Greetings, fellow Scarborough residents.
Scarborough’s beloved Rapid Transit line is no more. Last year’s derailment was the final straw. Kinda sad, actually. Yes, it was clunky compared to a subway, but it was a transit workhorse for Scarborough and we miss it.
Fortunately, the City has agreed to repurpose the decommissioned right of way as an express busway, which we really need. There are more buses on our roads now, carrying passengers who used to ride the SRT. It’s making our chronic traffic congestion even worse. So we all hope the work gets done soon.
Eventually, however, the Scarborough subway extension will open (planned for 2030 but none of us will be surprised if it’s later), connecting Kennedy station with Scarborough Town Centre and then north to McCowan & Sheppard. Once that happens, we won’t need the express busway anymore.
Then what?
We’ll have this magnificent public asset that is no longer needed as a transit line. What should we do?
The City could just demolish everything at a cost of $150M – $175M, as estimated by the TTC in 2018. It’s probably more than that now.
Or we could use our imagination. We can envision something new and bold; something special for Scarborough as a whole for generations to come.
That’s what we’re doing now. We’re looking at creating a “linear park” along the SRT line. Never heard of a linear park? Check Wikipedia, of course, and learn all about them.
SCRO and others have formed a steering committee to work on this, being led by the Institute for Inclusive Economies at U of T Scarborough.
UTSC has received funding to research and develop a linear park model for this space. We’ll be engaging researchers, planning professionals, and community leaders across North America where linear parks have already been successfully done.
Here are some examples: The High Line in New York City; the Belt Line in Atlanta; the Joe Louis Greenway in Detroit. Closer to home, we have the Kay Gardner Beltline Trail and even Scarborough’s own Meadoway. They’re all different, but they often have one thing in common: repurposing former railway transportation corridors for public benefit.
This past January, UTSC hosted a design charrette, involving Scarborough community leaders, local organizations, UTSC students and faculty, labour representatives, designers, planners, and business stakeholders to explore options along five themes: transportation, recreation, local economic development, arts & culture, and envisioning the RT line as an iconic destination.
The 31 page design charrette report was released by the Design Industry Advisory Committee on October 15 at UTSC to an enthusiastic group of almost one hundred community leaders and Scarborough politicians.
Want a quick video backgrounder? Take a look at: “Demolish or Reimagine? The Future of the Scarborough RT”. It’s a terrific four minute video that sums up what’s happened so far and where we go from here. It’s a “call to action” to all of us to make this happen, because there’s much more to be done to bring this project to life.
What would you like to see for this project? Let’s get the conversation started. Contact SCRO at scro.ca and click on “Contact Us”.
You can also sign up for updates from the City of Toronto at the SRT Future Use Initiative website.
In the coming months, SCRO and our partners will seek to ignite conversations across Scarborough, to get us excited about this project and imagine the possibilities for designing and building an iconic and vibrant community asset once this transit ribbon becomes a blank canvass.
Larry Whatmore
President
Scarborough Community Renewal Organization
https://www.scro.ca
Larry.Whatmore@rogers.com
(416) 562-2101
