Day: January 29, 2024

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Will There Ever Be A Scarborough RT Busway?

At its meeting of January of January 25, 2024, the TTC Board received an update on the status of a busway in the former SRT corridor.

The news was not good. For various reasons, the opening date for this facility has slipped to 2Q2027. This is quite a change from the original plan for construction through 2024 and 2025 with a year-end opening, roughly 18 months sooner than the updated projection. Here was the plan back in April 2022 when the project was approved by the Board. At the time, the assumed shutdown date for the SRT was mid-November 2023.

TTC Project Chart for Line 3 Bus Replacement Construction, April 2022

The Board’s discussion was unusually heated, and much criticism fell on TTC Management for an unplanned delay required to conduct a Transit Project Assessment (aka TPAP) even though the corridor is not changing use. The problem lies with planned acquisition of new lands to provide station and corridor access, and they are subject to a review including for cultural/archeological purposes. (Detailed station plans appear later in this article.)

Construction will also require a barrier between the busway and the adjacent GO line because Metrolinx wants to protect from buses accidentally coming onto their corridor. This adds cost, but should not substantially affect the construction schedule.

Total cost is now forecast at $67.9 million, up $12.2 million from the earlier estimate of $55.7 million which is part of the TTC’s 2024 Capital Budget. Of this, $4.3 million is due to the Metrolinx barrier, and $4 million goes for a grab-bag of items that appear to have been omitted in the original estimate. This increase is compounded by other cost lines which are calculated as a percentage of the base.

A far more important source of delay was the foot dragging by Council and the former Mayor about funding the design work which should have been finished by now, but sits at the 60% stage. Essentially Council sat on its hands crying out for Provincial money as part of the subway extension project, and the busway just sat waiting for aid that never arrived from Queen’s Park.

There has certainly been no sense of urgency to get design finished and construction underway as quickly as possible.

The delay, cost increase and a sense that travel time savings might be less than expected have combined to raise the question “why do it at all”. This can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if those responsible for the project, including the politicians, really did not have their hearts in the idea. There is no quicker way to sandbag a project than to deny critical funding, watch the price rise and the due date vanish into the misty future.

While awaiting a formal funding approval, the TTC will redirect $15.2 million from other capital projects to pay for enabling works and property acquisition. This can proceed in parallel with the remaining detailed design and TPAP.

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