Most Scarborough residents will be on the bus longer with subway option, analysis finds
(The Star Movies)

Building a one-stop subway extension in Scarborough will leave most residents facing longer bus rides compared with the light-rail alternative, according to data analyzed by Ryerson University researchers.Despite subway advocates’ claims of substantial time savings — claims that have not, to date, been backed by evidence — the Ryerson analysis shows most transit users travelling to the proposed Scarborough Town Centre subway station would on average spend longer on the bus than they do today with the existing Scarborough RT and longer than if a seven-stop LRT were built instead.A transit user travelling from the area near the previously proposed LRT stop at Sheppard Ave. East and Markham Rd. would have to travel an additional 19 minutes by bus with the subway plan compared with the LRT option.Ryerson University associate professor Murtaza Haider, who specializes in transportation planning and statistical models, and research assistant Liam Donaldson used a standard transit planning method to calculate how long it would take a transit user to get between 123 different census tracts in Scarborough and the closest rapid transit station. The researchers performed this analysis using federal census data and publicly available data from Google for three scenarios: with the existing SRT; with a previously planned seven-stop LRT that was to be fully funded by the province; and with the planned $3.35-billion one-stop subway extension.They determined the average travel time by bus to the closest transit stop would be 20.5 minutes with the seven-stop LRT, 23.7 minutes with the existing SRT, and 27.3 minutes with the one-stop subway — meaning the average time spent on the bus with the subway option would be 6.8 minutes longer than with the LRT. Individual commutes could be longer or shorter than the average times.On average, a commuter would have to travel an additional 1.4 kilometres on the bus to get to the subway compared with the bus trip to ...