{"id":343046,"date":"2025-10-30T11:49:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T11:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/343046\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T11:49:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T11:49:23","slug":"anatomy-of-a-mislaid-railway-how-the-eglinton-crosstown-lrt-went-so-wrong-for-so-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/343046\/","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a mislaid railway: How the Eglinton Crosstown LRT went so wrong, for so long"},"content":{"rendered":"

The eventual outcome on Eglinton, Mr. Miller charges, was predictable: The TTC had built and run all of the city\u2019s subways and streetcar lines for a century; Metrolinx, which the province created in 2006 to draft a regional transit masterplan and run its GO Transit commuter bus and rail lines, had at the time barely built anything at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have an agency that was a planning agency oversee the largest [P3] proposal in the history of Canada, it\u2019s madness,\u201d he said of the Metrolinx takeover. \u201cIt just made no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Miller also says the Eglinton fiasco is the end result of what he says has been a growing provincial desire in recent decades \u2013 shared by both the previous Liberals, and Mr. Ford\u2019s current PCs \u2013 to meddle in things the former mayor believes should be best left to the city government.<\/p>\n

The premier\u2019s pledge to fund all of Transit City would not last.<\/p>\n

In 2010, amid the fallout of the global financial crisis, Mr. McGuinty would partially renege, chopping his pledged billions for the new LRTs in half and prompting the TTC to halt its imminent move to seek bidders to build the Eglinton line. Later that year, the TTC and Metrolinx would agree on today\u2019s shortened, 19-kilometre Eglinton line, pledging to have it done by 2020.<\/p>\n

Mr. Miller said that if the TTC had been able to get a Crosstown contract signed before the province cut its funding, it would have been harder for Mr. McGuinty, and Mr. Miller\u2019s successors at City Hall, to keep redrawing the plans.<\/p>\n

And redraw them they did.<\/p>\n

After Mr. Miller chose not to run for a third term, he was replaced by Rob Ford, the current premier\u2019s now-deceased brother.<\/p>\n

Rob Ford had campaigned as a culture warrior against surface light-rail, blaming it for taking up traffic lanes, while intoning a mantra of \u201cSubways! Subways! Subways!\u201d He scrapped the Transit City plans on his first day in office in December 2010, and vowed to bury the entire Eglinton line, which would have added billions to the cost.<\/p>\n

But his city council rebelled and reinstated the more affordable, partially tunnelled proposal for Eglinton in 2012.<\/p>\n

\"Eglinton
\n In 2016, a worker looks down into where the LRT trains will enter and exit the tunnel. When Rob Ford became mayor in 2010, he moved to have the entire line buried, but that decision was reversed a couple years later.<\/p>\n

Fred Lum\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t only Mr. Miller who advocated against a Metrolinx takeover to install a P3. Behind the scenes, engineers and transit officials were also engaged in their own tug-of-war.<\/p>\n

A TTC staff report from May 2012 is eerily prescient.<\/p>\n

The TTC asked a panel of experts with the American Public Transit Association to look over the province\u2019s plans. Prominent transit authority executives, who had overseen major subway and LRT projects in New York City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, took part.<\/p>\n

They concluded that Metrolinx\u2019s promised 2020 completion date was \u201cextremely challenging\u201d and \u201cunrealistic,\u201d with 2022-23 being more likely. The report also warned of \u201cuncertainty\u201d around the purported advantages of the P3 model, which had rarely been used for large transit projects \u2013 although Vancouver\u2019s Canada Line, completed on time in 2009, in time for the Winter Olympics the following year, was a P3.<\/p>\n

(Later in 2012, the City of Ottawa would sign it\u2019s own ill-fated LRT P3, which would be plagued by delays and shutdowns after opening day \u2013 shadows that account for Metrolinx\u2019s reluctance to rush opening the Crosstown without extensive testing.)<\/p>\n

The TTC report also predicted that the province\u2019s Eglinton plan would cause \u201cdisproportionate disruption\u201d to neighbourhoods along the route, and didn\u2019t allow enough time for potential contract changes, the complexities of relocating water and gas pipes or the building of a massive interchange station at Yonge Street.<\/p>\n

\"A
\n \"Commuters<\/p>\n

The construction of the LRT,
\n shown here in 2018, disrupted the neighbourhoods along Eglinton for years.
\n The construction of the LRT,
\n shown here in 2018, disrupted the neighbourhoods along Eglinton for years.<\/p>\n

Mark Blinch and Fred Lum\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Plus, the panel said that such a large contract as the Crosstown\u2019s may make true competitive bids unlikely as few companies are big enough to take it on. Just two consortiums would later bid on the project.<\/p>\n

There were other warnings about P3s that the province ignored, including from its Auditor-General, who in 2014 reviewed 74 of Infrastructure Ontario\u2019s P3 projects and concluded they would have collectively cost $8-billion less if they had been handled by the public sector in the conventional way. <\/p>\n

Clive Thurston, head of the Ontario General Contractors Association at the time, was involved in the release of a 2013 report by an umbrella group called the Construction and Design Alliance of Ontario that warned that the mega-sized Eglinton tender would squeeze out smaller, local companies. The report said that bundling the contract together was dampening competition and could add an estimated $500-million to the cost of the project. <\/p>\n

Mr. Thurston also says he made his case in meetings with ministers and officials, arguing that the contract should be chopped into smaller chunks, but got nowhere, and so went public and took his concerns in 2013 to the media.<\/p>\n

