due to the deep excavation. It takes passengers longer to get from street level to train. It doesn't provide the view of an elevated line (daylight, cell coverage).
Personally, I view the Scarbourough $3 billion "single station" as an unfortunate deal with the devil.
The SSE deal-with-the-devil exists to save DRL, ECLRT, FWLRT, and SELRT. Without SSE, the DRL wouldn't even be this far along.
Fewer riders will benefit than under an ideal plan (intelligently designed for the whole GTHA), but politically, SSE's existence (and few riders) will immensely increase transit ridership elsewhere simply by sheer protection of DRL's existence at all. Very ironic, that by Scarborough voters deciding to vote to hurt their transit ridership, they agreed not to block the increase of transit ridership
elsewhere. (by not blocking the DRL)
Thus, that's why it's a "deal-with-the-devil"
Note: DRL is actually a "Downtown
Temporary Relief Line".
Induced demand typically gradually happens to downtown subway expansion in most world cities, making transit even more popular. While I use "induced demand" more for freeways, it also happens to subways -- and it's better for induced demand to happen to subways since Toronto's Yonge Line handles more people than an 8-lane-wide freeway. Shanghai/Beijing's equivalents of DRL quickly got overloaded. Amazing for cities that had no subway systems when our Line 1 opened. See
here for more explanation about subway induced demand.
So you see, now that SSE exists to mollify politicians,
means more ridership for whole of GTHA, even if fewer people benefit in the Scarborough area.
I can economically understand improving/extending an already-built SSE (to make it less deal-with-the-devil) but getting a $3+ billion stop built now is a political move that doesn't help many transit riders quicker and sooner in this area.
A more optimized transit plan should have happened, but at least, DRL is now finally going ahead (plans are being made, various studies are under way, it's now partially funded, and now it finally "feels real, feels like it'll finally happen within my life" if it keeps up). If SSE politically made DRL possible, then I can live with the SSE (while holding my nose) because it'll increase transit ridership
elsewhere. Simply because DRL now exists as a real plan, now uninterfered by Scarborough having been given candy.
If built, it will probably be many decades before SSE finally "pays for itself economically" with infill stations & connecting to a fully-densified Sheppard Subway line into the big sideways U. Maybe not till the end of this century. Then, it might finally redeem itself cost-wise as a super-busy line. But right now, it is a "Big Owe" league of a deal that's being tolerated by other GTHA politicians in order to protect all the other transit projects elsewhere in GTHA.
Voters who used not to stand for this (and thus, delaying things like Transit City or cancelling projects) -- are now faced with the choice of denying Scarborough (and delaying your favourite local transit project) or letting Scarborough keep its candy (and getting your transit project). Increasingly, more people voted towards the tolerating of a certain amount of candy.
That is some of what happened in 2014 -- but will it happen for 2018? That is the question. Choices for protecting expansion of transit projects has always been a domino-effect minefield in GTHA politics.
More than $3bn, combined, has been wasted in 20 years of transit cancellations, so it's no small wonder that SSE is actually en edible, albiet bitter, choice, for many out there. Even if I disagree with the decision to go for the SSE, I can at least fathom why the decision is occuring.
20-years of exploding mines (everything between the cancellation of the Eglinton subway in year 1995 through the cancellation of Transit City in 2013) has made many politicians, government agencies, and voters alike want to tolerate SSE to protect other key GTHA transit projects.