Inside the Toronto mayoral campaign: A shiny new subway — and other transit promises you may have missed this week

It feels like not an hour went by this week without an announcement from a mayoral candidate (and there are now more than 70 running, blowing past the 2014 record of 65).

And with just under two months left to go, policy announcements big and small are piling up, though the underpinning details are often vague

This week appears to have had an unofficial transportation theme.

The SRT is being decommissioned at the end of the year and the earliest the subway extension replacement will be running is 2030. (This week Star columnist Matt Elliott traced the history of how we got to this point.) Meanwhile, plans for a dedicated busway have stalled for lack of funding, leaving Scarborough residents furious and facing (even more) hellish commutes. But fear not: the mayoral hopefuls have plans (or plans for plans).

Mitzie Hunter would pay for the busway from an as-yet unspecific transit reserve fund. Ana Bailão would immediately fund the preliminary work “while continuing efforts to secure funding from the province.” Josh Matlow has said he will soon be releasing a plan for Scarborough transit, and Brad Bradford has said Scarborough deserves a fair deal.

Olivia Chow said she’d fund the busway with the money saved by doing something Matlow has also announced he’d do — rebuilding the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway as a ground level boulevard.

Yes, the billion-dollars-and-counting project to restore the east section of the crumbling highway in the sky continues to loom over the mayoral race. Chow and Matlow would cancel the current plan to rebuild the eastern elevated section, including a ramp that connected to the Don Valley Parkway between Cherry Street and Logan Avenue.

But exactly how much that could save and how long it would take are unknown — just like the true cost of rebuilding it, since the cost estimates were done way back in 2016. The city has already flagged likely knock-on delays and a possible $340 million in throwaway costs if the plan was to change now. Next week, Matlow will be asking city council to approve a formal cost assessment.

Bradford, meanwhile, announced a “concrete plan” to speed up the eastern Gardiner rebuild by allowing 24/7 construction which he claims would cut the timeline by two years. (Under the current plan, no new construction is set to start until 2026 and to end in 2030). He also attacked noted NDP activist Chow for “caving to the demands of NDP activists” by vowing to reopen decisions made in 2015 and 2016.

Hunter made some massive transit promises this week. She’d revive plans for an unfunded Sheppard subway east extension but also extend it west. Her subway line would connect Line 4 to the new Scarborough Subway Extension in the east and to Sheppard West/Downsview on Line 1.

The plan includes extending past Don Mills station for four new stops (Consumers, Victoria Park, Warden, Birchmount) and a transfer point at Agincourt GO Station. Agincourt GO Station would be connected with two stops to Scarborough Town Centre. The line would connect to the Richmond Hill GO line at Leslie & Sheppard. And finally, it would extend west from Sheppard-Yonge station to Sheppard West/Downsview.

She estimates the eastern section would cost $5 billion and the western section $2 billion. The city would pay for the preliminary design and engineering from existing transit reserves, she said, but that amount and the rest of her detailed funding plan has yet to be revealed.

Torontonians weary from decades of unfulfilled subway promises (remember the mayoral election debut of SmartTrack in 2014?) will rightly be skeptical. Especially when the province liable to jump in at any time.

Hunter would also somehow spend $650 million from transit reserves on the $2-billion Waterfront LRT, another unfunded transit line. The province and federal government would, of course, have to agree to kick in the rest — adding to a long, long, long list of Toronto financial asks.

Not to mention, the TTC is currently cutting service (which several candidates have vowed to reverse). The agency is also allowing a state-of-good-repair backlog to balloon by several billions and needs more than $11 billion for unfunded capital projects over the next 10 years, begging the question of how this will all work.

Matlow would fund a redesign of the most dangerous intersections in Toronto to improve road safety and prevent deaths. Other candidates also have road changes in mind as the downtown core faces years of congestion during the construction of the Ontario line stations. Mark Saunders would “re-evaluate” the bike lanes on Adelaide and Richmond, and scrap the King Street priority streetcar corridor.

Bradford responded with the “King Street Express Zone.” Instead of diverting Queen streetcars onto Adelaide and Richmond to avoid the Yonge and Queen Ontario Line closure, he’d have the streetcars run along King as well from Spadina to Church. This would free up Adelaide and Richmond for car and bike traffic.

A small wrench: city council just approved a $40-million contract to speed up the installing the streetcar tracks on Adelaide to be ready in 10 months, and that work is underway. In the meantime, the Queen streetcars will run on Dundas.

Bradford has also focused on battling gridlock with a plan to appoint a “congestion relief commissioner” to co-ordinate all construction projects and increase traffic co-ordination.

Alyshah Hasham is a Toronto-based reporter covering city hall and municipal politics for the Star. Reach her via email: ahasham@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @alysanmati