Wondering how it’s humanly possible to waste some $600 million on the cancellation of two gas plants? Just watch how politicians can take people for a ride — a subway ride to Scarborough, for example.

In Mississauga and Oakville, the gas-fired power plants were all about NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard). In Scarborough, it’s simply SIMBYism (Subways In My Backyard).

As the legislature resumed Monday, these suburban hotspots laid bare Ontario’s political pathology.

First, opposition MPPs asked how the government could justify the massive sunk costs at those gas-fired power plants. (Hint: political survival after local voters and the opposition demanded their cancellation.)

Second, the opposition ridiculed the Liberals for going in circles on a Scarborough subway. (Explanation: city hall keeps changing its mind, Ottawa keeps ducking, the opposition keeps punting, and local voters must be placated.)

Despite the juxtaposition of these two questions on their first day back at work, MPPs seem not to be losing any sleep over the sunk costs of the original Scarborough LRT plan, if it is abandoned in favour of a costlier subway.

The subway switch is a case study for the kind of political myopia that led us astray on the gas plants, putting local interests ahead of the common good: City hall signed on to the LRT and Queen’s Park ponied up, but then both pandered to Scarborough’s chronic case of subway envy — and shifted into reverse.

Now it’s money down the drain, just like the gas plants. The sunk costs in Scarborough add up to some $85 million — and counting, according to Metrolinx. For the record, that’s roughly where the gas plant tab once was.

The original LRT proposal for Scarborough remains a better fit — covering more ground, with more stations, for far less money (leaving cash in hand for other transit projects). It’s not that Scarborough is a second-class suburb — it’s just not as heavily travelled as King and Bay, and is thus more suited to the shorter trains and more frequent stops of an LRT.

But not good enough for Mayor Rob Ford, who demonizes the LRT as Public Enemy No. 1. He claimed it would restrict roadways, when in fact it would remain above grade and out of the way — retracing the existing route of the old SRT (the aging Scarborough Rapid Transit line from Kennedy Station).

Yet Ford won the day, rallying pro-subway Scarborough councillors and their fellow travellers against an LRT. Many of these subway cultists harbour a transfer phobia — insisting that Scarborough residents deserve a seamless ride, without having to transfer from one platform to another at Kennedy (as commuters in other world-class transit systems do daily).

Now, Transport Minister Glen Murray has clambered aboard the subway bandwagon, unveiling his own above-ground subway route along the old SRT right-of-way. Bizarrely, Ford rallied to the proposal even though he had denounced that very route weeks earlier for getting in the way of cars.

Murray surprised everyone, including Metrolinx, by going public with his notional plan to essentially superimpose a subway on that old SRT line — with its overly-tight turns and a truncated terminus at Scarborough Town Centre (which no longer links up with a Sheppard LRT for a truly seamless network). Why? It seems the Liberals always lose their nerve in the end — acquiescing to expensive SIMBYism in Scarborough just as they capitulated to costly NIMBYism in Mississauga and Oakville.

It gets worse. Murray’s new subway route is not just leading Scarborough down a blind alley, but dragging the rest of us down with it. The twists and turns on his improvised route are so tight that even Metrolinx worries that trains will likely have to reduce speed — as they do when rounding Union Station.

When those turning trains slow down in Scarborough, brace yourself for knock-on effects across the Bloor-Danforth line — delaying commuters throughout the system. Just let that scenario sink in, while pondering those sunk costs of at least $85 million:

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We’ll all be poorer — and arrive later — thanks to Scarborough’s subway vanity and our politicians’ insanity. If we voters don’t learn the lessons of our history and pathology, we are condemned to repeat them — and keep paying for them, in both time and money.