Next stop for Scarborough’s subway comes next week, when Toronto council votes yet again on whether to get off the gravy train.

Will our politicians take us for a ride, leading us to a costly dead end?

Brace yourself for another multi-billion-dollar boondoggle that dwarfs the furor over cancelled gas plants. Then as now, we are watching a fiscal accident waiting to happen, cheered on by local pressure groups who know how to press the buttons of politicians at the wheel.

The end is in sight — not the light at the end of the tunnel, but a fiscal black hole. Which is why the Scarborough subway will ultimately be turned back.

The timeline for this turnaround is far off in the future: Not until after the next provincial and municipal elections — with the political risk safely behind them — will we see the premier and mayor of the day come to their senses and reverse course.

For now, what should have been a straightforward transit route keeps going in circles. Blame triangulation — and calculation — by rival players at city hall, Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill feeding off each other.

What transforms this debacle into spectacle is that it’s neither logical nor ideological: Tories, Liberals and New Democrats miraculously making common cause — prostituting and prostrating themselves before mythical Scarborough voters.

And patronizing them along the way. This is not about building bridges, but digging a tunnel too far.

No one should underestimate the intelligence of Scarborough residents. Nor understate the anger of all Torontonians when they discover how we’ve been shortchanged by political hucksters upselling us on subways.

All are complicit: Mayor John Tory, Premier Kathleen Wynne, Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown and the NDP’s Andrea Horwath, plus every city councillor or MPP who holds his nose or closes her eyes.

All have calculated that the risk of antagonizing a highly motivated subset of voters is greater than the reward of serving all of Scarborough and safeguarding the interests of everyone else. Never mind that the region would be better served by the original LRT design (and related lines) reaching far more people across far greater distances for the same money.

Former mayor Rob Ford and ex-finance minister Jim Flaherty (his family friend) are no longer with us, but their legacy lives on: Seduced by Ford’s subway vision, the federal Conservatives pledged $600 million. Fearing Ford’s wrath, the provincial Liberals repurposed $1.5 billion from the LRT to the runaway subway. And city council earmarked another $910 million, mostly through a 30-year property tax hike, to finance this fetish.

The subway’s original $2 billion budget has ballooned to $3.35 billion and climbing, with ancillary costs and budget overruns looming. As a consequence, the one-stop project has cannibalized other LRT lines contemplated to serve Scarborough.

This fetish is fed by the inverse of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard): SIMBYism syndrome (Subway In My Back Yard), with all its circular reasoning.

The rallying cry is that it’s Scarborough’s turn for a subway (ignoring Kennedy station). No matter that a suburb has a different density and ridership patterns than downtown.

Planners understand the folly of this fetish, but politicians can’t help pandering to populist impulses. People were repeatedly told that a surface LRT was somehow beneath their dignity, and few were prepared to level with them. But the more people learn of the cost overruns, and the line’s shortcomings, the more they realize a one-stop subway serves no one’s interests.

Ultimately it is voters who drive the train. People have it in their power to force politicians to change course, but they must ring the stop cord or they will be taken for a ride again.

In a perfect world, the mayor would see the error of his subway ways, distancing himself from Rob Ford’s legacy — and boxing in Doug Ford as the driver of a gravy train in a future mayoral election. Judging from Tory’s history, however, he is reluctant to go back on promises to a vocal Scarborough minority.

Lest we forget, he paid a heavy price for doggedly sticking to his pledge of faith-based funding for schools as PC leader in the 2007 provincial election. He should be wary of a faith-based subway today.

Even if city council somehow sees the light next week, would our feckless MPPs remove their blinkers at Queen’s Park? Recall that all three parties cynically opposed the mayor’s sensible request for road tolls.

Brad Duguid, the veteran cabinet minister from Scarborough, claims the subway would be stopped “over my dead body.” Duguid tells me Wynne would “stand by” her Scarborough MPPs in their fight to the death, regardless of any city hall vote.

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Is there any way to square the circle of triangulation and political calculation? Keep your eye on campaign timelines later next year.

Once the next provincial and municipal elections are out the way, after yet more billions are on the subway bill, we will reach the point of no return. Turnaround time.