The problem in Canada, with “rail” transit, especially light rail (LRT) is that politcans get involved and when politicians get involved, costs rise dramatically.
Unlike Europe, Canadian University’s do not offer degrees in Urban Transport and the vast majority of Engineers and Planners who work on transit projects have little knowledge of what “light rail” (LRT) is!
In Metro Vancouver, both Engineers and Planners still claim that LRT has less capacity than light metro (SkyTrain), yet LRT today in many cities, carry peak hour ridership numbers far in excess what Vancouver’s light metro can achieve.
In fact the current maximum capacity of the Millennium Line is a mere 4,000 persons per hour per direction!
In simple terms, LRT is a modern tram (streetcar) operating on a dedicated or reserved rights-of-ways, thus obtaining the operating characteristics of a modern metro or subway, at a fraction of the cost.
Not so in Canada!
As Canada lacks Engineers and Planners, who have a credible knowledge of “rail” transit, including LRT and what transit experts we have, been muted from providing honest comment, because telling the truth about transit in Canada is not merely a firing offense, it tends to get one blacklisted from working in Canada altogether!
Why do you think Haveacow wishes to remain anonymous!
TransLink’s two top planners, one being considered the best in Canada, were forced to resign for stating the obvious, that; “Broadway did not have the ridership to warrant a subway“.
$4 billion later, Vancouver will have a subway to nowhere, with a maximum capacity less that what Bombardier stated would be justified to build with a light metro, to carry mainly the current B-99 Rapid Bus customers, which peak hour ridership is around 2,000 to 2,500 pphpd!
And to top it off, transit ridership is declining in Metro Vancouver, down 1.5% in 2025, when compared to 2024’s ridership!
$4 billion would build a lot of light rail, about 100 km’s worth, if built as light rail, on-street/at-grade.
Here lies the problem, politcans want, the Rapture of Mega Projects!
Bent Flyvberg’s Iron Law of Megaprojects specifically addresses why politicians are obsessed with infrastructure at any cost.
…the “political sublime,” which here is understood as the rapture politicians get from building monuments to themselves and their causes. Megaprojects are manifest, garner attention, and lend an air of proactiveness to their promoters. Moreover, they are media magnets, which appeals to politicians who seem to enjoy few things better than the visibility they get from starting megaprojects. Except maybe cutting the ribbon of one in the company of royals or presidents, who are likely to be present lured by the unique monumentality and historical import of many megaprojects. This is the type of public exposure that helps get politicians re-elected. They therefore actively seek it out.
Until transit planning changes and becomes independent of the politcal process (politicians make very bad transit planners) and let real experts plan transit for what is best for the transit customer, Canada’s daft transit planning and massive cost overruns will continue.
Unlike those who say, “don’t listen to the experts“; politcans should “listen to the experts“, because they will give one the best advice on what and how transit is built.
A test train departs Sloane Station during ongoing system testing for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in Toronto, Oct. 9.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
A Toronto comedian just threw a quinceañera for the Eglinton Crosstown.
It has been – can you believe it? – 15 years since the birth of the light-rail transit line that will traverse the centre of the city. Authorities still won’t say for sure when it will open, though there is talk it could happen next month.
Jacob Balshin hired a mariachi band for a mock celebration of the line’s coming of age. It played merrily at a transit station as he and friends toasted the teenage project on video. “Fifteen years! Next year, you’ll be able to drive. You only cost an estimated $12.8-billion. That’s only $8.2-billion more than expected!”
Funny not funny. The Crosstown has been a comprehensive fiasco. When construction began, the completion date was set at 2020. That was pushed back to 2021, then 2022. For a while there, 2024 seemed like a possibility, but that year passed, too. Eventually, the people in charge stopped even saying when it would open, for fear of being forced to acknowledge they had missed another target.
So here we are, all these years later, waiting. The tunnels are bored, the stations are built, the trains are even running, gliding along their tracks on test runs with nobody on board, through stops with nobody in them. It is ridiculous and a little eerie – a phantom transit service.
