New $3.2B subway extension will improve ‘life for hardworking people,’ Trudeau says

Mississauga.com
Ben Spurr
Dec. 15, 2017

Heads of three levels of government helped inaugurate the first new TTC subway project in more than decade Friday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Kathleen Wynne, Toronto Mayor John Tory, and York Region Chairman Wayne Emmerson were among the dignitaries on hand to cut the ribbon on the Toronto York Spadina Subway Extension, which has pushed the TTC subway network outside of Toronto for the first time in its history. Two of the six new stations on 8.6-kilometre line are fully within the city of Vaughan in York.

Speaking to a large contingent of reporters and officials at York University station after taking the new subway from the ribbon cutting ceremony at Vaughan Metropolitan Centre station, Prime Minister Trudeau said the extension would “improve the quality of life for hard working people and their families” across the region, and provide suburban residents “unprecedented accessibility to key downtown areas.”

“All levels of government have come together to attach the heart of Vaughan to the Centre of Toronto, and that is a great connection,” said Premier Wynne.
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The extension was originally supposed to open in 2015 but was delayed in part due to disputes with contractors, as well as the death of a worker at York University station in 2011.

Mayor Tory acknowledged the project was in crisis by the time he took office in 2014, and credited outgoing TTC CEO Andy Byford with coming up with a plan to get it back on track. It took a complete reset of the project under a private engineering firm, as well as an additional $400 million, to limit the delays and cost overruns.

Tory argued without the reset the opening would have been even more delayed, and hailed the opening Friday as “a milestone day for rapid transit” in Toronto and York Region.

The extension is the first addition to the subway network since Line 4 (Sheppard) entered service in 2002, and will open to the public on Sunday.

The construction of the $3.2-billion project was jointly funded by the federal government, the province, and the municipalities of Toronto and York. The TTC alone will pay roughly $25 million a year to operate it.

By 2020, the extension is expected carry about 24 million passengers a year. It will take roughly 42 minutes to travel from the top of the line at Vaughan Metropolitan Centre station to Union Station in downtown Toronto.

Major beneficiaries of the line will be students of York University. In three years’ time roughly 27,000 people a day are expected to use York University station, one of two stops that will serve the campus, and school administrators say the subway will cut some students’ commutes in half.