Completing the bridge earlier won't make the TBMs bore down Queen street any sooner. It's not on the critical path for this project so there's no sense in accelerating its timeline, something that likely costs money through more workers or overtime.
Ostensibly reasonable, but I do not like this mentality of defaulting to: "we can't do X before we finish Y
and Z." Well Y and Z both need to be faster. Nothing wrong with doing things concurrently. Or early.*
The same logic has been applied to GO Expansion and look where that's gotten us. What is desperately needed is organizational culture(s) of getting things done early, or at worst, on-time. Not procrastinating on something because technically it can't be
used until a nebulous assortment of other sub-projects are finished first.
It starts with Metrolinx, but eventually involves the private sector partners too.
Ok the Burloak grade separation and others aren't done yet, does that stop us from starting work on electrification? Oh no, we've procrastinated so long that the current diesel fleet won't tide us over to when the electric locomotives go online. Guess we'll push electrification even later and procure more diesel locomotives... But wait, if we electrify too early, we won't get value for our money on those new/refurbished diesels... Let's push electrification of the non-Lakeshore lines to 204X.... (I embellish, but not by much)
Barring a significant change, we are genuinely looking at 2 decades before all 5 core GO lines are electrified. Asinine.
Not to mention electric locos are merely a stopgap solution before EMUs, caused by financial and political constraints.
More rants below:
And when you look at it you can't help but feel contempt for Phil Verster and the senior Mx team and their board.
Its not merely the delay or scaling back of electrification; though certainly, that's significant and unfortunate.
Its that signal work in the USRC wont' be complete until 2037! . And track work in the LSE Corridor is ongoing through 2035. SMH, who is anyone trying to fool? Its not a matter of hitting construction times comparable to China. Nor even 1/2 that.
Its taking projects that were promised to be substantially complete as early as 2024, and delivering them up to 14 years later. Its taking project components that are straight forward (like track) that involve no novel technology, and could, even in 2 or 3 phases, be delivered in a maximum of six years (I'd argue for 3 for any given line) ....and managing to stretch that time line by a factor of 3 (after a delayed start to construction).
This is a choice by unmotivated management; and by politicians who clearly don't view anything here as a legacy project, and most will be deceased (of old age) by the time its delivered.
The telling comment for me was when the 401 tunnels [Kitchener Line] were cited by the ML spokesperson as a sign of progress being made. They are a stranded asset that was paid off years ago [completed 2021] and still are not in operation. The sequencing of work on ML projects is fundamentally incompetent.
*Ok, maybe not
that early↑
I'm not the only one expecting the Ontario Line to be horrendously late. My wild guess is 2035 instead of 2031...
What year were Lakeshore East express trains supposed to be restored again? Question credited to
@Northern Light (They were stopped for East Harbour/Ontario Line construction)
