[URBAN NOTE] "On sobering day for Toronto transit plans, city put on notice to find funding"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Oliver Moore reports.

Ontario is demanding that Toronto show it can pay for its share of Mayor John Tory’s key transit proposal, even as the two governments continue to joust over the scope of his plan and other projects keep climbing in price.

Included in more than 700 pages of transit reports released Tuesday is a sobering picture of the difficulties facing Toronto. Timelines are lengthening and costs are mounting.

The one-stop Scarborough subway extension, costed at $2-billion a few months ago and pegged as recently as Friday at about $2.9-billion, will actually cost $3.16-billion. The additional cost is attributed to the price of extending the life of the current transit serving the region and then decommissioning it. The extension is not likely to open until late 2025, two years later than expected, assuming construction starts in 2020.

The Downtown Relief Line, which experts have long described as the city’s top transit priority, has more than doubled in price. A high-level estimate has long put the cost of the project at $3.2-billion. Staff say now it would be more likely to cost $6.8-billion. This assumes the line would be service by 2031, with construction taking about a decade, though there is no funding currently attached to it.

The bright spot on Tuesday was the province and Mr. Tory announcing four new GO stations in Toronto, two of them in the sections of the rail system that Mr. Tory has dubbed “the SmartTrack network.” A similar announcement is expected Wednesday, offering the prospect of easier access to GO rail service within the city.