Scenes from the Eglinton LRT
The 10-kilometre route will transform the city and, in the process, demolish it
John Lorinc
From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Aug. 06, 2010 6:00PM EDT
The American architect Daniel Burnham, father of modern Chicago, is reputed to have told colleagues to “make no small plans†– a muscular exhortation that has encouraged and bedevilled urban planners ever since. In a Toronto twist on Burnham's maxim, some critics argued that David Miller's proposed streetcar network, known as Transit City, failed to capture the public’s imagination in the way that a subway-building program might have.
Those critics will spend the next ten years eating dust, and lots of it.
Anyone who doubts the plan’s sheer humongousness should spend a humid afternoon driving Eglinton from Black Creek Drive to the slope east of Laird, a 10.5 km river of traffic. A decade hence, a twinned tunnel for light-rail vehicles, with 13 stations, will run below this busy arterial. That’s equivalent to the Keele-to-Pape segment of the Bloor/Danforth subway line.
The route takes in Fairbank’s working-class grittiness, upscale Forest Hill, congested mid-town and the new/old world of Leaside – in short, a social core sample of Toronto itself. Once the Eglinton LRT re-surfaces, near the saddle of Serena Gundy ParkÖ, it will press through Don Mills and Scarborough’s Golden Mile on its way to the Kennedy subway station, which will be re-invented as a transportation super-hub.
Proponents argue that the Eglinton LRT will provide rapid transit to a huge part of the city and spur development to justify the expense. Opponents fret about disruptive construction, loss of business, and congestion on the narrowed road allowances. Love it or hate it, the $4.6-billion Eglinton LRT – which received the final go-ahead in June – will transform Toronto in ways not seen since the Bloor subway linked the city’s east and west in the 1960s.
Even by Mr. Burnham’s yardstick, it is a big plan.
The Buses
On a typical weekday, 1,300 buses pass along Eglinton just east of Yonge; that figure is even higher near the Eglinton West station. The arrival of the LRT will drastically reduce those volumes and create more space for cars, although the Toronto Transit Commission has yet to make final decisions about the Eglinton bus routes. “At this point, we’ve made no commitments one way or the other,†says TTC planner Scott Haskill.
Less bus service raises the question of where the new LRT stops will be. The TTC modelled the optimal distance between stops and concluded it was about 400 to 500 metres, about twice the gap between bus stops. The trade-off, says Mr. Haskill, is between how far riders are willing to walk and the speed of the service. The TTC opted against spacing the LRT stops as if they were subway stations. “We’ve heard that loud and clear.â€
The Streetscape
The Eglinton Crosstown will unfold in two acts.
The tunnel boring begins in 2012. But construction on the surface sections – from Black Creek to Jane and Laird to Kennedy – will take place between 2014 and 2018. After carving out space for the LRT right-of-way, the TTC says there will be “at least†two lanes in either direction, three if space allows. Unlike St. Clair West, much of the route is not lined by retail stores, so the city has more room to manoeuvre.
On the tunnelled section, the street itself won’t look dramatically different, but Councillor Karen Stintz (Ward 16 Eglinton-Lawrence) wants the city to take advantage of the reduced bus traffic and examine the “exciting†possibility of narrowing the road on some parts of Eglinton in order to widen the sidewalks. “It opens up the opportunity for a pedestrian scramble at Yonge and Eglinton,†she adds, referring to the all-direction crossings where Yonge meets Bloor and Dundas.
The Boss
Peter Allibone is standing on a scrubby slope overlooking a point on Eglinton where it drops down toward the Serena Gundy Park. “The launch pit is going to be around here,†he says, gesturing at a spot in the middle of the road, “and the soccer field†– his pet term for a staging area for heavy equipment – “will be about here.â€
Dressed in a white shirt so crisp it looks as if it could crack, Mr. Allibone is a veteran engineer who exudes self-assurance and wouldn’t look out of place on a British legal drama. He’s spent 40 years building transit projects, including the London Underground, New York City’s subway system, and a connecting rail terminal at Newark Liberty International Airport.
