The drama over the city’s transit plans hasn’t ended yet. Some Toronto councillors are threatening to try to stop the city from signing a master agreement with Metrolinx and the province to build four LRTs in Toronto.
The councillors say the agreement gives Metrolinx too much authority over the scope of the project, particularly the placement and distance between stations.
They fear that as costs rise, Metrolinx will cancel some stations or build them so far apart the TTC could be forced to run buses along light rail routes.
There is “disaster lurking” in the agreement, said Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park). He believes Metrolinx wants the Eglinton LRT to serve the region as much as the city.
“What the province has put in front of us opens the door to them running it as a regional-only service and forcing us to try to carry any local trip on a bus running alongside the light rail line. It’s terrible transit planning, and I will not vote for an agreement that cedes control over local transit planning to an unaccountable body like Metrolinx,” Perks said.
The agreement that goes before council next week spells out the ownership and responsibilities for the LRTs to be built on Eglinton, Finch, Sheppard and the Scarborough RT with $8.4 billion in provincial money and about $300 million in federal funds.
Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s), a former transit commissioner, said the section in the agreement that refers to the scope of the projects “raises red flags.”
“Are there any plans to reduce the stations or stops? If it’s about that, we should know about that publicly,” he said. “We’re either partners in this or we’re not. We recognize their regional perspective. They have to recognize our local perspective.”
The Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT has an approved environmental assessment calling for 26 stops spaced about 800 metres apart on average, said Metrolinx spokesman Jamie Robinson.
Metrolinx, should it want to change that plan, would have to seek an amendment to the environmental assessment, requiring more public consultations.
“We’re in a stage now when all stations are under review because when you do an environmental assessment, it’s all concepts,” Robinson said. “But as you begin to do further work in terms of the station design, it brings more definition to what you’re planning to build.”
The exact location of the stations, which will cost about $100 million each, won’t be confirmed until around the summer of 2014.
Concern over the master agreement surfaced a day after the councillors on the transit commission officially designated a downtown relief line as a transit priority and then went on to reopen the subway-versus-LRT debate by voting for a feasibility study on two Scarborough subway options.
The move annoyed some city councillors who say Toronto has vacillated too long on the kind of transit technology it wants; that transit riders just need something to be built.
Not signing the master agreement isn’t an option, said TTC commissioner Maria Augimeri, councillor for York Centre. “He who pays the piper calls the tune. The money involved is provincial money, and the province doesn’t have time for our dilly-dallying,” she said.
Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 32, Scarborough Centre), vice-chair of the TTC, said the concerns might be legitimate, but he’s not worried, particularly on the Eglinton LRT, which will run underground for 11 kilometres.
“Eglinton is a very tight road. That’s why they’re going underground. That’s why there’s very few places you can put a station,” he said. De Baeremaeker said he believes Metrolinx is acting in good faith.
TTC CEO Andy Byford has not yet signed the master agreement.
The only place where the TTC currently runs buses along a subway line is at the north end of Yonge St., where the stops are farther apart.
