The only thing missing on the crisp and sunny September morning at the eastern edge of the Scarborough Town Centre was a beat box blasting out the song, “Ain’t no stoppin’ us now; we’re on the move.”
But that’s exactly what I was thinking as Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sakaria presided over the ground-breaking ceremony for the Scarborough Centre station – stop number 2 on the three-stop expansion of the Bloor-Danforth Line 2 east into the oft-forgotten reaches of Scarborough.
Debates, we’ve had a few. Mis-steps and slip-ups; regressions and concessions, too. But last September 5, with about a hundred workers and planners and politicians and bureaucrats present, it all seemed not only possible and probable but altogether unstoppable.
Scarborough! We are getting our subway!
It’ll penetrate into the heart of our city, right into the downtown core. And with it will come the best opportunity for growth and prosperity and the realization of a vibrant urban core that’s representative of Toronto’s most eastern precinct.
The planners have mapped out a future that sees 50,000 more people in the Scarborough City Centre over the next 30 years.
But for the city centre to blossom and bloom as planned, it needs the subway extension that Minister Sakaria came to boost and herald on that September morn.
When will it happen and what will it cost? Is the price too high? Will the riders be there? What’s the business case? Those are all good questions. They were all asked and debated and were the subjects of much analysis and hand-wringing for decades.
As late as 2020 Metrolinx released a study saying the business case was not there for the Scarborough Subway. Despite this, Metrolinx then CEO Phil Verster concluded:
“We know that higher-order transit like Eglinton West and Scarborough Subway extensions is transformative in so many ways, providing long-lasting benefits that extend well beyond the daily commute.”
“The business cases make it clear that these projects will provide significant relief to the busy commutes we all experience each day by expanding transit capacity and cutting travel times,” he said.
“They will ease congestion on roadways, and connect to other major transit systems throughout the network at a number of important transfer points—that is critical to ensuring people get to where they need to go.”
The cost of the subway, when announced, was $5.5 billion. Completion date: 2030. So far, delays and complications in the tunneling have resulted in the possibility of a later opening date. And more realistic cost estimates, including project costs that were not accounted for when the project was announced, put the subway cost at $10.2 billion. And if we’ve learned anything from projected cost estimates of transit building, it is that the costs escalate.
The cost is the cost. The opening timeline will no doubt be challenged. But Scarborough residents deserve the benefits that will flow from high order transit coming to its downtown. Thousands of new people and jobs are expected to come to the area over the next 20 years and the planned subway is the biggest catalyst.
The subway plans became even more critical when the Scarborough RT, the principal people mover between Line 2 and the Scarborough city centre since 1985, derailed and was shut down permanently in 2023. Buses have been carrying the freight since then, but the RT’s demise only underscored the need for the subway replacement as quickly as possible.
“People in Scarborough deserve better transit,” Mayor Olivia Chow said at the September announcement.
Even more importantly, Premier Doug Ford has not blinked at the cost of the subway.
“We have to build. It goes back for decades and decades. Everyone talked about a Scarborough subway. No one would do anything. We still stepped up and did it,” the Premier said.
Ain’t no stoppin’ us now!
