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Previous versions of the plan had the line travelling beneath Yonge Street and included up to six stations. A report released Thursday by Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency, shows the province is advancing an eight-kilometre version that would have just four stations, and south of Highway 407 would veer east to emerge north of Holy Cross Cemetery and run above ground parallel to the existing Richmond Hill GO Transit corridor.

The Star reported last June that Metrolinx was considering an above-ground route for the extension in order to reduce costs.

The new version of the plan would include an underground station at Steeles Avenue, on Toronto’s border with Markham and Vaughan, and two above-ground stops: one wedged between Highway 7 and Highway 407 called Bridge station, and another near Richmond Hill Centre, at High Tech Road.

The province has budgeted $5.6 billion for the extension, and with those three stops the project would cost about $5.2 billion. That would leave enough financial room to build one additional underground stop at either Cummer, Clark or Royal Orchard, each of which would cost between $400 million to $500 million. Further study will determine the location of the fourth station.

“As we continue to keep up with tremendous growth in pc28����and York Region, our government is delivering on our plan to provide people with access to faster, more reliable transit to get them where they need to go,” said Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney in a news release.

In a statement, Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti, a major booster of the extension project, said the Metrolinx report “is another positive step towards building Markham and York Region’s top transit infrastructure priority.” But he said he would push Metrolinx to add stations back to the plan and build stops at both Clark and Royal Orchard.

Markham Ward 1 Councillor Keith Irish criticized the revised route as a “disservice” to his constituents because he said it will require digging beneath a residential neighbourhood east of Yonge to reach the rail corridor. He said residents are worried about the “disruption” caused by construction and train operations under their homes.

Irish also questioned why Metrolinx plans to build the Bridge and High Tech stations just 400 metres apart at the north of the eight-kilometre extension. The result will be long gaps between the other stops, depending on where the yet-to-be determined fourth station is located.

Irish said it would be better to build one station instead of two at the north end of the line, and use the savings to build additional stops further south.

“It just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me,” he said of Metrolinx’s plan.

A spokesperson for Metrolinx said the subway tunnel will be deep enough to avoid direct impacts on homes, and the Bridge and High Tech stations are intended to serve projected population increases at Langstaff Gateway and Richmond Hill Centre, which are designated urban growth centres.

The Yonge extension has been under consideration for more than a decade, and Premier Doug Ford included it in the $28.5-billion transit expansion plan he unveiled in April 2019. The premier pegged the cost at $5.6 billion, but by the time the Ontario government took over subway planning from the city of pc28����in October of that year, the TTC estimated the cost of the fully-below ground version at about $9 billion.

Even with the cost-cutting measures in the scaled-back plan released Thursday, the project is not yet fully funded, and the Ontario PC government is seeking a commitment of more than $2 billion from the federal government.

Metrolinx hopes to start construction on the extension by late 2023 and complete it by 2029 or 2030.

Although the agency predicts the project will be a “transformative” one that will save passengers 22 minutes on a trip from Langstaff Road to downtown Toronto, bring 26,000 residents within walking distance of a subway stop, and attract more than 94,000 daily riders by 2041, the extension will under-perform on one key economic metric.

Metrolinx expects that every $1 spent on the project will generate just 79 cents of economic benefits. The agency’s planning guidelines say that for a transit project to be considered economically viable it should have a return of greater than $1 for every dollar spent.