It's no surprise that the delays center around the tunnel along the Ottawa River, which is a soggy mess of gravel, silt and fill. A few years back, the magical-thinking hundred days solution determined that building a tunnel here would cost no more than laying track at grade, or slightly below, along a largely unused stretch of river bank more than 250 feet wide. (Sound familiar, Etobicoke?) The bids came in wildly above the estimates, and the scheduled handover date is now 3 years behind what the procurement estimates had been. Of course no one could have anticipated the effects of the pandemic on the supply chain, but it's notable that the eastern part of the expansion, which is much less reliant on huge spatial interventions and massive amounts of reinforced concrete, is only about a month behind. As long as we keep opting for maximal constructions and high costs to benefit, this is what we can expect to see.
