Off The Rails – Part 2
I have issues with all of these projects as most have wandered from being light rail and instead become a light-metro.
Part of the 19km Eglinton Crosstown LRT is in a 6 km subway and the costs of subway construction is huge. Though the line does operate as classic LRT on portions of line a 6 km subway puts it in the much more expensive ‘light-metro’ category.
The 10.3 km Finch LRT has two underground stations and with subway access for trains, would add to the already bloated costs.
Calgary’s 19 km Green Line also included 4km of subway and as we all know, once you start going underground costs rise exponentially.
The Expo line extension Langley started as a $1.65 billion LRT project and now has climbed to a $7 billion (including OMC#5) light-metro project.
The article did not delve deep enough, as the entire 21.7 km extension package of both the Expo and Millennium (Broadway subway) Lines has now climbed beyond $16 billion!
Ottawa’s fiasco is strictly politcal in nature and I am puzzled at calling the light rail vehicles used in Ottawa, “unproven technology” as the tram has evolved over a time span of 150 or more years. This sound more like blaming “that mysterious other person” routine from six year olds, rather than trying to honestly understand and fix the situation.
In Canada, light rail is rather a novelty, as there are only three actually in operation (Toronto being a classic streetcar system), with Edmonton’s and Calgary’s LRT being modeled on German Stadtbahn, before the term LRT came into general use.
Most bureaucrats, planners and engineers, tend to use extremely dated information about light rail and most confuse it with a streetcar and make assumptions based on ignorance.
Until Canadian Universities have faculties in “Urban Transport” and offer degrees in Urban Transportation, I think we will continues to see huge costs for what should be much simpler light rail installation. Except for a small cadre of transit specialists, like our Mr. Cow, many transit projects design teams will base their planning on faulty assumptions, based on dated information (example: a local transportation engineer recently told me that LRT cannot travel faster than a bus and holds back traffic, yet he failed to take into account of the tram using a dedicated R-o-W which LRT operates on) and studies 40 to 50 years ago, with the resulting high costs and disappointing operation.

Six transit projects that went off the rails
Eglinton Crosstown LRT, Toronto
When construction on the 19-kilometre light-rail project across midtown began in 2011, the project was budgeted at $11-billion for building it and a generation of operations, and expected to be complete in nine years. However, just over 13 years in, estimated costs have risen to $12.8-billion and the date it will enter service remains elusive.
What went wrong? The list is lengthy and includes some huge issues, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and attendant supply chain shortages and labour constraints, as well as small ones, such as fixing work that wasn’t done properly. Throughout, a fractious relationship between Metrolinx and the consortium of international companies that are actually building the line has brought the two parties to court repeatedly.
Finch LRT, Toronto
A surface light-rail line on Finch Avenue, running about 10 kilometres west from a subway station at Keele Street, began construction in 2019 and appeared to be on track to open in 2023.
However, Metrolinx announced in 2023 that the opening for the $3.4-billion project had been pushed to the first half of 2024, and then the second half of the year.
Then, in August, 2024, the companies building the line filed suit against Ontario Infrastructure and Lands Corp. and Metrolinx. The suit has spawned a flurry of counteractions and Metrolinx does not currently have a public target date for the line opening.
Hazel McCallion LRT, Peel Region
The Hurontario-Main LRT became the 18-kilometre long Hurontario LRT when city council in Brampton, Ont., voted in 2015 to keep it out of downtown. Instead, the line will end more than three kilometres south of the city-centre GO train station.
A project originally described as costing $1.2-billion to build was by 2019 expected to run $5.6-billion, including 30 years of operations and maintenance. It was later renamed after former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion and was scheduled to open in 2024.
But in June, the builders reported delays owing to track procurement and construction issues. And then S&P Global Ratings warned in October the builders risked being downgraded over the prospect of the project not finishing this year.
There is no official opening date.
Green Line LRT, Calgary
In 2021, the city, Alberta and Ottawa agreed to fund the first part of an LRT line eventually planned to stretch 46 kilometres. But this past summer, facing growing costs, city council voted to reduce the length of the line and boost its budget by $700-million, to about $6.2-billion.
The province, which had earlier promised its $1.53-billion funding commitment was secure, dismissed the short version as too expensive and serving too few people. It pulled its money, effectively killing the project.
But then, early in October, the province and the city announced a new deal. The scope of the project scope has changed again and there is no longer an opening date. The two levels of government were still haggling over the route, and who would handle cost overruns, with a January provincial deadline looming for city council to approve the plan.
Surrey Langley SkyTrain, British Columbia
This project would extend the subway-like Expo Line 16 kilometres past Surrey, through a fast-growing area of suburban Vancouver, to terminate in Langley. The elevated route was intended to open in 2028 and cost $4-billion.
The extension has been formally on the books since 2014, but its business case was not approved until 2022, when the pandemic was still front of mind and inflation rising. Despite that, the provincial government blamed unforeseen circumstances for a 50-per-cent cost increase revealed last year.
In the same release, the B.C. government announced that the project, as well as costing nearly $6-billion, would also open a year late.

Confederation Line LRT, Ottawa
The line was budgeted at $2.1-billion, including 30 years of maintenance. It was a fixed-price contract, putting the builders on the hook for cost overruns. The line was expected to open in May, 2018, a promise that was modified four times before the line began operating in late 2019.
After a public inquiry, Justice William Hourigan issued a scathing report in 2022 that called out serious failures by the builders and city government.
He blamed the city for choosing “an essentially new vehicle based on unproven technology.” He found deadlines were unrealistic, that problems with testing were hushed up and that political pressure pushed the line into service.