OP-ED: Toronto’s Englinton LRT is a 15-year lesson in municipal incompetence

"The Eglinton Crosstown LRT finally started service on Sunday. It only took 15 years of construction, a nearly $8-billion budget overrun, and countless delays over engineering flaws."

Source: Adobe Stock

The Eglinton Crosstown LRT, I like to call Ontario’s white elephant, finally started service on Sunday.

It only took 15 years of construction, a nearly $8-billion budget overrun and countless delays over engineering flaws and lawsuits from the consortium that built the boondoggle, Crosslinx Transit Solutions.

Although the LRT had been a vision of socialist Toronto mayor David Miller way back in 2007, Premier Kathleen Wynne finalized the deal with Crosslinx in 2015.

Originally, it was to cost about $5-billion and be completed by 2020.

It took 15 years and final costs are now estimated at $13-billion.

Construction started in 2011 and in March of 2016, Wynne and then mayor John Tory broke ground on the Keelsdale station, the first of 25 stations along the 19-km line, 10 km of which run underground.

It is supposed to be 60% faster than bus service and ease congestion along the Eglinton corridor.

However, there were those of us who never thought the line would open.

For the past three winters, I’ve returned from down south to see the gleaming new stations near my home with fencing around them — sitting there as a testament to sheer incompetence.

Plagued by innumerable construction delays, lawsuits between Metrolinx, the Ontario crown agency charged with overseeing the build and Crosslinx and 260 construction deficiencies, the project dragged on and on and on.

It was a SNAFU of giant proportions.

I still remember attending a heated town meeting in 2018 during which Crosslinx president (for six years until 2022) Bill Henry told the crowd they could expect to see Eglinton cleared of all construction paraphernalia by 2019.

As if.

He just said whatever he thought people wanted to hear.

Premier Doug Ford, who told the media a few days ago that he would not hold an inquiry into the boondoggle, allowed Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster to stay on in 2020 even after it was clear the project was ballooning in costs and wouldn’t be completed that year.

In fact Ford not only renewed his contract but gave him a 46% increase to $838,960.

Verster finally left Metrolinx at the end of 2024.

But it’s little wonder Ford doesn’t want to have an inquiry. His poor judgement might come out.

Living only a handful of homes south of Eglinton, my wife and I experienced endless noise and dust, cracks in our ceiling from the tunnel boring and street flooding.

Our foundation shifted and we had to fix our front porch this past summer.

But it was the sheer inefficiency of the workers we saw up close.

We watched as workers sat at our corner for what seemed like hours, fixated on their Smartphones or yakking with fellow workers.

They rarely worked past 5 p.m. and never on weekends.

So what if traffic got diverted for months onto other side streets and we weren’t permitted for some time to turn into our very own street?

These guys couldn’t have cared less about the number of businesses forced to close their doors or which went bankrupt.

The work ethic was nonexistent.

But why should it be when the Metrolinx CEO got amply rewarded for failure?

I had hoped way way back in 2011 that those overseeing the Eglinton Crosstown build would learn from the mistakes of the St. Clair dedicated Streetcar line, whose costs ballooned from $48-million to $106-million for an above-ground 6.8km line.

Innumerable businesses went under due to delayed construction and a mess of contractors who didn’t talk to each other.

When I ran for the Tories in St. Paul’s in 2,009 it was a hot topic in the western part of the riding.

But governments never learn and politicians retire or are fired, leaving a mess in their wake.

Wynne is long gone and I dare say she’s never given a moment’s thought to the mess she made with this project, especially with her choice to hire Crosslinx.

Ford refuses to hold an inquiry. Heaven forbid he should be held accountable for what he contributed to the mess since coming to office in 2018, particularly by keeping Verster in his job.

It’s as if accountability no longer exists.

Politicians like Ford, Wynne and Carney just fail upwards.

I can’t wait to hear how many transit users actually ride the LRT.

Whatever the number, I suspect the 15-year build and the $8-billion cost overrun will never be worth it.