Every major decision about transit taken in the last thirty years in the city of Toronto has been wrong. Think I'm exaggerating?
* The Sheppard subway (or more accurately, stubway, as it's only five stations long) was foisted on the city by former Mayor Mel Lastman (as in, the last man you'd want as mayor of a big city). Remarkably, council's initial decision was to dig the tunnels and build the thing and then mothball it, as there were no funds to run it. That might have been a better idea, given that the line is minimally used, with each rider costing the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) an estimated $10 in subsidy. They're now having to custom-build shorter trains to run on the line.
* A subway was started on Eglinton Avenue around 1990, but work was halted by the Mike Harris government, which ordered the tunnels to be filled in! A part-surface, part underground light transit line is now being built along the same route, at far greater cost and with much lower capacity (and freshly re-dug tunnels).
* A subway extension is underway to Vaughan, north of the city's borders to the northwest. Given the time that the commute to downtown will take and the fact that Vaughan is a car-oriented community, it's unlikely that the line will be well-used, although the link to York University will be welcome. It is, of course, way behind schedule and far over budget.
* The TTC awarded a contract for new streetcars to Bombardier, via a bidding process that was so skewed toward "local content" that there could only be one winner. Bombardier has fallen so far behind on the delivery schedule that the TTC is suing for $50 million in damages. And by the way, local content requirements or not, much of the work is actually being carried out in Mexico.
* Toronto's airport express train, UPX, opened in mid-2015. In the rush to put it in place before the PanAm Games were held in the city, it was necessary to use diesel trains, as there was no time to install overhead wires. The line saw pitiful usage from day one, mainly because of high fares. A fare cut has improved ridership, but at the new fares, the line can never cover its operating costs, even if every train is full. Suggestions that the line be used for conventional commuter traffic are stymied by the fact that the line is so under-built -- the trains are only three cars long!
And yesterday, City Council was at it again. It has approved a plan to build a one-stop extension of the east-west subway line in Scarborough, at an estimated cost of (hope you're sitting down) $3 billion! The same money would have funded a 24-stop light rail network in Scarborough, but local pols have successfully argued that anything less than a subway would be an insult to their citizens.
Here's the killer point: the subway will replace an existing light rail line known as the RT, which has six stations. Projections show that the new one-stop extension will carry fewer passengers than the RT does. So, $3 billion to serve fewer people. Only in Toronto.
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