It’s the morning rush hour at Toronto’s least-used subway stop, Bessarion station on the Sheppard line. Elsewhere in the system right now, thousands of riders are squeezed armpit-to-armpit — clinging to stainless steel poles in packed subways, streetcars and buses, swaying dizzily back and forth on their frantic way to work.

Not so at Bessarion, centre stop on the Sheppard underground. There’s tranquility here. Stray commuters meander on a broad marble-white platform like tumbleweed drifting across a desolate prairie.

“Really, right now is when it’s at its busiest,” chuckles Kevin Viger, an app developer who lives nearby. He confesses to enjoying this dearth of fellow riders. “Most people around here drive cars.”

“It’s usually like this,” agrees health-care consultant David Lynch. “There’s really no reason there should be a station here, given the traffic.”

Only 2,590 riders pass through Bessarion on a typical weekday — a pitiful number considering that the Toronto Transit Commission carries an average 1.5 million riders daily. The entire Sheppard line is grossly underutilized, handling just 47,700 people on an average day. Several TTC bus routes each carry almost as many.

Yet Mayor Rob Ford is determined to extend this particular subway at enormous expense, sacrificing far more pressing transit needs. Ford doesn’t have facts or reason on his side, but he does have a cute slogan — “Save Our Subways.”

In sending out his SOS, the mayor is pressing hard on right-wing allies, demanding that they defend his ill-judged subway plan. And he’s blatantly appealing to people’s inherent preference for underground transit without telling them the true cost — potentially billions of dollars that Toronto doesn’t have.

Call it the unthinking trying to sell the uninformed on the unaffordable.

Ford’s previous venture into creative sloganeering carried him to the mayor’s office. His “Stop the Gravy Train” mantra resonated even though all his overblown promises obviously couldn’t be kept.

Now Ford is at it again, insisting that Toronto support construction of a Sheppard subway extension. And he wants the already-approved Eglinton light rail line entirely buried, turning it into a subway of sorts. It’s worth noting that about 11 kilometres of this route were to run underground in any case. But Ford intends to squander more than a billion dollars burying all 18 kilometres of the line. That money would be far better spent on surface light rail serving hundreds of thousands of riders across the city.

No wonder there’s sharp resistance to his vision. City council dealt Ford a staggering blow in February when it quashed his plan for burying the entire Eglinton line. And later this month it is to decide the fate of Sheppard, choosing either subway or light rail. That’s why Ford is now fighting so hard — lobbying business leaders, attempting to sway moderate councillors with sympathetic chat, and taking to the airwaves with his own highly partisan radio show.

Keeping the public in ignorance is key to his SOS strategy. For almost a year, Ford hid a TTC report spelling out in plain numbers the folly of Sheppard subway expansion. It turns out that economic projections made in 1986, justifying need for the subway, are wrong. Expected jobs haven’t materialized in Toronto — they’ve gone to surrounding regions. Less work means fewer than expected riders.

The area around North York Centre, the western terminus of the Sheppard subway, was supposed to have 93,400 jobs by now. But, according to the latest available data, it has only 30,200. Scarborough Centre, at the route’s eastern terminus, was projected to have 65,000 jobs. This area has just 13,700. Predicted employment levels wouldn’t be reached even with a fully built-out subway line. No wonder Bessarion so often resembles a mausoleum.

There’s more. The history of development at, or around, subway stations shows that many of these sites haven’t been as attractive to investors as originally thought. Prime land has remained vacant for decades. So if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. And a quarter-century ago light rail hadn’t yet emerged as a strong transit alternative, so 1980s planners didn’t fully consider it.

The Ford administration’s habit of describing new light rail trains (with an 840-passenger capacity) as “trolleys” is misleading to the point of deception. Today we know light rail is the most efficient and cost-effective way of serving the population in the Sheppard corridor — now and into the foreseeable future. And this advanced form of transit could be installed on Sheppard and also along Finch West, where it’s desperately needed, with money already available from the province.

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In contrast, just building a subway on Sheppard, and nothing on Finch, would require wringing fresh cash from Torontonians in the form of road tolls, higher parking fees or other new “revenue tools.” After months of denying such need, the mayor last week endorsed a “modest parking levy.” There’s talk of allowing a casino, or a transit lottery. And, in private, Ford has even discussed tolls and other taxes. That’s utterly contrary to his conservative values. He’s either become a liberal overnight or is hoping to delay a decision on Sheppard, ostensibly for more study.

Delay seems more likely. The SOS effort needs more time if it’s to work. The public isn’t riled up enough. Awkward facts keep getting in the way. Of course, the facts never much troubled Ford. He’s quite capable of riding just a slogan into office. Not so the thousands of strap-hangers crowding the TTC every day. They need real transit to get to work, not more subway bafflegab.