Toronto Star ePaper

Waiting for the Eglinton Crosstown, a transit tragicomedy

EDWARD KEENAN

When Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster announced quietly on the Metrolinx blog Friday that the Eglinton Crosstown would not open soon, as we were promised it would, it was entirely predictable, and entirely enraging.

With apologies to Samuel Beckett, the recent news had me picturing the situation as all-too-real absurdist theatre:

A city street. Construction hoardings. Friday evening. Estragon is craning his neck, looking up and down the street. Enter Vladimir.

ESTRAGON: ( giving up) Nothing to be done.

VLADIMIR: ( advancing while holding a Presto card) I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. ESTRAGON: Let’s go. VLADIMIR: We can’t. ESTRAGON: Why not? VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for the Crosstown.

ESTRAGON: ( despairingly) You’re sure it was today? That we were to wait?

VLADIMIR: They said 2020. Or 2021. Or 2022.

ESTRAGON: ( checking watch) It should be here.

VLADIMIR: They said for sure it would come.

ESTRAGON: And if it doesn’t come?

VLADIMIR: We’ll come back tomorrow.

ESTRAGON: And next month. And next year.

VLADIMIR: And so on. Metrolinx is what Metrolinx is. The essential doesn’t change.

Enter Phil Verster, president and CEO of Metrolinx, tiptoeing in as the sun sets. He clears his throat and begins to whisper, reading from a prepared statement.

VERSTER: We had expected the Eglinton Crosstown LRT to be fully built, thoroughly tested, and in service this fall in accordance with our project agreement with Crosslinx Transit Solutions …

ESTRAGON: ( timidly, to Verster). You’re not opening the Crosstown, Sir?

VERSTER: … Unfortunately, while progress has been made, Crosslinx Transit Solutions have fallen behind schedule, are unable to finalize construction and testing, and therefore the system will not be operational on this timeline …

VLADIMIR: ( aside) There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.

VERSTER: … doing everything to hold Crosslinx Transit Solutions accountable and to redouble efforts to meet their commitments and complete the work quickly so we can welcome riders onto a complete, tested, and fully operational Eglinton Crosstown LRT as soon as possible. ( Verster slinks back offstage.) VLADIMIR: Did you hear what that man said? He said they would redouble efforts. (Pause.) He said, “As soon as possible.”

ESTRAGON: Then all we have to do is to wait on here. ( They wait.) ESTRAGON: I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off taking a car.

( They stare out at the road full of cars sitting still in gridlocked traffic, surrounded by construction.) VLADIMIR: It’s not certain. ESTRAGON: No, nothing is certain. ESTRAGON: Well, shall we go? VLADIMIR: Yes, let’s go. They do not move.

We do not move. We wait ever longer than promised. We pay ever more than planned.

Fifty years after Premier Bill Davis floated the idea of a “Crosstown” transit route along Eglinton, 36 years after Premier David Peterson announced an Eglinton subway, 29 years after Premier Bob Rae began digging an Eglinton subway tunnel, 27 years after Premier Mike Harris filled those tunnels in, 15 years after Mayor David Miller announced a new vision for a “Transit City” featuring a subway LRT along Eglinton, and 11 years after construction on it began, we are used to waiting.

Toronto is not the only city where this kind of construction cross-up has become routine — you can look up London’s Crossrail, or California’s high-speed rail, or New York’s Long Island Rail Road extension to see budgets and timelines ballooning to swallow up fortunes and years. Toronto isn’t alone in the world. But in this respect, at least, it is world class.

Just since 2018, the cost of the Eglinton line to governments has ballooned by more than $550 million. The projected opening date has been pushed back from 2020 to 2021, then 2022, and now beyond.

How far beyond? Who knows? Metrolinx so far hasn’t said. And who knows if any revised date will be any more reliable than the previous ones.

You get used to not trusting the dates, when they are offered.

Still, recently, the visible presence of apparently complete tracks on the east end of Eglinton — and the sight of actual trains conducting test runs on those tracks! — might have lulled us into believing that this thing might actually be about to open. Maybe we should have known better, but the people in charge might have warned us. I mean, on Monday afternoon, the Metrolinx website was still projecting a 2022 in-service date.

We have, at long last, a lot of transit projects on the books in Toronto, almost all being built by Metrolinx. The Crosstown and the Finch LRT, the Ontario Line, the Scarborough subway extension. And more.

They represent tremendous potential relief for Toronto commuters. The completion of the Crosstown alone will reshape many lives to be less frustrating and give people more time with their families. We might expect it to revitalize whole neighbourhoods. To change lives, and change the city for the better. It’s a transformative project among many other transformative projects. Or it should be. We hope. Eventually. But man, the road to get there is slow and expensive and constantly, frustratingly (even if increasingly predictably) uncertain.

Are we learning from this? Are we going to get better? Can we at least get some clear and honest communication about what to expect? We have to, right?

Near the end of “Waiting for Godot” — the original, not the Metrolinx re-enactment — Estragon says, “I can’t go on like this,” and Vladimir replies, “That’s what you think.”

We can’t go on like this. That’s what I think. So let’s get going. They do not move.

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2022-09-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

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