$11-billion Ontario Line may not open until 2030, three years later than Ford’s initial promise

Thestar.com
Dec. 18

The Ontario Line may not open until 2030, three years later than Premier Doug Ford promised when he unveiled the $11-billion transit project last year.

Although a senior government source had previously acknowledged the original target date of 2027 was under threat, a report released by provincial transit agency Metrolinx Thursday confirmed the deadline won’t be met. The updated business case for the project lists 2030 as the tentative year Ontario Line operations will begin.

Despite the delay, Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Natasha Tremblay said in a statement the Ontario PC government is “commitment to getting transit built is as strong as it was when Premier Ford announced this project.”

She said that once complete the 15.5-kilometre line, which would run between Exhibition Place and the Ontario Science Centre via downtown, will provide badly needed transit service to high-density neighbourhoods and reduce crowding on the TTC subway network. Metrolinx projects that by 2041 the line could serve as many as 388,000 trips each day and reduce crowding on Line 1 by 15 per cent.

Ford announced the Ontario Line in April 2019 as the centrepiece of his $28.5-billion GTA transit expansion plan, replacing the city of Toronto’s more advanced designs for a relief line subway.

The province’s line would use lighter trains than a TTC subway and be elevated on some parts of the route, and the Ontario government argued it could be built faster than the relief line, which would be entirely underground. The city had projected the first seven-kilometre phase of the relief subway could be complete as early as 2029.

“The relief line was changed ostensibly in order to make things go faster” but it was just “another change of plan that ends up taking longer,” said Coun. Paula Fletcher, who represents the Toronto-Danforth ward where both lines would run. She called news of the delay “bitterly disappointing.”

Ontario NDP transit critic Jessica Bell (University-Rosedale) predicted in a statement that “delayed and cancelled transit projects are going to be Ford’s legacy.”

“What’s so tragic is the relief line -- the plan Ford scrapped -- was ready to go. All levels of government were on board and shovels were supposed to hit dirt in 2020,” she said.

Bell also criticized a new service model Metrolinx examined in the business case that could see the Ontario Line initially operate with shorter, less frequent trains than previously anticipated.

Metrolinx says it could run lower-capacity service in the line’s early days when demand is lower, but is still committed to running trains as frequently as every 90 seconds during peak times by 2041.

Since Ford announced the Ontario Line, experts have told the Star said that while there were benefits to the plan -- including the fact it would be longer and serve more marginalized neighbourhoods than the first phase of the relief line -- the province’s claims it could design and build a major transit line beneath Toronto’s dense downtown in eight years were unrealistic.

Metrolinx spokesperson Scott Money said Thursday the original schedule was based on market conditions at the time, but since then “the commercial landscape has changed dramatically.”

The province is contracting work on the Ontario Line to the private sector through a public-private partnership model, and Money said that as the government prepared to go to market it discovered there was “diminishing interest” among industry take on such a large project. The trend towards less risky ventures was exacerbated by the economic downturn caused by COVID-19.

Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario responded by breaking up procurement of the project into three smaller public-private partnership contracts, which Money said “will help to mitigate market issues.” The final construction schedule will be determined by the winning bidder.

On Thursday, Infrastructure Ontario announced it had shortlisted bidding teams and issued a request for proposals on the first two contracts, which are for civil works, tunnels, and stations on the southern section of the line between Exhibition Place and the Don River, and for building, operating and maintaining the train fleet.

“By issuing these first Ontario Line RFPs, Premier Ford’s vision for a world-class regional transit system continues to make steady progress,” said Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney in a statement.