A consultant with engineering giant Parsons Brinckerhoff, Mr. Allibone has signed on as the chief project manager for the Eglinton Crosstown. For the next several years, his focus will be the tunnel. At either end, the entrances will be built on slopes to take advantage of the grade change. The tunnels will be 15 to 25 metres deep, with the lowest points where they dip under the two subway lines. Next year, the TTC will carve out the entrances – 15-metre-deep pits in the middle of Eglinton, with the road lanes routed around the hoardings.
In 2012, trucks will haul a pair of tunnel boring machines (TBM) from a factory in Downsview to the launch sites. At full speed, Mr. Allibone says, the TBMs can move 15 metres a day, disgorging enough “muck†to fill 75 to 100 dump trucks. The tunnel will displace 750,000 cubic metres of dirt, enough to fill half the Rogers Centre.
Mr. Allibone is well aware of the disruption factor. “It’s a bit like tearing off a band-aid,†he offers. You can tear it quickly – lots of pain but it’s over quickly, or you can ease it off, but prolong the agony. “We have to find which is the most effective approach.â€
The Stations
Transit veterans know that stations are the cash sinks in subway schemes, so the TTC’s plan for the Eglinton LRT is to create a standard design that can be adapted to meet local needs. They’ll be “cut-and-cover†boxes about 150 metres long. “You basically dig a large hole, fill it up with stuff and put the lid on,†says Mr. Allibone.
The end walls for each station are built first, and the TBMs bore through, allowing crews to erect the side walls. The platforms, at 100 metres, will be two-thirds the length of a standard subway platform, but the overall design will have familiar subway elements – a mezzanine level above the platform, plus retail kiosks.
For the Eglinton and Eglinton West stations, Mr. Allibone’s contractors will first rebuild the foundations supporting the existing subway tunnels. Only then can they begin to construct the box for the new LRT station situated directly underneath. Tunnelling is never straightforward, but this job presents a formidable challenge, he says. “When we’re building under an operating subway, that technical difficulty goes up exponentially.â€
The Kennedy station, meanwhile, will undergo a massive, $500-million facelift between 2015 and 2018 so it can accommodate two LRTs (Eglinton plus the proposed Scarborough-Malvern line) and the rebuilt Scarborough rapid transit terminus, as well as the existing subway station, bus bays, and GO Transit connection. “This is a very complex undertaking,†says Scarborough Rapid Transit chief project manager Rick Thompson. Kennedy “will become the most complex hub in TTC’s repertoire.â€
The Shopkeeper
Her tiny shop filled with crates of sugar cane, Marcia Sterling is vaguely aware that something on her stretch of Eglinton will be changing. But, as with other businesses along that stretch, she feels the city hasn’t done much to spell out the details.
Ms. Sterling has run Shanty’s Caribbean near the corner of Dufferin for 23 years. There’s a seniors’ home and a gas station across the street, a funeral home next door, and a busy bus stop nearby. “I hope I don’t have to move,†she muses.
The new LRT station at Dufferin will be just steps away, and Ms. Sterling hopes it will bring traffic to a neighbourhood with lots of small shops, but also lots of vacancy signs. “Anything to help business, because we need business around here.â€
The Pitfalls
The Eglinton Crosstown budget is about 40 times higher than the final bill for the St. Clair West right-of-way, which – at $106-million and five years in the making – was a magnet for criticism. The big numbers suggest the spectre of big mistakes, not to mention the prospect of years of traffic snarls around the tunnel entrances, the station construction sites, and the stretches where the route will run above ground.
Looking to avoid past mistakes, the TTC has hired an outreach co-ordinator to keep lines of communication open with businesses and neighbourhood groups so everyone knows when disruption is imminent. “I’m doing a lot of proactive outreach,†says Franca DiGiovanni, a former Liberal aide at Queen’s Park, now community liaison for Transit City. “We’re talking now, and we’ll continue to talk.â€
The TTC has also changed its tendering policies for Eglinton, combining all the construction tasks on each stretch into one contract to minimize delays. As TTC spokesperson Ryan BissonetteÖ says, “One of our mottos is, ‘Get in, get out, stay out.’â€
