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Toronto St. Clair West Transit Improvements | ?m | ?s | TTC

I hope Miller's replacement just cancels Transit City outright. If they can't do St. Clair right, then they don't deserve to ruin even more streets.

St.Clair isn't a Transit City project and the dynamics of the project are very different from anything expected with Transit City. St.Clair is still seen as a "streetcar" or "city" line whereas the others are seen as LRT. An existing streetcar line where the loss of any stop or parking spot resulted in debate, a complete halt to the project when things went to court, and burying the electricity is very different from a brand new line running in the middle of a street where sidewalk widths and on-street parking will be a complete non-issue due to the suburban nature of the streets. Now that Metrolinx is involved and the lines are funded there is zero chance that anything, other than the unfunded lines, will be cancelled. Other than the underground portions, it seems unlikely that there will be any issues implementing Transit City.

While Transit City is sold as a way to bring urbanity to currently desolate streetscapes it is obvious that Transit City itself isn't going to be building that but is expected to be a catalyst for that happening in the future. They will not likely be creating on-street parking nor have many buildings flush with the sidewalks and while some utilities will likely be moved or repaired it will be nowhere near the same scale. Lastly, the city has recognized the need to have a larger contractor involved in Transit City projects.

While I would love there to be a way to vote for the SRT, Eglinton, and Sheppard East lines to be built as a subway in the next election, in reality we will be voting on what happens next... will the DRL, Don Mills, and Jane line be built or will the next council be focused on reductions.
 
We were warned to expect 24-hour-a-day construction activity, a painful yet understandable pace. But it turns out that the contractors hired by the TTC were too small-scaled to adjust to the project's changing demands. "With large contractors," says Adam Giambrone, "you have more options. You can force them to work evenings and weekends. With small ones, technically you can compel them, but if we tried, we would have forced them into bankruptcy."
Is this kid for real?
 
Is this kid for real?

If the city did force a small contractor to go out of business, you can immediately expect ALL tenders (TTC related or with other departments) to increase by 50% due to the risk the city might throw their weight around.

There is already a huge overhead with government projects built into the price. We probably don't want to add to that.
 
funny how the NIMBYs cry and whine and delay the project for 2 years and then complain that it's going too slowly.

just can't please them... eh....
 
funny how the NIMBYs cry and whine and delay the project for 2 years and then complain that it's going too slowly.

just can't please them... eh....

How about the people who organized and petitioned and rallied in support of the project and are now complaining that construction is going way too slowly?

When I moved into this neighbourhood the ROW was finished between Yonge and Bathurst. Two full years later and now the ROW is finished... between Yonge and Bathurst.
 
Correction, it's not even fully finished from Yonge to Bathurst, since the St. Clair West entrance tracks have to be replaced. It's a joke. I don't care how many delays there are, the city needs to do a much better job in overseeing work done by contractors and making sure that days/weeks don't go buy when nothing gets done.
 
Correction, it's not even fully finished from Yonge to Bathurst, since the St. Clair West entrance tracks have to be replaced. It's a joke. I don't care how many delays there are, the city needs to do a much better job in overseeing work done by contractors and making sure that days/weeks don't go buy when nothing gets done.

The city needs to get it's house in order and start firing personnel who cannot do their jobs or follow council directions/orders.

There are too many ppl within the City Departments who have ego trips and think their department should be calling the shots.

Moreso, getting all department on the same page to work together has to come from the top as this is where the real problem is. Various departments refused or drag their feet in doing this.

There are a number who are and will continue to put traffic ahead of everything regardless they been told that not the case anymore. There are a few within TTC that can be added to this list on this issue also.

The contractor doing St Clair is the best contractor to date that has done their work on time and is above par on workmen ship.

Who every is responsible for this project on TTC be haft needs to find a job else where as they have fail in their duty more ways than enough to justify been let go. This is a common issue on other TTC project as ppl should be fire for allowing this to happen in the first place.
 
The delays on St. Clair are just ridiculous. Its almost like the City went out of its way to prove NIMBYs right. Why did the City hire contractors it appears to have known couldn't complete work on schedule? Why not just go to a major engineering and design firm like SNC-Lavalin? Their work on the Canada Line is night and day compared to this fiasco. Its all the worse because, at the end of the day, we will just have a bus route on rails. The Yonge subway was pretty disruptive, but at least afterwords the City had a piece of useful infrastructure. Here we are getting not nothing, but not a huge improvement in bus service either.
 