Doug Ford, Ontario’s Premier since 2018, says he’s as frustrated as anyone, telling reporters this week that it is “driving me crazy” and urging transit officials to “get the damn thing moving.”
While he was at it, he couldn’t resist taking a shot at the party that preceded his Progressive Conservatives in office. “This thing has been a disaster since the Liberals started it,” he said.
In fact, the problem goes back farther than that. It was a PC premier, Mike Harris, who cancelled a subway project on Eglinton Avenue in 1995 as he tried to bring provincial spending back in line. The hole had already been dug. Workers filled it up again. That subway would have long ago started whisking commuters across town.
It was Mr. Ford’s brother, Rob, who further gummed up the works when he was Toronto’s mayor by cancelling a plan, called Transit City, to build a whole network of light-rail lines. The Eglinton Crosstown is a remnant of that plan – a 19-kilometre project with 25 stops, some of them underground.
Driving such a line through a dense urban area like midtown Toronto – digging the tunnels, building the stations, redesigning dozens of above-ground intersections – was always going to be expensive. But $13-billion? For what is in essence a fancy streetcar? Outrageous.
People wait for a bus along Eglinton Avenue in view of a test train.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
By comparison, building Toronto’s 8.6-kilometre Spadina subway extension cost $3.2-billion. That went overbudget and over time, too, but at least the city got a proper, high-speed, high-capacity subway out of it.
The mismanagement of the Crosstown has reached a whole other level. Globe and Mail reporter Jeff Gray laid it all out in a recent investigation.
Instead of giving the job to the Toronto Transit Commission, the century-old agency that operates the transit system, the provincial government handed it to Metrolinx, a new transit-planning agency with little experience building anything.
Using the public-private partnership, or P3, model, Metrolinx then passed it on to a big engineering consortium. But the public and private sides soon set to quarrelling over costs, timelines and a host of other issues, leaving the project tied up in court and adding many millions to the price tag.
Toronto simply can’t afford this kind of mess.
After decades of stalling, the city is finally building out its transit network to fit its status as a major metropolis. Several huge projects are in the works, including subway extensions into Scarborough to the east and Richmond Hill to the north. A whole new subway will run through downtown: the Ontario Line, with its eye-watering budget of $27-billion.
And yet the quarterbacks of this big play can’t even manage to open a line that has been substantially finished for a couple of years. In October, Metrolinx had to put a pause on testing the Crosstown when two trains actually collided in a storage yard.
First, Arbutus is nowhere. What the CoV did was parachute the subway planning on the old Broadway Lougheed LRT project which terminated at Arbutus to connect with future LRT on the Arbutus Corridor.
Why the the line is slow is a conundrum, but lack of priority signalling could be part of the answer.
The City of Toronto controls the traffic signals, not the TTC. People will yell and complain and Toronto Roads will eventually bend, just like they did with the bus lanes. The head of Toronto’s Roads is profoundly anti-transit and anti-rail. This is a common fight with him!
The lrt is slow according to the CBC. Almost 1 hour to go 10KM.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/finch-west-lrt-first-monday-9.7006698
Can they speed it up?
The Canada line to Richmond takes less than 30 mins and is about 15KM.
Driving my own car to Richmond from downtown only takes about 30 minutes too.
It looks like the new LRT in Toronto has its own right of way, so it should be faster.
The Broadway subway is not a subway to nowhere.
Translink should have kept the Olympic line in false creek area.
According to my spies, the Crosstown will open by January 18, 2026. I take this with a great deal of salt though.
First, Arbutus is nowhere. What the CoV did was parachute the subway planning on the old Broadway Lougheed LRT project which terminated at Arbutus to connect with future LRT on the Arbutus Corridor.
Why the the line is slow is a conundrum, but lack of priority signalling could be part of the answer.
The City of Toronto controls the traffic signals, not the TTC. People will yell and complain and Toronto Roads will eventually bend, just like they did with the bus lanes. The head of Toronto’s Roads is profoundly anti-transit and anti-rail. This is a common fight with him!