Consider it the Voldemort of municipal politics.

Just as the Harry Potter villain is known as “he-who-must-not-be-named,” the cost of the western spur of Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack transit line is the price that dare not be spoken.

As reported by the Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro, city hall staff appear painfully reluctant to reveal a consultant’s cost estimates for a major section of Tory’s much-vaunted “surface subway” plan.

Other parts of the analysis by the consultant HDR have been summarized in a staff report and made public, including a variety of possible routes. According to staff, the consultant “has produced initial construction costs for the corridors reviewed.” But there’s no trace of these figures in the city’s synopsis.

In a quest reminiscent of Kafka, Pagliaro describes going to Toronto chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat, to Peter Notaro, who’s a director in the city manager’s office, and to the mayor himself, asking for the cost estimates. All to no avail.

Keesmaat confirmed that numbers exist, but said she couldn’t release them. Notaro said the HDR analysis remains under review, and Tory said he hadn’t seen any cost estimates at all. “No document, no draft, no summary, no report.”

It’s difficult to avoid a nagging suspicion that the consultant’s projections have turned out distressingly high — too high to reveal, at least just yet, to the public.

It was obvious from the start that the western spur would be the most expensive part of Tory’s SmartTrack vision. The bulk of that bold plan involves running electric commuter trains on existing track used by GO Transit. But major new construction is proposed for a three-stop route running west from the Mt. Dennis station to Mississauga’s job-rich airport corporate centre.

This track could use various corridors (the consultant looked at eight) but all would require “a combination of elevated and tunneled sections” — and that means serious costs. In addition, the consultant found all the options studied “would have significant impacts” on surrounding communities.

The official line from the city manager’s office is that the HDR analysis is being reviewed and still has to be filled out with SmartTrack ridership figures. Those projections aren’t expected to be in until early next year. But, even when they arrive, it’s hard to see how they would affect the cost of construction.

This western spur could ultimately cause Tory considerable pain. He was elected last year largely on a pledge to deliver SmartTrack: a 22-station, 53-kilometre transit line that would be built in just seven years, and at no cost to Toronto property tax payers. Concerns about the expense of tunnelling for the western spur were brushed aside, as were other questions about the overall practicality of Tory’s promised “transit relief.”

Uncertainties still cloud the future of SmartTrack, including basic information on costs. And Tory can’t keep avoiding the bill forever. The public deserves to see the extent of its liability sooner, rather than later.

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