海角社区官网

Delaying the Waterfront East Light Rail Transit project not only leaves thousands of new residents in the area without reliable transit, it could also cost the city millions a year in lost tax revenue, as it looks to transform the eastern waterfront and Port Lands.

Build it and they will come

Current plans call for the light-rail line to run through an underground section between Union Station and Queens Quay between Bay and Yonge Streets, before emerging onto Queens Quay East, then down Cherry Street onto听Ookwemin Minising (formerly Villiers Island) and onto Commissioners Street. The TTC will design the underground section as the work will need to modify the current Harbourfront streetcar tunnel,听while the remaining portions are being designed听from scratch听by Waterfront Toronto, a tri-government corporation.

For now, residents have to rely on听priority bus routes听created by the city听to service the rapidly growing neighbourhood. But a stopgap measure like dedicated bus lanes will not be able to handle the volume of riders that are expected as the area grows, according to the line’s planners.

”(A streetcar) carries more people, on a more dedicated schedule,” said Tim Kocur, the Waterfront BIA’s executive director. “It’s higher order transit.”

The route is too close to the water for a subway but needs more service than a dedicated bus lane. “The Waterfront East LRT is, hopefully, the right balance,” he said, pointing to the current 509 Harbourfront streetcar as a model to emulate on the eastern waterfront.

In some ways, the transit project seems hung up on an age-old dilemma: which should come first 鈥� the residents to demand the transit or the transit to serve what you know will be a growing population?

“Until you build the housing, there won’t be demand for public transit,” said former councillor Jack Layton, late husband to Mayor Olivia Chow, in 2000 when the city was eyeing the east waterfront for redevelopment. “It’s one of those chicken-and-egg situations.”

Twenty-five years later, the chicken is here. Between 2016 and 2021, the population in East Bayfront grew by nearly 200 per cent, according to the city. Overall, roughly 100,000 new residents 鈥� about the population of Guelph 鈥� are expected to move within the next decade into a neighbourhood that used to be exclusively industrial.

The egg? It still hasn’t hatched.

鈥淚t鈥檚 important that we move immediately because we are already many years behind,鈥� said听Chow about the transit line in November 2023, fresh from her mayoral victory. 鈥淟et鈥檚 be sure we don鈥檛 have all the buildings coming in, but the only way to get around is to drive or ride a bike.鈥�

Show us the money?

Two years after the mayor lamented the lack of progress on the line, it still doesn’t have the funding it needs from the provincial or federal governments for its听more than $2-billion price tag.

Neither the federal nor the provincial governments answered questions about whether they would commit funding to the Waterfront East LRT.

“The Ministry of Transportation continues to work with our federal and municipal partners on transportation options for the city of Toronto,” said Dakota Brasier, a spokesperson for Ontario’s minister of transportation, in a statement.听

A spokesperson for Housing, Infrastructure and Communities said the federal government is supporting public transit through the Canada Public Transit Fund.

“The government of Canada continues to work closely with the province of Ontario, the city of Toronto, Waterfront Toronto, and the 海角社区官网Transit Commission on how we can support the transit needs of the people of 海角社区官网and the GTHA,” spokesperson Caleb Spassov said.听

The Waterfront East LRT would be the first major transit project that the city has constructed in nearly a decade 鈥� the last being听the Toronto鈥擸ork Spadina subway extension of Line 1, which was completed in 2017. Since then, most transit infrastructure has been built by the provincial transit agency Metrolinx, which is currently overseeing the construction of the听Eglinton Crosstown听补苍诲听Finch West听尝搁罢蝉,听GO expansion听and the听Ontario Line.

A 鈥榩riority project鈥� takes shape

Despite the lack of confirmed funding, developers and planners are optimistic,听听that are expected to occupy the new neighbourhood.

“We’re closer now to getting that (funding) than we’ve ever been,” said Christopher Glaisek, chief planning and design officer for Waterfront Toronto. “We’re feeling that the stars may be starting to align on getting this done.”

