Metrolinx says the $1 billion provincially funded Finch West LRT is still a go, even as fears mount among transit advocates that a new council may try to persuade the province to postpone or delay the line.

CodeRedTO, a pro-LRT group, sent its members a message Wednesday urging them to call or write their councillors and MPPs in support of Finch.

The email followed the latest threat by a city councillor to cancel the LRT. The Toronto Sun reported that councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (York West) wants council to kill the Finch project. That would allow mayor-elect John Tory to devote the funds to his SmartTrack transit plan.

CodeRedTo’s Cameron MacLeod said he’s worried the province would cancel the Finch and Sheppard East LRTs if council voted against them, in the same way it cancelled the Scarborough LRT in favour of a subway.

“There’s enough opposition and enough need for that $1 billion by the province that if council said, ‘Push it off,’ the province might take that money and run,” he said.

York Centre Councillor Maria Augimeri, who chairs the TTC board, said opposition by Mammoliti and councillor Vince Crisanti (Etobicoke North) may already have slowed progress on Finch.

“I know some representatives of Metrolinx have voiced their concern about municipal representatives along the Finch line casting aspersions on the LRT,” she said.

Tory acknowledged on Wednesday that the LRTs aren’t his priority.

“Transit decisions in this city will be made, of course, by the city council working with the province and the federal government, and I've indicated my top two work priorities, which are the Scarborough subway and SmartTrack,” he told reporters.

SmartTrack is Tory’s plan to electrify the Stouffville and Kitchener GO lines and run frequent service along them to relieve TTC crowding.

The Finch LRT is supposed to run 11 kilometres from the new Finch West subway stop to Humber College and already has an approved environmental assessment, completed in 2010.

The environmental study of a maintenance and storage facility for the light rail vehicles at Keele north of Finch isn’t complete, however.

Consultations on that part of the project began in July and were supposed to continue through the fall. But further community consultations were postponed due to the municipal election.

Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins says the public consultations are expected to be rescheduled early in the New Year. The scheduled 2020 completion date “isn’t necessarily impacted,” by the delay in the environmental assessment, she said.

She did not say how much money the province and TTC have already spent on the two projects.

Tens of millions of dollars have already been spent on the preliminary work, however.

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Metrolinx has put the cost of cancelling the seven-stop Scarborough LRT, on which work had already been done, in favour of a three-stop subway, at about $85 million, money the city will be required to cover.

A longstanding agreement between the city and Metrolinx for the LRT has yet to be amended to reflect that change of plan. The same agreement governs the construction of the LRTs on Finch, Sheppard and the Eglinton Crosstown, which is already underway.

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