Eglinton Crosstown faces another setback, delayed until 2022

Thestar.com
Feb. 18, 2020
Ben Spurr

The Eglinton Crosstown LRT won’t open until some time in 2022, months later than the province’s September 2021 deadline, Metrolinx has confirmed.

A statement from the president of the provincial transit agency, which is set to be made public Tuesday but was obtained by the Star, gives no firm date for when the massive 19-kilometre midtown transit line will be complete.

The statement from Metrolinx president Phil Verster merely says the LRT isn’t expected to open until “well into 2022.”

It attributes the delay largely to Crosslinx Transit Solutions (CTS), the private consortium building the LRT under a public-private partnership with the province. It claims that while CTS has improved its work rate since 2018, it has “achieved only 84 per cent of its target, meaning the project will be delayed.”

The statement also cites a defect discovered in decades-old infrastructure located under the TTC’s Eglinton subway station at Yonge Street, which has complicated construction of a new LRT stop beneath the subway at the site.

“We will keep the public apprised on a consistent basis over the next two years on how work is progressing,” the statement says.

“Ultimately, our goal is to deliver more transit to the region as quickly as possible without compromising safety or quality. Like all transit riders in the region, we are disappointed that the Eglinton Crosstown LRT will not be operational in September 2021.”

A spokesperson for CTS didn’t immediately return a request for comment Monday evening. The consortium is led by ACS-Dragados, Aecon Group, EllisDon and SNC-Lavalin.

The Star reported in December that, based on information contained in internal Metrolinx documents the newspaper had obtained, the Crosstown was on track to be delayed until at least May 2022 for reasons similar to those cited in Verster’s statement.

At the time, Metrolinx asserted it was working with CTS to mitigate the problems and still planned to meet the September 2021 date.

Confirmation of the delay comes despite the fact Metrolinx reached a settlement with CTS in September 2018 that was supposed to keep the LRT on schedule. Under the terms of the deal, Metrolinx paid CTS $237 million, while the consortium agreed to drop a legal action it had launched against the agency and recommit to the September 2021 deadline.

In an interview Monday, Verster defended that earlier deal, saying it had resolved issues that risked delaying the project at the time and the payment was accounted for within the Crosstown project’s overall budget, which is about $12 billion. The causes of the most recent delay are separate from those covered by the previous settlement, he said.

Verster said the agency won’t be able to provide a firm deadline for the Crosstown opening until Metrolinx has concluded discussions with CTS.

“We are now working with CTS to finalize with them what the completion date for Eglinton Crosstown will be. That date will be tied to a commercial resolution of commercial issues,” he said.

He didn’t rule out the possibility of another financial settlement with the consortium, or a potentially messy legal battle.

“We always approach any commercial claims with a view to reach a fair and equitable outcome, given that there are so many unforeseen risks on these projects. However, where there are causes for delay attributable to the contractor, those are not for us to bear,” he said.

Verster’s statement cites numerous “challenges” CTS has encountered since winning the LRT project contract award in 2015 as the principal cause of the delay, including claiming that the consortium started some work nine months late and that it was slow to finalize designs for aspects of the line.

The issue at Eglinton station relates to pipes that were embedded in concrete when the TTC station was built in the 1950s, but are in the wrong location. According to Metrolinx, the problem has made it difficult to excavate the soil beneath the subway station to build the new LRT stop, which would connect at Eglinton with the TTC’s Line 1 (Yonge-University-Spadina). Verster said the extent to which CTS could be responsible for delays to work at Eglinton would be part of the ongoing discussions.

Asked whether Metrolinx would consider opening the rest of the Crosstown but bypassing the future stop at Yonge until the issue there could be resolved, Verster said it was too early to make such decisions.

The Eglinton Crosstown would have 25 stops, running between Mount Dennis in the west and Kennedy station on the TTC’s Line 2 in the east. Metrolinx describes it as the largest transit project under construction in Canada.

This is not the first time it’s been delayed. It was previously scheduled to open in 2020, but in 2015 the provincial government announced the date had been pushed to 2021.