Residents, many of whom watched in fury as city politicians flip-flopped on a subway or LRT to serve Scarborough, are now being asked for their views on what the subway extension should look like when it opens around 2023.

Toronto planners begin public consultations Saturday to gather input on nine potential subway corridors, even though construction isn’t to start for another three years.

Eventually the specifics of routes and stops will be recommended by city officials and ultimately approved by council.

In the meantime, Toronto's desire to consult the public is genuine, said Councillor Joe Mihevc, who sits on the TTC board. It is also complicated.

The complication, in this case, is the need to insert Mayor John Tory's SmartTrack plan into the Scarborough transit scenario.

The city has already expanded the area it is studying for a subway extension east, from the originally envisioned McCowan Rd. to Markham Rd. Planners have to give themselves enough room to recommend a route that won't risk gaving future SmartTrack trains on the nearby Stouffville GO tracks cannibalizing the expensive subway's ridership.

But moving the subway farther from the GO tracks has its own issues, said transit blogger Steve Munro, who still believes the city should be building the LRT.

“Going further east (with the subway), immediately you have problems with the line becoming more expensive because you're adding mileage,” he said.

The Markham Rd. corridor, for example, would mean a 9-kilometre subway — about 50 per cent longer than the McCowan route council envisioned in 2013 when it approved the project over a seven-stop LRT to replace the aging Scarborough RT.

Extra kilometres could add $1 billion to the subway's already hefty estimated $3-billion tab.

That's not the only issue Munro sees. One potential corridor runs under an established residential neighbourhood near Eglinton Ave. Another would mean burying the subway along a hydro corridor where, he said, hydro officials have already expressed reluctance.

There's also the common-sense objection to the proposed Bellamy and Markham corridors, which would require the subway to travel east and then double back west to stop at the Scarborough centre.

"The key thing is Scarborough Town Centre. That's the node, and that is the thing that has to be thought through," said Mihevc.

It's important to distinguish between corridors and routes, said Tim Laspa, Toronto’s director of transportation planning. The corridors are broader areas within which a specific route will be drawn.

The city's environmental assessment has to consider each corridor in terms of the impact of underground transit on the neighbourhood, natural environment, existing sewers, watermains and hydro lines, heritage issues and its potential to attract new development. The recommended corridor also has to connect key destinations in the community and take into account the travel patterns of its proposed ridership.

Cost is a consideration, said Laspa. But price doesn't rule the route that the city's planning department ultimately recommends.

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“The cost is one of the factors and objectives ... However, we're looking at the corridor options and seeing where it takes us with this work," he said.

If the environmental assessment pointed to a financial direction far beyond the envisioned $3-billion estimate, Laspa said, "We would be going to the city and TTC executive committee."

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