Executive committee pushes forward with Eglinton LRT extension to Malvern

By Momin Qureshi

Shovels are still years away from going into the ground and already plans for the Eglinton East LRT are expanding.

The mayor’s executive committee met on Monday to discuss the future of transit in Scarborough, and approved moving forward with extending the project.

City council has already approved the Eglinton LRT to go up to the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, but this new extension would now see the line end at Malvern.

Although funding has yet to be secured for the project, Mayor John Tory said currently there was money available for the planning and design phase of the extension and encouraged the executive committee to approve the plan.

“I’m confident that when all is said and done, we will have the money necessary. In fact, we must have the money necessary, to make sure those (projects) happen and they will happen,” Tory said.

“Between now and future years, the money will be available for them, as it must be.”

Tory also said that instead of going forward with the project as two separate plans, it should be put together and looked at as one total project.

“Staff are recommending that while we had always looked at the Eglinton LRT in two stages, we should in fact now move ahead with the planning of the entire line from Kennedy Station to the Malvern Town Centre,” Tory explained.

Tory said the benefit would be that when the time comes for city council to vote on the project, they could do it as one big item.

This comes as Coun. Josh Matlow’s motion to have a judicial inquiry into the building of the one-stop Scarborough subway was killed at the executive committee before it was even discussed.

“Mayor Tory’s decision to kill the request for an independent inquiry into serious questions regarding the Scarborough one-stop subway, and to not allow residents from being heard today, is shameful,” Matlow said in a tweet.

“I want council to put people, and facts, before their own political interests.”

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