It's much easier when they don't have to work around traffic. They had to close all 4 corners of an intersection in different phases just to deck over a station. Half a year ago, some were worried that it's just an open pit.
I'll take what's happening on Eglinton over the 4 year mess on St Clair. Crosslinx is able to manage a lot more work all together than TTC ever did. Once it's done, I think it'll be good. You also realized the same companies who worked on the ION and Confederation Line are working on Eglinton and Finch. They aren't new to this LRT construction business. Those that the TTC contracted for St Clair were inexperience small/medium size businesses that ended up being a disaster. It's probably a good thing ML put an end to that and have the same guys do both lines.
Well what do you expect when the SOS group and Toronto Hydro held up work on this project?? Then the city itself screw things up by surveying the area wrong to the point a number of sections of tracks were off set by a foot or more including drainage. TTC had to bend rails around these areas to join the sections together. Have lots of photos for these areas
How the work was to be done and how it was done in phases ended up being backward. Then there was the waterlines that needed to be upgraded that wasn't part of the EA or work that force work to leap frog the areas or stop all together.
Dufferin intersection was partly rebuilt due lack of space for turns. Yonge St was another area that was change from the EA and the first area to see work until the court shut it down. There are a few other for various reasons that were better than plan or worse.
St Clair became the poster child to have all work done at the same time in place of 6 months here 1 year there and so on. There is more coordination taking place these days when one hand didn't know what the other was doing in the past and costing less money to do the work now. That shows up in the Crosstown Line work.
As for small companies working on St Clair, I don't know what you call EllisDon who screw up some of their work. The bulk of the work was done by one company who has and is doing most of TTC track work with very little issues. TTC had them jumping around out of phase a lots of time and delay finishing off areas later than sooner as plan. They did the Queensway. Then, TTC doesn't hire the contractors in the first place, the city does, with TTC being a sub to the contractor.
Clearly you have no understanding what size for construction companies are to be or who they should be. Makes no different in size where various trades come from Union Halls for doing various type of work. Union companies hire various crews out of Union halls and they have only so many to the point there isn't enough to go around to meet all the projects on the go at X time. Most contractors have a core of skill workers for various trades, as they end up over seeing workers out of the Union Halls or perform along with them.
How track is place across major intersections is similar to how TTC has been doing it for years, but very rarely they close the whole intersection down like ML is doing. Have no issue for either options, but full closure is the way to go. I will have to find time to watch how the work is taking place since its outside my travel zone.
