Newly raised questions suggest a light-rail alternative to the Scarborough subway is more viable than what city staff and pro-subway councillors have previously argued.

Councillor Josh Matlow, who has been chiefly critical of the one-stop subway extension plan that has ballooned in cost to an estimated $3.35 billion, submitted several official questions with city staff ahead of a March 28 council meeting.

Critically, the questions outline how doubts raised about the LRT plan over construction timelines and design are contradicted by a 2012 report from the provincial transit agency Metrolinx. The transit authority was in charge of planning the original LRT option.

“Time and time again city council has either willfully ignored the facts before them or have not been provided complete and accurate information on a decision that affects so many lives and spends billions of tax dollars,” Matlow told the Star. “That’s unacceptable. It’s time that city council ask the hard questions and receive the full answers.”

Council voted in 2013 to scrap plans for a seven-stop LRT and instead build a more expensive subway — which is now planned as a six kilometres route along McCowan with a single stop at Scarborough Town Centre. Either option would replace the existing Scarborough RT.

Those advocating for a subway, including Mayor John Tory, say the debate over which option is better is now closed and criticized those still opposed to the subway as wanting to wage “war.”

“We are ending years of indecision and waffling with transit across the city,” Tory told a recent town hall in Scarborough.

But those still opposed maintain the region would be better served by a network of LRTs. Matlow noted the upcoming vote will be the first opportunity council has to say whether it wants to proceed with the one-stop subway extension after costs have risen more than 50 per cent.

As controversy over the subway continued last year, Tory and city staff pitched a second, 17-stop LRT line along Eglinton Ave. East to be built within the $3.56 billion envelope in committed funding if the subway was reduced from three to one stop. But because the cost of the subway continues to rise, that LRT line has been effectively priced out.

A federal budget announcement Wednesday had the mayor’s office claiming a $5-billion share over 11 years. But necessary contributions from the province and competing priorities leave the future of the Eglinton line unclear.

With that reality before council next week, Matlow’s questions frame the plan to replace the Scarborough RT with an LRT, as originally planned, a more viable option — one that could also see the Eglinton East LRT built.

His questions point out that while council was told by city staff in July the Scarborough LRT was only at between five to 10 per cent design, a 2012 report to Metrolinx’s board of directors clearly states at that point in time the LRT was already well advanced at 30 per cent design.

Though the mayor’s office was communicating in July 2016 that the LRT was at 0 per cent design — bolstering its argument that a return to the LRT plan would further delay Scarborough getting new transit options — at that point an environmental assessment had already been completed for the LRT. The assessment is a mandatory study which is not yet underway for the subway.

The Star has asked for responses to Matlow’s questions from both the city and Metrolinx. Both the city and Metrolinx are preparing those answers ahead of council.

“The evidence suggests the seven-stop LRT was and is much further along than council was led to believe,” Matlow said. “Despite what the mayor and some others have been saying the facts remain the same: The only reason for delay in providing Scarborough residents with rapid transit is due to council flip-flopping from a funded LRT to a three-stop, and then one-stop subway which has remaining and significant questions about how it would be paid for.”

It’s also unclear, as Matlow noted in his questions, why the design of the subway seemingly stalled in the last eight months.

TTC staff reported in July that the subway was at around the 5 per cent design mark. An update from staff on the subway extension in February noted the subway was still at 5 per cent design.

“Given that there has been significant work done on the one-stop Scarborough Subway Extension between July 2016 and March 2017, why is the project design status not moved beyond the 5 per cent completion status cited in July 2016?” Matlow’s question reads.

His questions also challenged information provided about construction timelines.

Ahead of the July council meeting, the TTC produced a briefing note that raised several other potential issues with returning to an LRT.

It noted a rise in costs the TTC claimed would be caused by a delay in starting construction because, the briefing note said, of a need to wait until the in-progress Eglinton Crosstown LRT line could be linked to Kennedy Station.

In answering questions on the briefing note, TTC staff also claimed construction delays could not be avoided by starting the line at the other end, at Sheppard Ave. and assumed work at Kennedy Station would require five years to complete.

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But the Metrolinx report explains construction of the Scarborough LRT line could actually be accelerated by a year by starting work on the section between McCowan and Sheppard avenues and that the plan was to start at the northern end.

It also indicates that the plan was always to build both the Scarborough LRT and Crosstown line to Kennedy Station simultaneously.

Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, who has been the leading voice in support of the subway, accused Matlow of asking questions at the “11th hour,” saying the verdict is in on a subway. But when asked about the substance of the questions, De Baeremaeker said: “Those are all valid questions.”