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Officials from four governments gathered yesterday at a site near Mississauga's Airport Corporate Centre and, with a flick of a switch, officially launched tunnelling for the Eglinton West extension to the Crosstown Line 5.
According to Ontario's transit agency, Metrolinx, during the next 20 months, two massive tunnel-boring machines (TBMs) will work 20 metres underground, digging two parallel tunnels that will stretch more than six kilometres in length.
These twin tunnels extend the Crosstown LRT another 9.2 kilometres west between Mount Dennis and Renforth Drive. The two TBMs will start digging from the launch site near Renforth and Eglinton Avenue West, moving 10 to 15 metres a day as they travel eastward toward Scarlett Road, where contractors will remove them from the ground.
In July, 2021, Metrolinx's contractors on the project, West End Connectors, broke ground at the launch shaft site to get ready for the tunnel boring machines, which arrived last December. They created a shaft that could hold the volume of 11 Olympic-size swimming pools. After the TBMs start heading eastward, they'll dig another shaft near Scarlett and Eglinton West this spring, where they will later extract the two machines.
Crews will also start building the headwalls for the future stations at Martin Grove Road and Kipling Avenue this spring. The headwalls are underground supports at the each end of each future station site. They create the frame for future underground stations and must be in place before the tunnel-borers arrive at each future station.
The seven-stop extension the Crosstown Line 5, still under construction, heads westward through central Etobicoke to eastern Mississauga. At the municipal boundary at Renforth, the western terminus of the line, passengers may connect with GO Transit, MiWay, and TTC buses at the Mississauga Transitway's Renforth Station. At Mount Dennis, where the initial terminal of the Crosstown LRT is set to open within a year's time, passengers may continue along the Crosstown line through Toronto and Scarborough, or transfer to GO and Union Pearson Express trains and TTC buses.
From the west end of the extension, Metrolinx is also working with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority and municipal partners to explore plans to further connect the line to Toronto Pearson International Airport.
The Crosstown West extension includes four underground stations — at Martin Grove, Kipling and Islington avenues, and Royal York Road — and two above-ground stations--at Scarlett Road and Jane Street. The station at Renforth Drive will be at the surface.
The line mostly stretches under the Eglinton roadway between Renforth and Scarlett. Passenger access to the stations at Martin Grove, Islington, and Royal York is from the north side of the roadway. On the other hand, the "station box" -- the underground platform area where passengers will board the trains -- at Kipling is directly under Eglinton Avenue West. At Kipling, following consultations with neighbours, Metrolinx proposes permanently shifting Eglinton Avenue to the south of the current road allowance, while they will build the new station and its access buildings in the centre of the present-day road. This will protect more of the woodlot to the north of Eglinton, which was identified as the community's greatest concern.
West of Scarlett, the line rises onto an elevated guideway to carry trains over the Humber River. A few hundred metres east of Jane Street, the future LRT trainsets will again transition underground to where the extension will run seamlessly onto the first phase Crosstown LRT at Mount Dennis.
Metrolinx worked with Infrastructure Ontario to procure a contractor for this first tunnelling phase of the project west of Scarlett. In December 2021, the two provincial agencies awarded a contract worth $729.2 million to the West End Connectors consortium. The West End Connectors team includes:
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Developer: Aecon Infrastructure Management Inc., Dragados Canada Inc., Ghella Canada Ltd.
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Construction: Aecon Infrastructure Management Inc., Dragados Canada Inc., Ghella Canada Ltd.
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Financial: ACS Infrastructure Canada, Aecon Concessions, Scotiabank Capital, Ghella Investments & Partnerships.
Metrolinx expects to complete and open the line to service in 2030 or 2031. In a news release, the Government of Ontario claims that the extension project will support as many as 4,600 jobs annually during construction and attract 37,000 daily boardings by 2041.
Officials at the launch event Monday, April 11 included the Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure and Communities, the Honourable Omar Alghabra, federal Minister of Transport, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Caroline Mulroney, provincial Minister of Transportation, Kinga Surma, provincial Minister of Infrastructure, Stan Cho, provincial Associate Minister of Transportation, Toronto Mayor John Tory and Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie.
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