He said the government\u2019s clear shift towards P3s, and the powerful private-sector lobby for them \u2013 backed by Bay Street and big industry players \u2013 was just too strong.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships, an industry association that has promoted P3s since the 1990s, even gave the Crosstown project a \u201cgold\u201d award for \u201cproject finance\u201d at their annual gala dinner in 2015, an event usually attended by prominent businesspeople and politicians.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018We told you so\u2019 just doesn\u2019t seem to cut it,\u201d Mr. Thurston said in a recent interview. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of satisfactory to know we were right. But so what? Nobody listened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metrolinx and Crosslinx lock into legal battles<\/p>\n

In 2015, then-Ontario transportation minister Steven Del Duca, now the mayor of Vaughan, announced that the P3 Crosstown contract, worth (at the time) $9.1-billion, had been awarded to Crosslinx, for the line and all its systems and stations, and 30 years of maintenance. (The tunnels had been dug beforehand, with separate contracts.)<\/p>\n

The consortium includes the former SNC-Lavalin \u2013 now known as AtkinsR\u00e9alis \u2013 as well as other major construction and infrastructure players Aecon, EllisDon and ACS-Dragados. The completion date was also pushed to 2021.<\/p>\n

The problems started almost immediately. Crosslinx submitted its own designs for stations and sections of the line 12 to 18 months late.<\/p>\n

There were also \u2013 unnecessary in hindsight \u2013 concerns and a court battle with delay-plagued Bombardier over whether it would be able to deliver the line\u2019s fleet of vehicles in time for opening day.<\/p>\n

(In recent testing, these same vehicles \u2013 some of which are now a decade old \u2013 have had problems with brake pad wear, and ventilation and communication systems, hampering Eglinton\u2019s progress.)<\/p>\n

\"The
\n Bombardier\u2019s delay in the manufacturing of the LRT\u2019s
\n fleet of vehicles caused concern, but that was before the entire project\u2019s deadline was
\n extended.
\n Tijana Martin\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long after the 2017 appointment of former ScotRail Alliance managing director Phil Verster to the top job at Metrolinx that relations between the agency and Crosslinx would become confrontational, and end up in court \u2013 with Mr. Verster responding with pointed, public criticism of the consortium.<\/p>\n

He quit last December and was replaced by Mr. Lindsay, who had run Infrastructure Ontario since 2020. Mr. Verster, whose salary had risen to more than $880,000 a year by his departure, did not respond to LinkedIn messages requesting comment for this story.<\/p>\n

A source familiar with the inner workings of the project said that Metrolinx under Mr. Verster had put itself on what amounted to a war footing, sending Crosslinx hundreds of formal notices alleging it had failed to adhere to parts of the contract instead of taking a more collaborative approach to fixing the various problems that emerged during construction. The Globe is not identifying the source as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the project.<\/p>\n

Tensions boiled over in the summer of 2018 when Crosslinx hit back in a court filing alleging that the delays plaguing the project were due to utility work beyond its control and the sluggish pace of government permits and approvals.<\/p>\n

Metrolinx would later have to hand over $237-million to settle the fight, as revealed in a report on the mess from the province\u2019s Auditor-General that also said the agency had \u201climited remedies\u201d under the terms of the contract.<\/p>\n

In another legal battle in 2020, this time over Metrolinx\u2019s decision to deny that the COVID-19 pandemic constituted an emergency under the contract, a judge sided with Crosslinx, saying the provincial agency\u2019s approach was \u201cneither a fair nor reasonable approach.\u201d This time the settlement cost Metrolinx another $325-million, with the opening date pushed to 2023.<\/p>\n

But in April of that year, then-transportation minister Caroline Mulroney announced that the consortium had \u201cno credible schedule\u201d for completion of the project. Mr. Verster said there were 260 \u201cquality issues\u201d that remained outstanding, including mislaid tracks, but did not release a public list.<\/p>\n

Crosslinx would hit back with yet another legal filing that May, blaming \u201cundue interference\u201d from the TTC, which is to operate the line. In a public statement, Mr. Verster dismissed the lawsuit as a delay tactic.<\/p>\n

\"The
\n \"Technicians<\/p>\n

The Eglinton Crosstown\u2019s
\n tracks and stations, shown here in 2021, have been completed for a while, but testing of
\n the line was still needed. Eglinton\u2019s shorter sister line on Finch Avenue West, also a
\n P3 and well behind schedule, could open sooner than the Crosstown, even though
\n construction only started in 2019.
\n The Eglinton Crosstown\u2019s
\n tracks and stations, shown here in 2021, have been completed for a while, but testing of
\n the line was still needed. Eglinton\u2019s shorter sister line on Finch Avenue West, also a
\n P3 and well behind schedule, could open sooner than the Crosstown, even though
\n construction only started in 2019.<\/p>\n

Christopher Katsarov\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

The consortium, under fire but barred by its contract from speaking to the media to defend itself, decided to break those terms and give a Toronto Star reporter a tour of the nearly complete line in 2023.<\/p>\n

EllisDon president CEO Geoff Smith, who is now the company\u2019s executive chairman, told The Star that the relationship with Metrolinx was \u201cbroken.\u201d He said both sides had underestimated the transit line\u2019s vast complexity, and that this kind of project can \u201cthreaten companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan Sperling, a spokesperson for Crosslinx, declined to comment for this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The eventual outcome on Eglinton, Mr. Miller charges, was predictable: The TTC had built and run all of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":343047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8837,2147,168971,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-343046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-appwebview","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-exclude-body","11":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115462968142766677","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}