Not sure what it is with Conservatives and their aversion to facts. If it's not Donald Trump stopping the EPA from using science to make decisions, it's John Tory and his cadre of ne'er do wells blocking a perfectly reasonable "apples to apples" business case comparison of the LRT network vs. a one-stop subway.
The vote comes amidst lingering confusion about the impact of the subway extension as far as ridership and time savings are concerned. The debate has been hamstrung, largely by the spread of misinformation by pro-subway councillors.
Mayor Tory has claimed in recent weeks, for example, that the subway extension will shave 15 to 20 minutes off the commute for Scarborough residents.
That would be nice, but those numbers are fictions, calculated only on the pseudo-science of feelings and intuition. No study has vindicated these claims; no study has replicated the findings of Tory’s time riding the rails between Scarborough Town Centre and Kennedy station. Other estimates border on the absurd: Councillor Neethan Shan (Ward 42, Scarborough-Rouge River) suggested that savings upwards of 40 minutes were possible with a single subway stop.
The facts don’t bear this out: Andy Byford confirmed that not a single bus ride carrying commuters to Scarborough Town Centre would be shortened. A representative from the TTC, when questioned, suggested that with lengthened bus routes, preliminary calculations showed savings of about two minutes. Moreover, a recent Ryerson University study showed that commuters will spend more time busing with the extension plan.
I'm not sure what it is with these people...maybe they think reality has a "liberal bias" or something? Or maybe they should realize that their "ideology" is garbage and they can believe what they want about finance, the economy, the environment, etc...but clearly whatever they believe doesn't hold up to independant scrutiny and that's causing them to wage war on the one thing we need to make sure we aren't screwing up life as we know it: facts.
KB