The $2 billion Scarborough subway, for which taxpayers in Toronto may spend the next 30 years paying, has “no real benefits,” says the author of a new independent analysis.

Instead, the Scarborough RT, the proposed Sheppard LRT and the Sheppard subway line should be combined into a single automated light rail system, which would cost less than a subway and attract more riders, the report says.

“If I build a subway, I have to pay $2 billion to $3 billion, and I get nothing back for it. In fact, it’ll cost more to run,” said the report author, Michael Schabas, a partner at First Class Partnerships Limited, an international transit and rail consulting firm.

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Schabas scrutinized key projects in Metrolinx’s Big Move transit plan, calculating their overall costs compared with the benefits they will provide. The report was funded by Toronto-based nonpartisan research group the Neptis Foundation.

The subway, which city council voted to support in October and the provincial and federal governments will help fund, is an extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway to Scarborough Centre.

But Schabas says the subway will only be about five minutes faster than the existing Scarborough RT — mostly because it has fewer stops — and is unlikely to attract many new riders because it offers little that is new.

Combining the Scarborough RT, proposed Sheppard LRT and the Sheppard subway into a single automated light rail system (ALRT) would cost an estimated $1.8 billion, the report states.

The report dubs this option the “Scarborough Wye,” which would travel from Sheppard-Yonge station to both Kennedy-Eglinton and to Malvern via Scarborough Centre. It would feed directly into both the Yonge and Danforth subways and into a GO regional express rail system at Kennedy.

The existing Sheppard subway would be converted to ALRT technology. A new section of line 6.5 km long would be built linking it and the Scarborough RT, which can be upgraded and extended to Sheppard Ave. The new line would be elevated, running mostly along Highway 401.

Three new stations would be built: one at Victoria Park Ave.; another at Warden Ave.; and a third at Kennedy Rd. A junction with the Scarborough RT would be built between Midland and Kennedy.

ALRT technology is the type used in Vancouver’s SkyTrains. It is elevated rather than buried, so it costs less to build and does not compete with cars for road space. It is also automated, so drivers don’t have to be paid to operate it.

Metrolinx referred questions on the Scarborough subway to the TTC, as the subway is a Toronto-based project.

TTC chair Karen Stintz defended the business case for the subway, saying that there are more than 50,000 people who use the Scarborough RT every day, sufficient to justify a subway.

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Stintz said she was not prepared to revisit the subway plan — now fully funded by three levels of government — to consider the ALRT alternative.

“These decisions have been made,” she said. “We have spent too many years talking about transit. Now we need to build transit. The consensus that we’ve built at council allows us to move forward.”





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