Existing riders matter, but evidence based planning said that the original LRT plan was the appropriate solution.
Unfortunately, "evidence based" has become a code term for "tailored to the future density and not focused on helping the existing riders".
The subway may be a few minutes faster, but at the same time it leaves northeast Scarborough with no rapid transit and removes every stop in central Scarborough between Kennedy and STC. At Scarborough Centre, the station will be relocated to McCowan Rd which will destroy the elegant pedestrian connections that have existed for 30 years between the SRT, shopping mall, Civic Centre and Albert Campbell Square.
The location of STC subway station is not known at this point. If they are not going to build a station at McCowan and Lawrence, and not even going to rough it in, then there is no logical reason to run the subway under McCowan. They can select a shorter and cheaper route, running mostly under Brimley Rd.
In that case, the subway station can be placed very close to the Civic Centre, current bus terminal, and all other points of interest.
So while the LRT would have had two stations within STC plus a third one at Brimley in the future when the area develops, the new subway station will be well removed from the centre of STC and further away from all the condos that have developed there and to the west at Brimley.
The Brimley station is not included or funded as a part of the existing LRT plan, either.
If we are taking about a potential future station, we can as well consider a new LRT line in the E-W section of the former SRT corridor. That line can have a station at Brimley, as well as at Bellamy east of McCowan (another omission of the existing SLRT plan).
Such LRT line is not inconsistent with the subway extension. Of course, it will not run all the way to Kennedy and duplicate the subway; it will connect to SmartTrack's Agincourt or Ellesmere station in the west. In the east, it can run to Centennial Progress campus, and then have two branches, one to Malvern Centre and the other to UofT Scarborough.
This whole subway fiasco was never about building a transit system that works for Scarborough, it was all just for politics.
You can call it "fiasco" if it makes you feel better. You probably do not travel to Scarborough very often, and would not be a regular user of either SSE or SLRT.
But people who will ride the subway extension every day, are going to call it a major improvement.