All levels of government know this is a “priority project” for the city, said Derrick Toigo, executive director of听the city’s transit expansion office, adding that the city is actively working with the provincial and federal governments to get them to commit funding.

The most recent price tag for the project was put at $2.67 billion over 10 years, but that was based on a projection where funding had been secured in 2024.

“It’s too early for us to tell you what a cost (for the transit line) would be,” Toigo said, adding that further design work on the project will identify any other risks that could bloat its budget. “Will the cost potentially increase? Yes, for sure.”

Currently, the designing of the Waterfront East LRT by Waterfront 海角社区官网and the city’s transit expansion office is about 60 per cent complete. They will then go back to city council for more funding and evaluation in order to finish the design.

That work alone is听expected to cost the city $135 million,听which does not include the underground portion of the line, as it requires an expansion of the existing Harbourfront streetcar loop. That design money would be a sunk cost, if funding from other levels of government to actually build the LRT doesn鈥檛 materialize.

Both Toigo and Glaisek peg the Waterfront East LRT’s opening date as “early to mid 2030,” based on its current design.

The optimism that a multibillion-dollar transit project that鈥檚 still largely unfunded will open in less than six years is based on the belief that the Waterfront LRT build will not be as complex as the as-yet unopened Eglinton Crosstown LRT, a Metrolinx project that has been plagued with problems and delays for more than a decade, say the planners.

The Waterfront East is more closely related to the Finch West LRT, according to Toigo: the line will run mostly at street level and will use the same streetcars as the current Harbourfront line. The Finch West, which Metrolinx began in 2019, was delayed due to the pandemic, and is expected to open soon after the Crosstown LRT sometime this fall.

In fact, Toigo said he’s taken lessons from Toronto’s troublesome LRT lines, and has drawn inspiration from across Canada, in Vancouver’s Canada Line and Calgary’s Green Line, and from around the world.

“I don’t want to start saying that we’re going to solve all the problems,” Toigo added.

“What we are doing is looking at it and trying to figure out as many of these areas that have caused risk previously (and) how do we de-risk them,”听he said, pointing to how the Crosstown struggled with how to deal with utility infrastructure, and the lessons that the Waterfront East LRT could take from those troubles.

What’s on the line?

Any delays in that timeline could also cost the city valuable tax revenue and productivity. Six years ago, the Waterfront BIA published a report by an engineering consultancy firm that found that not building the Waterfront East LRT could result in听$1.8 billion in lost productivity and $20 billion in forgone tax revenue听to all levels of government, because of lost ridership from commuters and slower retail traffic.

Now, Kocur is more optimistic about the transit line’s prospects, lauding Chow’s consistent push to have the line built.

Still, he acknowledges, his BIA report from six years ago was on lower density projections for the waterfront neighbourhood, and the forgone revenue from lack of progress on the line has increased from those initial estimates.

“The pandemic didn’t do any of these projects any good,” Kocur said. The LRT may need some streamlining in its design,听which could include omitting the Union Station underground connection,听to finally get it pushed through, but Kocur emphasized his optimism.

“There is no reason why this should take more than a few years of construction,” he added. “Absolutely no reason.”

Steven Farber, a transportation geographer at the University of Toronto, said he thought a mid-2030 opening date would be “reasonable,” with the most complicated part being the tunnel portion between Union Station and the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal.

This isn’t a case of a lack of forethought or planning, like in Liberty Village where congestion听snarled the rapidly growing neighbourhood, said Farber.听

Instead, the city has a plan 鈥� one developed for more than a decade 鈥� it just needs to reduce the cost to speed its construction, he said.

“Why are rail projects in Canada and Ontario costing almost an order of magnitude more than, say, similar projects with similar demand?” said Farber citing a听U of T report from December 2024听that听found poor planning, overdesigning and an overreliance on external consultants drove up the budgets of Toronto’s transit projects.

“Bringing down the cost of construction and focusing on that should open up opportunities for more of our projects to get funded and shovels into the ground.”