An ‘object lesson in how to do everything wrong:’ Why we aren’t celebrating the opening of the Crosstown LRT ... yet - Toronto Star
We need to know everything that went wrong with the Crosstown LRT. More importantly, we need to ensure it can never happen again.
The Eglinton Crosstown LRT near the Sunnybrook Park stop at Eglinton Avenue East and Leslie Street during a test run.
The opening of a new mass transit line in a major city should be a moment of celebration for residents. But if — and forgive us if we still count this as a significant “if” — the Eglinton Crosstown LRT does indeed open to the public as planned Sunday, it will be, first and foremost, the end of a nightmare for Torontonians.
Rarely in the history of this country has a major project gone so wrong for so long with such devastating consequences. As laid out in an investigation by the Star’s Andy Takagi and David Rider published last week, the Crosstown has been an orgy of buck-passing, blame-shifting, money-blowing incompetence that has somehow managed to stagger on, unfinished for more than 15 years.
Every level of government, public agency and private company involved deserves some of the blame. As Takagi and Rider make clear, the entire $13 billion project was badly conceived, poorly designed, wretchedly tendered and incompetently executed.
Takagi and Rider called it a national joke. It’s worse than that. When it finally does open, the Crosstown will stand as an object lesson in how to do everything wrong. Spend the most money. Waste the most time. Snarl up a city. Wreck neighbourhoods. Ruin traffic. Bicker ceaselessly and pointlessly among yourselves.
City councillor Josh Matlow has called for a public inquiry into the Crosstown debacle. That’s a great idea. We’ll never know everything about what went wrong and why on Eglinton without a complete and painful airing of the facts. What we already do know is concerning enough. But we deserve to know more because Toronto and Ontario can’t afford to repeat this debacle with current and future public projects.
As unearthed by Takagi and Rider, the “original sin” lies with the decision by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government to give control of the Crosstown to Metrolinx.
Unlike the TTC, the then-newly created provincial agency had zero experience planning, tendering or building major transit projects. And boy did it show. From the beginning, Metrolinx vastly underestimated the complexity and costs of the Crosstown line.
“From the beginning, the Crosstown LRT seems to have been planned and built by people and agencies more concerned with being blamed for getting things wrong than they were in actually making them work right.”
Right at the start, the agency designed and signed an unwieldy and unrealistic contract with Crosslinx — the private consortium charged with building the LRT. What followed was years of overruns, foul ups and bad blood that drove up costs, pushed back timelines and undermined public trust, not just in this project, but in our governments’ abilities to get big things done in this city, province and country.
McGuinty (and Kathleen Wynne’s) Liberals can’t shoulder all the blame, of course. Ford’s government has owned this file since 2018. And Takagi and Rider’s story suggests the TTC shares at least some of the responsibility for what remains a broken relationship with Metrolinx.
Indeed, the largest failings here may be structural and even cultural. From the beginning, the Crosstown LRT seems to have been planned and built by people and agencies more concerned with being blamed for getting things wrong than they were in actually making them work right.
Nowhere is that more structurally true than in Metrolinx. What McGuinty and his team built — and what Ford and his government have kept in place — is an agency that allows full provincial control with zero political responsibility. It’s recipe for unaccountable, inefficient operations: a politician’s dream that has turned into a nightmare for the residents of Toronto.
If Sunday’s opening goes off as planned, we’ll be the first in line to cheer. The people of Toronto have been paying for this LRT, and living through its construction, for 15 years. They deserve something that works, something that links the wonders of the Aga Khan Museum to the flavours of Little Jamaica, that ties together Forest Hill and Scarborough, that allows families, employees and friends to visit, play and work in each other’s homes and businesses without facing the abject terror of the existing east-west commute.
At the same time, we cannot forget the mess that brought us here. We can’t just smile and move on. We need to know everything that went wrong with the Crosstown LRT. More importantly, we need to ensure it can never happen again.
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