Toronto Crosstown LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | Arcadis

[Allandale25]

A few more details in this. No time to parse them out at the moment. cc @Northern Light

'Progress is relentless': Still no opening date for Eglinton Crosstown LRT

Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster said progress on the Eglinton Crosstown project has stabilized adding that a couple of significant milestones have been achieved

toronto.citynews.ca

 

[Northern Light]

A few more details in this. No time to parse them out at the moment. cc @Northern Light

'Progress is relentless': Still no opening date for Eglinton Crosstown LRT

Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster said progress on the Eglinton Crosstown project has stabilized adding that a couple of significant milestones have been achieved

toronto.citynews.ca

I don't think there's much that's new there, beyond what's been posted. I suppose we got that 'Yonge' is one of the outstanding occupancy permits.

 

[generalcanada]

“One of the most important milestones was at the end of July. For four consecutive days we operated 75 per cent of the fleet, which delivers the service level six that we’ll have on opening day, eight hours a day, relentlessly, to check that the infrastructure is ready for the next stage which is so important which is operator driver training for the TTC,” said Verster. “It wasn’t perfection – there were still issues with the signalling and control system – but all of the important infrastructure held up to the extent that the TTC and ourselves were satisfied to start operator driver training.”

 

[cplchanb]

I can't find a YouTube livestream video of today's press conference related to OL station construction, but the media naturally asked about Crosstown and here is what Phil Verster said. Unfortunately, without the video we don't have the verbatim quotes cc @Northern Light

• NEW: Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster says they are “relentlessly progressing” towards an opening date for the Eglinton LRT. Verster says there have been some “significant milestones” and they are now in the 4th week of operator driver training.
• 36/40 occupancy permits have now been issued, Verster says, but he is not giving us a date for the opening of the LRT. Verster said “speculating on a date creates fictitious deadlines.”
• Verster says speculation on dates “gets us into a messy place.”He says the province “will declare a date as soon as we can”
• We asked Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria about specific accountability measures the Ford government has taken with Metrolinx re: Eglinton LRT. The minister says the gov’t has taken “learnings” and changed its process. But no accountability actions taken.

^ Tweets from Colin D'Mello

honestly by giving no deadlines Verster is allowing contractors to go carte blanche on their construction schedules. they are under no pressure to deliver on time since their opening date goals are secret from the main stakeholders of this project: the public.
verster needs to be relieved of duty after this project is finished. he is at fault for most of these delays.

 

[nfitz]

verster needs to be relieved of duty after this project is finished.

After? So a few more years yet.

 

[cplchanb]

After? So a few more years yet.

unfortunately it would actually do more harm than good at this stage to fire him. short of a major scandal you cant afford to fire the ceo at a critical juncture, its like the leafs letting go of the GM and head coach during the middle of the stanley cup playoffs. these things are done afterwards.

 

[generalcanada]

honestly by giving no deadlines Verster is allowing contractors to go carte blanche on their construction schedules. they are under no pressure to deliver on time since their opening date goals are secret from the main stakeholders of this project: the public.
verster needs to be relieved of duty after this project is finished. he is at fault for most of these delays.

remember, just because they dont have public dates, doesnt mean that there are no actual completion dates.

 

[nfitz]

unfortunately it would actually do more harm than good at this stage to fire him. short of a major scandal you cant afford to fire the ceo at a critical juncture, its like the leafs letting go of the GM and head coach during the middle of the stanley cup playoffs. these things are done afterwards.

I disagree. It's like MLSE letting go of their CEO and president - Keith Pelley.

Verster does nothing day-to-day. They lose nothing on this projct with him gone, and have everything to gain on this project.

 

[cplchanb]

remember, just because they dont have public dates, doesnt mean that there are no actual completion dates.

yea but who holds them accountable if the ones that make the deadlines allow for it to slip or such a low bar deadline that if scrutinised would be almost scandalous?
dont forget this is a public project, and the lack of transparency and moving goalposting is really driving a nerve on everyone

 

[cplchanb]

I disagree. It's like MLSE letting go of their CEO and president - Keith Pelley.

Verster does nothing day-to-day. They lose nothing on this projct with him gone, and have everything to gain on this project.

well in this case his lieutenants can also join him too in the unemployment line. they need to really clean up shop after this project is done.

 

[generalcanada]

yea but who holds them accountable if the ones that make the deadlines allow for it to slip or such a low bar deadline that if scrutinised would be almost scandalous?
dont forget this is a public project, and the lack of transparency and moving goalposting is really driving a nerve on everyone

yea but then that's 2 different things.

"they're not holding contractors to the construction schedules and responsible for the delays

"they're not giving the public any construction estimates"

You can be mad about the transparency, but that's not on Verster, its on Ford muzzling the entire agency.

Remember it was Ford preventing an opening day from being announced a year ago

 

[Rainforest]

I don't really understand the comparison here. Lots of people are very frustrated with slow zones or other limitations on line 1. They don't suggest rebuilding line 1 because that is obviously not the solution to the problem, maintenance and modernization is, and that is clearly on the long-term agenda!

Even with theoretically perfect operation and maintenance there are non-trivial capacity and speed limitations to road median tramways that grade separation potentially addresses. Whether you think that eventually will/should happen is another thing that I don't really care to argue about, but it's clearly not unorthodox. The first ttc subways were themselves built to replace streetcar lines. And the SSE most recently was always premised on ripping up the RT. Transit infrastructure is often iterative, this seems rather uncontroversial to me

I can't predict what happens 50 or 70 years from now. Maybe, Eglinton LRT will be replaced by a subway, or by a yet-unknown new transit technology.

My post was in response to suggestions that the eastern section of ECLRT needs to be rebuilt soon after opening, or disconnected from the grade-separate section and operated separately, etc. I don't believe such actions are needed, and don't see them happening.

 

[Chris R.]

I know the Crosstown is all doom and gloom (rightfully so) but this was a sexy night video I saw on Instagram:

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