Have you evenr had to travel from scarborough to downtown?
Have you ever had to travel 'long distances' on a streetcar/lrt?
Have you ever taken the Bloor subway from Yonge to Kennedy/warden/or even victoria park? - now imagine taking a street car to go those distances?
This argument that there isn't enough 'ridership' is such falacy that's been created by special interest groups backed by ideologically politics.
Bloor and yonge did not have the 'ridership' when it was built in the 50's, imagine having a queen/king like street car along those lines? this city would be gridlocked and constrained like no other (and we are already the longest commute in the city)
If you look at the traffic patterns of drivers, majority come out from the suburbs, if you give them an alternative, FAST mode of transport to their car, they will take it. In order to sustain the growth this city is expecting in the next 10/15 years, this city will need subways.
Infrastructure is built for the future, if you wait until there is enough 'ridership', you'll get the same and expensive mess that is the queen/king street cars (A DRL should have been built 10 years ago)
Transit city is more of a social enginnering experiment to create local neighbourhoods and communities. That's great and i'm all for it, but if you look at the traffic patterns and the locations of jobs, most of it is centralized in the core. This means that the majority of commuters must travel to the core, during work hours (obvious in our traffic patters between 7-9 and 4-7) and Transit city is not nearly a sufficient solution for these commuters (case study queen/king street cars, most have abandoned them for bikes instead)