When Toronto councillors voted in July 2016 in favour of the $3.35-billion, one-stop Scarborough subway over the LRT, the information they had about its design was exaggerated by city staff, rushed by consultants and based on hand-drawn sketches.The Star reviewed internal documents that warn of “time constraints” and “insufficient information,” staff reports, independent peer reviews and comments made by city staff to council before that key July vote.They show that city staff also significantly downplayed the progress of the seven-stop LRT alternative that was years ahead in the planning process.While city officials told council before the vote that the subway’s design was at “approximately” 5 per cent, work was not that far along, documents show. A project’s design is directly linked to its cost estimate.When taken together, the information provided by city staff cast the one-stop subway, which was ballooning in cost, in a more favourable light at a time when council was under pressure to choose the project promised by Mayor John Tory.They did so without seeing any study on whether the 6.2-kilometre subway extension was good value for money.“It’s deeply troubling that it appears that council and the public were told that a subway project practically drawn on the back of a napkin was as far along as the LRT plan that was supported by a 300-page environmental assessment,” Councillor Josh Matlow, who has long pushed for a network of LRTs in Scarborough that would put more people closer to rapid transit, told the Star. “Enough is enough.”All Toronto homeowners are on the hook for a special tax to fund the subway, from Kennedy Station to a new Scarborough Town Centre stop, for at least 30 years. The LRT would have been fully funded by the province.With an accurate cost of the Scarborough subway still unknown, and evidence that the project is not a worthwhile use of money, questions over d ...
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