Mayor John Tory is defending plans for a one-stop subway in Scarborough despite the city’s lead transit consultant publicly raising concerns the cost has still not been justified.

“The chief planner has brought forward a plan that will deliver significantly more transit to more people in Scarborough. The plan is based on data, evidence and good planning principles,” Tory’s office said in a statement to the Star on Monday. “It also has the support of a significant number on city council. Now, it’s time to get on with actually building it. Once council approves, that’s exactly what we will do.”

Tory’s defence of that plan comes after University of Toronto professor Eric Miller, who was hired by the city to crunch the numbers related to Tory’s own heavy rail SmartTrack plan and its impact on projects like the Scarborough subway, told the Star the subway does not contribute to a future transit network.

Chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat, who did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, first proposed a one-stop subway extension on the Bloor-Danforth line to Scarborough’s City Centre in January, saying reducing the stops on a controversial three-stop subway plan would allow a 17-stop LRT to be built at the same estimated $3.56 billion.

The new plan, observers say, is a more than $2 billion political compromise that allows Tory and other Scarborough politicians to keep their promise of building a subway while freeing up funds to build more transit east along Eglinton Ave. East.

Though further study of a one-stop option has yet to be released, Miller said over the weekend there is currently little justification for a subway of any number of stops.

“At the end of the day it might still be the case, for example, that a (three)-stop or a (one)-stop subway is the best thing we can do under the circumstances,” he said. “But that case certainly has not yet been made.”

A report to executive committee debated last week outlined the number of people who might have ridden a three-stop subway if the service was increased along the Stouffville GO lines and new stations built — work lead by Miller.

Even with the best case ridership — 14,000 riders travelling at the busiest time in the busiest direction without any SmartTrack service in place — Miller said a three-stop subway “might” have been justified, depending on cost and other considerations.

The projection of riders on a one-stop subway is not yet known. A report is expected in June. That work is now being done by the city’s planning department, under Keesmaat’s direction. But Keesmaat, who has pitched the need for a one-stop subway as an “optimized” solution to connect Scarborough City Centre, earlier said she expects ridership on a one-stop extension to be lower than the three-stop plan.

“Obviously as ridership gets lower and lower the need for subway technology becomes more and more difficult to justify,” Miller said.

He said there is no “magic number” to justify a subway and that the decision should be based on the benefits of a subway compared to any alternatives — work Miller says is not currently being done.

“A big part of the problem we have with the (Scarborough subway extension) is that we seem to keep making decisions without doing this comparative analysis.”

Council, under the leadership of former mayor Rob Ford, originally backed the three-stop subway plan, cancelling a seven-stop LRT that was fully funded by the province.

In this term of council, Miller said an LRT to Scarborough City Centre has not been modeled.

Cherise Burda, executive director of Ryerson University’s City Building Institute, said Miller is not alone in his concerns but they significant coming from him.

“We all know that the one stop is a political compromise. I don’t think there’s anybody who thinks otherwise,” Burda said. “It’s never been a debate on evidence until recently. We’re getting closer to evidence, but we’ve still been dealing with compromises along the way.”

University of Toronto Scarborough human geography professor Andre Sorensen — who earlier co-authored a study that questioned a three-stop subway extension — said the priority should be east-west corridors, including an LRT along Eglinton Ave. East and Sheppard Ave.

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“The subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre is less important than either of these,” Sorensen said, adding SmartTrack has the potential to provide subway-like service to Scarborough if trains came every five minutes and cost as much as riding the TTC.

Sorensen said it is possible to make a case for the subway, which Tory and Keesmaat are trying to do. He said a rapid transit connection to Scarborough Town Centre is needed for those who already travel from that point and with potential for redevelopment of that area.

“The city has looked at it in the past, very carefully, and agreed that an LRT would be the best option,” he said.

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