Mayor John Tory is defending the one-stop Scarborough Subway extension ahead of a vote at council to deal with some of the logistics around it.

Speaking at a lunch with the Scarborough Business Association Monday, Tory said the city cannot continue to “re-litigate” every decision around transit.

Speaking to the crowd, Tory said that the vote at council Tuesday is on the alignment of the subway extension and whether to build an above-grade or below-grade bus terminal to support it. However he said that the vote is being used by subway opponents to reopen the entire issue.

“Debates on decisions like that – on those two very particular items – turn into yet another subway versus LRT vote because every time the subway issue comes back to council, the subway critics try to derail it,” Tory said.

The projected cost for the subway extension has ballooned from $2 billion in 2013 to $3.35 billion, prompting transit advocates and some members of council to call for a return to a previously overturned light rail plan that could provide many more stops at a fraction of the cost.

But speaking with reporters after the lunch, Tory said there needs to be a cap on where the debate ends.

“I just don’t think we can go on switching back and forth and back and forth and never accepting that any decision that’s taken is to be a decision to actually move forward,” Tory said.

“I believe that we have to move forward and build transit to Scarborough. We’ve got to build a lot of other transit in the city as well. Scarborough itself has a network transit plan that has to be built out and that starts with the SmartTrack.

“It goes on to the Scarborough-Bloor-Danforth subway extension and then on to the Scarborough East LRT. And then we move from there to projects that work is already being done on like the relief line and the waterfront LRT.”

Tory’s comments come as a new report based on research from Ryerson university suggests that commuters in Scarborough will face even longer bus trips than they currently do once the subway extension is completed.

At the same time, a meeting is being held tonight for subway and LRT advocates to debate the issue further. The meeting is being organized by a group which sees an LRT as a way to help Scarborough’s priority communities.

In his remarks to reporters, Tory said the danger of continuing to debate the issue is that nothing at all will get done.

“I’m just determined that I’m not going to fall into the trap that many of my predecessors fell into which is to end up your term with little to show in terms of catching up on the huge deficit we have for public transportation in this city, including Scarborough but not limited to Scarborough,” Tory said.

“We’re in a gigantic deficit in this city in terms of not having built the transit we need to build in this city when we were well able it seems to build condos and office towers and houses and now it’s time to catch up. It’s time to make big investments. They’re bold investments but they’re going to pay big dividends and it’s high time we did it.”