The delays on St. Clair are just ridiculous. Its almost like the City went out of its way to prove NIMBYs right. Why did the City hire contractors it appears to have known couldn't complete work on schedule? Why not just go to a major engineering and design firm like SNC-Lavalin? Their work on the Canada Line is night and day compared to this fiasco. Its all the worse because, at the end of the day, we will just have a bus route on rails. The Yonge subway was pretty disruptive, but at least afterwords the City had a piece of useful infrastructure. Here we are getting not nothing, but not a huge improvement in bus service either.

The city hire good contractors for this projects, but City personnel keep screwing them around by not allowing them to do their job right. Then there are the Opp's we miss this and here a change order adding more delays. Took 5 weeks to decide what to do about access at Hendricks Ave by the fire department. It also saw the removable of the centre poles west of here to Oakwood.

The City has set some time line that could never be met from day one.

The City or should say a few ego tripper have gone out of their way to reinforce NIMBYs complaints and try to kill surface transit.

Going to a company like SNC-Lavalin is going to happen on TC lines and going to tick a few off within the city as it going to upstage them and show how bad they are.

I have shot over 500 photo's on this project for this year already and photo's don't lie. They tell a story that not great.

The city set the rules at the time of the tender and to go back to any contractor and say you must complete this project X days sooner at your cost, some will say stuff it while other bring out the huge markup on extras to cover the extra cost to do this.
 
I tend to think.....

That people are protesting too much given the scale of this project, the seasonal aspect to doing it and trying to navigate everything in between. I understand there have been blunders and not sure where the blame should fall but I don't see this project as being the disaster that some are proclaiming.

And I also tend to think that the reason why we're getting this Transit City LRT instead of subways is that the funding is never going to arrive from the governments to actually build all new subway lines. Its too expensive.

Thus I believe the compromise. I could be wrong of course on all of this.
 
St.Clair isn't a Transit City project and the dynamics of the project are very different from anything expected with Transit City. St.Clair is still seen as a "streetcar" or "city" line whereas the others are seen as LRT. An existing streetcar line where the loss of any stop or parking spot resulted in debate, a complete halt to the project when things went to court, and burying the electricity is very different from a brand new line running in the middle of a street where sidewalk widths and on-street parking will be a complete non-issue due to the suburban nature of the streets. Now that Metrolinx is involved and the lines are funded there is zero chance that anything, other than the unfunded lines, will be cancelled. Other than the underground portions, it seems unlikely that there will be any issues implementing Transit City.

Speaking to Joe Mihevc and others, St. Clair is clearly intended to be the model for Transit City. The same people at the TTC who have managed the St. Clair project will be managing Transit City projects.

I don't buy that the wide suburban streets will somehow make construction so much easier. For one thing, many of these streets aren't nearly as wide as you might think. Finch, for example, will need significant widening and will cost a whole bunch of trees. You can bet that the neighbours won't be pleased about at, not to mention the loss of traffic lanes.

I've never been a PPP kind of guy, but I've come to the conclusion that they're absolutely necessary in Toronto. At the very least, they should be allowed to bid against the TTC in-house option. The key is that it is a complete design-build contract. The City lays out basic design criteria (station locations, capacity, technology) and the private company does all the rest. That's how Vancouver managed to build an 18 km fully grade separated rapid transit line for less than $2 billion.

I should add that I also campaigned for the St. Clair ROW and I went to public meetings to voice my support. I just can't believe how it has turned out. It has made me much more cynical about these kinds of things. I can't imagine how the construction of this project could have been any worse. And it's not even close to being done yet! Watch for them to discover a few years after "completion" that the workmanship was so poor that they have to rebuild it all again. Drum's comments about tracks being out of alignment do not inspire confidence.
 
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That people are protesting too much given the scale of this project, the seasonal aspect to doing it and trying to navigate everything in between. I understand there have been blunders and not sure where the blame should fall but I don't see this project as being the disaster that some are proclaiming.

And I also tend to think that the reason why we're getting this Transit City LRT instead of subways is that the funding is never going to arrive from the governments to actually build all new subway lines. Its too expensive.

Thus I believe the compromise. I could be wrong of course on all of this.

Your wrong because we are building subways right now. Only we are building them out into York Region not in the city. The reason we got funding for transit city is becase that is what we asked for, York asked (nay petitioned) for extensions and got it. Toronto came up with the transit city plan and got it. Seriously all other political bs aside that is why we are building transit city and not a subway. Subways are not prohibitavly expensive, I think I did the math a while back and for what is being spent on Transit city we could have built the eastern leg of the DRL. Now one mode gives you more transit km per dollar but which one truley gives you more bang for your buck?
 

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