Subways won’t win Rob Ford Scarborough votes

In a meeting room in Scarborough earlier this month, Mayor Rob Ford’s grand plan to ride to re-election on subway promises drift further off track.

It happened deep in the heart of Ford Nation, with a few dozen people gathered in Agincourt for an information session put on by CodeRedTO, a non-partisan group that’s been active throughout this year’s transit debate. They’ve supported light-rail lines in Toronto’s suburbs over the mayor’s wish for “subways, subways, subways.” (He really likes the word “subways.”)

The mayor and his allies have said that Scarborough doesn’t want the planned LRT lines, which recently won provincial support. But the reception from this Scarborough crowd wasn’t all righteous anger and fury. They were there to learn.

And so they listened as CodeRedTO founders Joe Drew and Cameron MacLeod walked through the pros and cons of LRT versus other modes of transit. They didn’t heckle or jeer when the TTC’s David Nagler gave a detailed explanation of the revived plan for Sheppard Avenue and the Scarborough RT corridor.

When it came time for questions, no one ranted or threatened to throw their chair. Many asked about neighbourhood impacts, an angle that mostly went unexplored during this winter’s heated council debate.

The most pointed comments related to the construction schedule. Thanks in part to Ford’s meddling, the Sheppard LRT construction will be delayed by four years and won’t be complete before the Scarborough RT shuts down. No one’s happy about that.

Some weren’t totally convinced that LRT was the right choice, but they were open to the ideas presented.  And most definitely weren’t ready to ditch an approved and funded plan in favour of a vague notion about building subways.

After the session “more than half the attendees stayed and simply talked to each other, discussing improving transit and the challenges involved,” MacLeod said. “No yelling, lots of smiles and handshaking.”

If this is the issue that’s supposed to inflame voters and win Rob Ford a second term, this crowd wasn’t showing it.

For their part, the CodeRedTO founders believe that most local residents just want to see something built in their neighbourhoods, having suffered for decades with packed buses and a Scarborough RT that frequently breaks down.

“Transit riders in Scarborough want something better than buses in mixed traffic,” Drew said. “Scarborough has been burned again and again by rapid transit lines that are announced and never built.”

And that’s really the nub of it. That Scarborough crowd had grown wise to empty promises. They’re not going to be taken by unfunded multi-billion dollar plans and repetitive slogans, no matter how hard the mayor tries. After all, they can’t ride to work on a slogan.

Read more from Matt Elliott on his blog, Ford For Toronto.