TTC board asks staff to look into busway along SRT right-of way until subway extension is completed

By: Chris Fox

The TTC board has voted unanimously in favour of a report that recommends shutting down the Scarborough RT in 2023 and replacing it with buses for at least seven years while the Line 2 subway extension is completed.

But they have also voted to ask staff to look into the feasibility of setting up a dedicated lane for buses along the SRT right-of-way with signal priority measures as part of their analysis into replacement transit service options.

Staff were considering three different options on what to do with the 30-year-old rapid transit line, including a partial overhaul that would have allowed it to remain in service until 2030.

Staff, however, ruled out another overhaul of the SRT in a report made public last week due to the costly price tag of $522.4 million and the “high risk of not achieving the required service reliability.”

Instead, staff recommended that the line be decommissioned in 2023 and that eight bus routes that currently terminate at Scarborough Centre Station be used to provide express service to Kennedy Station for at least seven years while the subway extension is completed.

They say that the switch to bus service will result in the commute from Scarborough Centre Station to Kennedy Station increasing from 10 minutes to 15 to 18 minutes on average.

However, the report makes clear that keeping the Scarborough RT in service until 2030 isn’t a realistic option due to the age of its vehicles, which reached the end of their life cycle a decade ago.

At today’s meeting, TTC board members heard from a number of community members about the impact of losing rapid transit in the corridor, many of whom urged the committee to consider a dedicated right-of way for buses.

“As a commuter, it is already very difficult travelling in Scarborough in comparison to to other communities because of the long bus wait times and it is clear as day that the TTC has prioritized every other community and neighbourhood and that is not OK,” Sarah Abdillahi, who is the president of the student union at University of Toronto Scarborough, said. “That is why when you folks are replacing the SRT with a different service, I want you to seriously consider the residents of Scarborough and students like me who commute to Scarborough every single day. We want you to install a dedicated bus lane so that the buses will more closely match the speed and capacity that the SRT currently provides.”

“We fear that with the shutdown of the SRT and the additional buses competing with traffic will create massive delays,” secondary school student Zain Khurram added. “For this reason I call on the TTC board to urge the TTC to create and implement a BRT (bus rapid transit) lane for the buses to operate on.”

The Scarborough RT has been running since 1985 and had carried 35,000 customers a day before its ridership took a hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two bus options proposed by staff would cost $357 million and $374 million, respectively.

Both would rely on the same routes to provide supplemental service, but one would see the TTC immediately purchase 60 additional buses and the other would see the TTC utilize vehicles from its existing fleet until 2027.

It is not clear how much a dedicated bus lane would cost the TTC.

"We have to make the very best and suit as many needs as possible in the replacement bus network that we put together. So, we're hoping for the best advice possible to make that work," said Councillor Shelley Caroll, who is also a member of the TTC Board.

Jamaal Myers with the Scarborough Transit Action said the decision is a huge blow to the community.

"Just to put this in context, once the SRT is decommissioned, there will be no rapid transit for all of Scarborough, east of Kennedy station. That's a huge area," Myers said in an interview with CP24.

"And a lot of the neighbourhoods that are being left out are neighbourhood improvement areas with high racialized populations and high areas of low-income residents."

It is also a slap in the face for many essential workers in Scarborough who rely on transit to get to work, Myers said.

"These people that are currently using Scarborough's transit system are the essential workers that allow the rest of us to work from home," he said.

"And then now they're being told that they're going to have to deal with really substandard transit for the next seven-plus years when the SRT is decommissioned."