TTC warns more time needed on Eglinton LRT construction
A panel of leading North American transit and construction experts is casting doubt on the province’s ambitious promise to complete the Eglinton LRT by 2020 using a public-private partnership.
That schedule “seems unrealistic,” according to a committee assembled by the American Public Transit Association at the request of the TTC.
Its preliminary report will be part of a long-awaited update about the four Toronto LRT projects at the Toronto Transit Commission meeting on Wednesday.
The TTC’s role in managing construction of LRTs on Eglinton, Finch, Sheppard and the Scarborough RT has been simmering for about two years, since Metrolinx put Infrastructure Ontario in charge of building the provincially funded $8.4-billion projects.
Although the TTC has a consultative role and is expected to operate the lines, including Eglinton when it opens in 2020, its managers say they have no real authority over how the project is built and fear they will be on the hot seat for community complaints they can’t solve.
“What’s the TTC going to do? We’re going to man the community offices to clean the blood off the floor,” said one senior official, who acknowledged that no matter who is in charge, a certain amount of community disruption is inevitable.
TTC chair Karen Stintz said it’s not clear what role, if any, the TTC has during construction.
“If we’re going to operate this line and sign off on safety we don’t want to get to the end and find out there are all these problems,” she said.
“We know we’re the operator. But do we have a role in the (community) consultation process? We have until now,” she said.
TTC officials say the American Public Transit Association review validates their position that they need more say and the job needs another two or three years.
“The TTC has to have a major influence, role and authority,” the panel reported.
But Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig said the TTC already has a key role.
“The way they’re defining their role — and I’d like to emphasize this is the way they’re defining their role — is that they’re positioned as the operator. . . . In the construction phase they will be signing off on some critical design elements — for example, the interchange stations because they will have to be so much integrated in the existing subway station at Kennedy for example.”
The TTC, points to the transit association’s finding that, the 2020 schedule “appears overly aggressive when considering the need to stage construction . . . especially for the Eglinton line.”
Metrolinx officials agree it’s an aggressive timeline.
“Our objective is 2020. We think it’s achievable. We recognize it’s a tight schedule. We’ll get clarity on whether our partner believes they can deliver to that schedule,” said McCuaig.
Even when the TTC was leading the projects, public-private contracts were part of the scenario to build maintenance and storage facilities and the SRT.
But then the government gave the lead to Infrastructure Ontario, which it maintains has a good record of bringing projects in on time and on budget, although most of that is based on building courthouses and hospitals.
“Their feeling is that the TTC is committed to its old way of doing business,” said Stintz. But that’s not the case.
How the contracts are structured, how much of Eglinton is torn up at the same time and who answers community concerns about that, are the issues, said Stintz.
