Mayoral candidates Olivia Chow and Doug Ford both took aim at John Tory’s SmartTrack plan at separate news conferences Monday morning.
While speaking to reporters beside the GO Transit tracks on the Stouffville Line in Scarborough, Chow called Tory’s transit promises “blatantly wrong.”
“Mr. Tory's claim that he can do his scheme on 90 per cent of existing tracks is blatantly wrong. It is misleading,” Chow said, surmising that 50 per cent would be a more realistic estimate.
“Well if you look behind me, there is one track and he said he needs to do it both ways every 15 minutes. Obviously we need at least another track on here for it to work.”
Chow said Tory’s plan would also have a significant impact on homes in the Scarborough area.
“There are houses all along this Stouffville Line and the home owners are horrified that they would either have to be expropriated and these houses demolished, which Mr. Tory won’t tell people ... Or he won’t be able to do this line at all,” she said.
“He does not deserve your trust… he is not honest in saying that he can actually get this scheme built.”
Outside the Danforth GO Transit station this morning, Doug Ford also slammed SmartTrack and John Tory’s credibility, calling the candidate a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“He misled the people on his map making it look like the Main Street and Danforth Station’s GO train and the subways connect,” Ford told reporters, noting that there is some distance between the two stops.
“Well we are here at the Danforth Go Station and I want to know, is John Tory going to tunnel, is he going to build a bridge, is he going to get a jet pack?”
After receiving an endorsement from Liberal MPP Mario Sergio at a news conference Monday, Tory addressed the criticism and accused the pair of playing politics.
“Mr. Ford and Ms. Chow are trying to find every reason they can to say no. It is a political competition so they are trying to discredit my platform,” Tory said.
“The bottom line is, we talked specifically on the day we launched SmartTrack about the fact that there would have to be some double tracking done in order to make sure these trains could move properly on the eastern side.”
