End of the line for subways
Scarborough had to accept an LRT, so there’s no cash for Downtown Relief Line either
christina-blizzard
By Christina Blizzard ,QMI Agency
First posted: Saturday, April 14, 2012 07:12 PM EDT
You knew it had to happen.
No sooner had city council gleefully voted to foist LRTs instead of subways on Scarborough, over the vigorous objections of suburban residents, then the cry went up from all the smug downtowners.
They want the Downtown Relief Line.
How to explain it to all those self-entitled, Starbuck-swilling snobs?
Oh, this might work: Not a friggin’ chance.
If there’s not enough cash for Scarborough’s subways, there’s not enough for downtown.
Get on your bikes, guys. It’ll be a cold day in Hell, Ont. before this city ever builds another kilometre of subway system.
What planet are these folk living on?
They didn’t just tell Scarborough to get lost.
They’ve sealed this city’s fate. We’re doomed to gridlock forever.
Council’s decision is akin to that of former premier Bill Davis’ cancellation of the Spadina Expressway in 1971.
That move ensured no other expressway would be built in Toronto, including the Scarborough Expressway.
So Scarborough has the worst of all possible worlds. No subways, no decent highways.
This city, indeed, the GTA, is grinding to a halt because of half-baked plans gone awry.
Spadina was the first. It begat the Allen Expressway, which begat the Allen Road when Davis stopped construction.
It now ends at Eglinton Ave., creating a massive bottleneck.
Other transportation disasters include the cancellation of four subways by Mike Harris.
Shovels were already in the ground for the Eglinton Ave. West line when the Harris government filled it in, citing a lack of funding.
It would be up and running by now if it had gone ahead.
Then there’s the Union Station to Pearson Airport direct rail link.
It took years to get any progress on that line. While other cities had multiple transit links to their airports, drivers here sat fuming in traffic, often missing flights when highways jammed up.
No sooner had work started when the protests began.
Local residents complained about the noise. Hello? Do you have any idea how much the value of your property has increased?
Another group popped up saying diesel trains would kill their children. They wanted electric trains, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars in extra costs that would add.
Diesel trains on the entire GO Transit system don’t kill babies, but watch out when it’s in their backyard.
Now, some politicians are urging Metrolinx to put more stops along the line. Not quite sure which part of “direct†and “link†they don’t get.
Politicians don’t have the vision to set out a plan for the GTA and follow through with it, no matter what.
They’re meek, timid and too easily cowed by noisy special interest groups.
It’s not just transit.
Look at what happened with the gas-fired plants the provincial government cancelled in Misissauga and Oakville.
The Mississauga one was almost finished when Premier Dalton McGuinty pulled the plug during last October’s election.
Now the government is being sued for $300 million by the financing company associated with the plant.
That doesn’t even take into consideration the estimated $1 billion it will cost to scrap the plant and move it elsewhere.
And McGuinty has the nerve to ask NDP leader Andrea Horwath to tell him where to make $1 billion in savings?
Here’s some ideas: Don’t build $1 billion gas-fired plants and then pull them down. Don’t squander $1 billion on an eHealth boondoggle that benefited Liberal insiders. And don’t waste more millions on an Ornge Air Ambulance fiasco.
If this city had the billions of dollars they’ve put into not building highways, not building gas plants and in fighting any development that does manage to slip past the eagle eyes and slow wits of politicians, who like to nix every worthwhile project, we could build a subway to the moon.
Or at least to Scarborough.
