The SRT alignment isn't practical for the subway. I dunno how many times this needs to be posted. There are just too many obstacles. First you have to figure out the curve north from Kennedy, then you have to build a new tunnel at Ellesmere & Midland, and then you have to figure out where subway tracks fit in between the Lawrence Avenue bridge and the new Go Train station. And there are also the opportunity costs - it eliminates the potential for a future stop at Lawrence & McCowan and complicates the possibility of a connection to the SELRT whenever that ends up being built. It's not happening.
Really? Figuring out the curve north of Kennedy and building a new tunnel at Ellsemere & Midland is worth spending billions more on a McCowan alignment? It isn't worth studying for a fair pros/cons analysis with alternative options?
Scarborough wants a subway and STC is the hub not Sheppard. The missed opportunities are unfortunate, but are things that should be weighed in a pro/con analysis. As others said, the SSE-McCowan is coming to upwards of $3.4 Billion.
That is why I saw the connected SRT with ECLRT as the optimal solution. The SRT would have cut diagonally through Scarborough from Malvern to STC to Kennedy Station to Vic Park to Don Mills. That serves a very big chunk of Scarborough. It also provides more reason to built the DRL to Eglinton. With this everything would be 1 transfer away from Scarborough. Can transfer to B-D (for Yorkville or U of T north) or Markham GO RER (for Union), or transfer to DRL (for City Hall / Financial), or transfer to Yonge (another route downtown), or transfer to Spadina (for U of T south, Hospital Row, or less crowded route downtown). This option would have been by far the best solution for Scarborough.
We must admit though, that Metrolinx has carried the current ECLRT project too far to switch to this solution. So the obvious answer is to do the planned subway extension.
Definitely the ideal plan. Plus it would have justified grade-separating Leslie, and we could have had split services heading to STC and to Malvern via Crosstown East.
Unfortunately, I believe you are a correct that it is too late now to change plans.
This map is by no means an indicator that we shouldn't be building rapid transit to our inner suburbs. Its quite the opposite. Its shows we have two separate needs, one of growth and one of decay which both need to be addressed simultaneously
Population is decreasing, therefore we need to expand transit services. Something does not compute there.
You are falling for the same tired 'logic' that transit expansion drives land-use change and population growth. It does not. Decades of studies have shown that to be empirically false across North America. Rapid transit is but one of many many factors that influence long-term growth and revitalization of areas.
It needs to be said that Scarborough is not currently 'lacking' for public transit. Yes, it does not have a subway. But it has a rapid transit like in the SRT (with all of it's flaws), alongside a great number of bus routes on it's arterials with high frequency and reliability. Yes, the bus routes are inadequate and unreliable compared to Toronto standards, but it is still rather continentally unique in their frequency and reliability, especially so when compared to other (sub)urban areas of Scarborough's build form in North America. You might laugh, but other cities send their transit planners to Toronto to study how well our bus routes serve people in suburbs like Scarborough.
Public transit (as inadequate as it may be) is not absent from Scarborough, and yet it is still in a state of 'decay' to use your words. There is zero indication to support the idea that a lack of public transit is responsible for this decay, or that upgrading to rapid transit would change that trend.
We can discuss of course what can be done with Scarborough's present land uses to stop this 'decay', but it starts with an admittance that it won't be singlely solved by building a (poorly-thought out, political) subway.