John Tory’s Bullshit

A selection of bullshitting about the Scarborough Subway Extension

Tomorrow, Toronto City Council will likely push the Scarborough Subway Extension — now costed at $3.35 billion, though that number will surely rise — through, barring a collapse of the suburban voting bloc. (Note: I don’t expect this to happen, but with Giorgio Mammoliti pitching his own subway plan, I guess anything is possible. But my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that unless there’s a mass revolt among the suburban councillors against the subway — which is possible, theoretically speaking—that Tory has the votes.

Because this is the Scarborough Subway Extension, current fetish object of conservative Toronto politicians, there has been a lot of misinformation and, frankly, bullshitting, coming from Mayor John Tory.

Non-existent Transit Lines

Tory presented this map on March 27, speaking to a Scarborough business association. Not only does it show SmartTrack (still wholly unfunded) but it shows the Eglington Crosstown LRT extension — which there is nearly no money for since the SSE’s costs have risen.

Again, mostly bullshit. There is only one new rapid transit stop funded in Scarborough: Scarborough Town Centre, where the subway extension will terminate.

(To this point, Ontario Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid has stated that there is no new funding from the province for the Eglington East LRT.)

Fictional Time Savings

Tory has struggled to respond to calculations about the time that commuters might save with the SSE. In an exchange with the Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro and the Globe’s Oliver Moore, Tory makes the argument that, essentially, the feeling that one might save time is better evidence of actual time savings than studies of actual time savings.

From the Toronto Sun:

City staff estimate the express subway connection from Scarborough Centre to Kennedy Station will shave at least five minutes off a person’s commute. That’s not including the time saved by doing away with the need to shuffle down three flights of stairs between the RT to catch the subway at Kennedy Station, and it doesn’t include significant additional time savings getting to the new Scarborough Centre subway stop by bus or car.

This is a favourite Tory talking point, but the time savings estimates are vastly overstated. He gets around this by focusing specifically on anecdotal evidence that supports the idea that people might save 20–25 minutes on their commute:

The reality is almost the exact opposite: since there’s only one subway stop, there will actually be extra steps involved for people to get to the rapid transit network.

A Ryerson University study found that, when compared to the LRT, the SSE will almost across the board take longer to get to:

There are two possibilities to all of this: either that Tory doesn’t understand the numbers in front of him, or he just doesn’t care. It’s debatable which one is worse. In any event, the people of Toronto are being mislead.

I’ll be on twitter, likely, covering the subway vote tomorrow. You can follow me there at www.twitter.com/k_delamont. It seems silly and pedestrian, but following along and engaging there helps justify my time commitment of covering council.