Update on Metrolinx Transit Expansion Projects

Mayor and Members
Toronto Executive Committee
via email to: Cathrine Regan
Committee Secretary
exc@toronto.ca


RE: EX25.5 Update on Metrolinx Transit Expansion Projects - Second Quarter 2021


Dear Mayor Tory and Member of Executive Committee:


Staff tell you on page 15 of their report that they support the Durham Scarborough BRT.


We are writing to tell you the people of Highland Creek do not support it.


I am writing to you as President of the Highland Creek Community Association. Our Executives asked Mr. Douglas Phillips to study and understand what this project is all about.
Mr. Phillips and his team of volunteers have been working on this since September 2019. They have attended several meetings, read reports, written letters, and tried to work with Metrolinx and get answers from them. Studies have been promised, but nothing completed yet.
Highland Creek is a residential community, with only two small plazas, no high-rises, and no commercial businesses. It has many mature and beautiful trees, and its properties are well maintained.
The team’s conclusion: Metrolinx, aided and abetted by your staff, are bound and determined to push their busway 2.7 kilometers straight down the middle of Ellesmere Road, with raised concrete curbing on both sides, all the way through the Highland Creek Community from Military Trail to Kingston Road, dividing our community in two. This is a dangerous and extremely costly project. It is totally unacceptable. It is not needed and unnecessary.
The Highland Creek CA Executive joined Mr. Phillips and his team’s conclusion: this project must be stopped. The Community put together a door-to-door campaign and contacted every household in Highland Creek asking residents for their comments.
The Community unanimously said: ‘STOP THE DSBRT BUSWAY’.

The 550 ‘Yellow Pins’ on this air photo are households all across Highland Creek who took the time to fill in and return a ballot to us stating their opposition to the Busway.

Over 300 Highland Creek Residents asked for and have put out a lawn sign or banner to voice their opposition.

NO BRT ON ELLESMERE

Over 1,300 people have signed our on-line Petition.

Mayor and Members: The people who live in Highland Creek do not want your Busway.

They do not want ‘No Left-Hand Turns’ from their homes, their library, their community park, and their local side streets which would all be cut off permanently by the concrete barrier. This plan would highly impede emergency vehicles.

The busway your staff supports brings absolutely zero benefits to the people of Highland Creek:

We have been told that even after you build the busway, the TTC’s York Mills bus will continue to run in the curb lane. We will get to watch Durham buses run down the middle of Ellesmere Road taking

University students to class...MAYBE saving them 60-90 seconds in their daily commute from Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax, and Pickering for the two or three years they go to classes.

Mayor and Members:

The Community supports the U of T Scarborough Campus.

There are already several GO/TTC bus services direct to the U of T campus.

Nobody in the right mind will take this proposed BRT from Oshawa through 40 stops to the U of T!

Metrolinx already operates buses from Durham Region along Hwy. 401 to Scarborough Centre and beyond to the Finch Subway Station. Add one more stop at the U of T: use Morningside, problem solved!

• Zero cost.

• Zero trees cut down.

• Zero private property expropriations.

• Zero driveways cut off.

• Zero public streets cut off.

• No library or park cut off.

• AND Durham residents could get service right to the front doors of the Pan-Am Centre much easier/faster/safer than what Metrolinx and your staff support.

Mayor and Members: The message from the people of Highland Creek could not be clearer:

NO BUSWAY THROUGH HIGHLAND CREEK.

Yours truly,


David Anderson, President 

Douglas Phillips, Chair

DSBRT Committee
Highland Creek Community Association 

cc:

Gary Anandasangaree MP – Scarborough-Rouge Park gary.anand@parl.gc.ca

Vijay Thanigasalam MPP – Scarborough -Rouge Park vijay.thanigsalam@pc.ola.org

Mike Adler – Scarborough Mirror madler@toronto.com