cplchanb
Senior Member
well its not new... their incompetent boss already made it public that the track is mms off a few weeks ago
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cplchanb
Senior Member
uhhh.... no...?? look how the university extension turned out to be....
its damned if you do damned if you dont... the big lesson in all this is:
1. contractors should not undercut on their fees in desperation to get their jobs without the expectations they will be on the hook for extras (unless its for acts of god events). they cant rely on value engineering and corner cutting to recoupt their profits
2. ML cant blindly take the lowest bid. they are usually too good to be true. im sure most taxpayers would be fine with higher bid prices if it means fewer extras and delays
3. issues happen all the time. DONT be like verster and publicly burn the bridge like what he did. it only will lead to finger pointing and litigation like now
4. verster's contract cannot be renewed.
T3G
Senior Member
The TTC is not exactly a paragon of competence, but you're not equating Crosslinx's biblically poor performance on the Crosstown to the Spadina subway extension, surely?
The Crosstown has been, by a considerable margin, the worst project in the modern history of the Toronto. Whatever snags the project would have encountered under the management of the TTC, and I'm sure there would have been many, I am confident based on past performance that it would have come nowhere close to the display of incompetence Metrolinx and their poorly chosen contractors have shown.
There are two key takeaways from this project:
1) Keep the God damned capitalists away from transit;
2) Disband Metrolinx. They are not fit for purpose.
The Crosstown has been, by a considerable margin, the worst project in the modern history of the Toronto. Whatever snags the project would have encountered under the management of the TTC, and I'm sure there would have been many, I am confident based on past performance that it would have come nowhere close to the display of incompetence Metrolinx and their poorly chosen contractors have shown.
This lesson will not be learned, for this is literally the basis of modern capitalism. Make promises you can't keep and try to keep them by milking your employees, clients, or tax payers for everything that they've got, rather than owning up to your fuck up. This is not some corrupt scheme, this is what constitutes "good business" in this age.
There are two key takeaways from this project:
1) Keep the God damned capitalists away from transit;
2) Disband Metrolinx. They are not fit for purpose.
cplchanb
Senior Member
my equivalence of the subway extension to this is that they are both years late and over; the former being particularly egregious since they only need to do half the distance, no need to go under an existing subway and yet it still took 10 years.
dont forget 2 managers were publicly fired for their mismanagement of the project.
regardless, theres no point in saying who failed more. they both suck at project management.
thats what happens when you get bureaucracy involved in construction.
generalcanada
Senior Member
"the ttc should build it"
"why is the ttc project years late? so much government waste, we should outsource it"
"why is the project so delayed? private companies are super incompetent the ttc should build it"
ITS A CIRCLE
"why is the ttc project years late? so much government waste, we should outsource it"
"why is the project so delayed? private companies are super incompetent the ttc should build it"
ITS A CIRCLE
T3G
Senior Member
The thing is, incompetence and stupidity is a hallmark of both public and private sector institutions, but generally the public sector is much more transparent, so you get to see the incompetence in real time. Private sector institutions are every bit as bad, but they're not beholden to the public in the same way, so all the corruption, stupidity, etc goes on behind closed doors and may never see the light of day. Why do you think we have so little information on what exactly has gone wrong with the Crosstown?
I don't know about you, but if giving the job to people with brains is not on the table (it usually isn't), I'd rather take the transparent bozos without a profit mandate, thanks.
I don't know about you, but if giving the job to people with brains is not on the table (it usually isn't), I'd rather take the transparent bozos without a profit mandate, thanks.
crs1026
Superstar
Actually, I would dispute elements of this, although in the end we reach similar conclusions by different means.
The disclosure that a private company must undertake to raise capital is substantial, and there is less room for evasive answers. Bay Street has a pretty intrusive system of investment analysts and ratings - and if a company gives insufficient explanation, their ratings are downgraded, leading to consequences in borrowing costs and investor demand/share price - and ultimately shareholder non-confidence. This structure is backed up by laws governing regulatory-mandated filings and public disclosure. Some games get played - but ultimately if a CEO misleads investors, they get sued - or they go to jail.
Whereas in politics - spin is everything, and one can obfuscate and refuse to answer for a very long time. (Although, as this situation demonstrates, the truth may eventually out, and the crime of screwing up a project is far less serious than the crime of lying about it). Metrolinx’ annual report and MD&A documents are audited but without the same legal onus of truthfulness and full disclosure. One has to ask how a failure of this magnitude was not fully disclosed in those reports (as they would have been in the private sector) and how an independent auditor would certify the books with such a major deficiency not flagged.
To my mind, the root cause of the Crosstown failure is indeed the lack of transparency, which allowed whatever problems have emerged to remain undisclosed, and which enabled government to remain silent and hands-off when their fiduciary duty to the taxpayer required them to impose corrective action.
If I were running things the changes I would make are:
- the removal of Ministerial privilege such that all communications between the Ministry and ML are in writing and discoverable
- the requirement for ML to respond to FOI requests fully and promptly
- the restructuring of P3 contracts to provide for independent third-party oversight and audit, with the power to disclose and comment publicly and issue periodic reports on progress, financial spend against target, and contractor performance including any areas of concern or dispute between the parties
- all scope changes and change requests to be discoverable and put on the public record
-all claims submitted by contractors for variance to price or completion dates to be discoverable and a matter of public record
- ML Board meetings to be held in public session with in-camera sessions limited to matters where this is traditionally and commonly the case eg personnel decisions, requests for direction from solicitors re litigation or negotiation
If this kind of governance existed around ML’s management, P3 would be a viable way to get work done and prevent ML from becoming an even bigger and less responsive monolith.
The problem with P3 in the current model is that it firewalls government from accountability. Crosstown is supposedly an infrastructure project - but to the Province it’s only an opportunity to create a political narrative. The obsession with maintaining a favourable political narrative has allowed the hard cold facts about the project to be suppressed…… except that, with trams still not running, some amount of truth ultimately leaks out.
TTC screwed up elements of TYSSE, but ultimately fessed up and faced the music. With Crosstown, the games are still going on.…. this failure is the result of an entirely misplaced governance structure and politicallycentric culture.
- Paul
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DensityDan
New Member
Do you have any idea why the Crosstown project has been so bad when the west extension and the Finch LRT seem to be running so much more smoothly? The optimist in me wants to believe that this project represents an earlier generation of Metrolinx project and that maybe some kinks have been worked out since then.
generalcanada
Senior Member
We have went over this in different threads
The hurontario line as well too. Go Expansion running smoothly
yes Metrolinx have learned, People saying OL will be delayed 3 years like the crosstown are just wrong
crs1026
Superstar
Any actual facts, no. But I have some theories, based on what is out there in the media reports
- The underpinning tasks at Cedarvale and Yonge were more technically complex than ever anticipated, and the design took longer than planned. My recollection is that the engineering for both locations was delayed and these work tasks only got started late in the game. This put the schedule at risk right from the start as these work packages became critical path for the entire project.
- The discoveries at Yonge with respect to water were likely a true unforeseen and posed new engineering challenges - creating both further engineering difficulties, construction scope creep, as well as a commercial question of who eats the cost and absorbs the impacts on schedule
- ML had political pressure to push the “fixed price” premise beyond reasonable levels - for political reasons, they could not approve cost variances as these would be publically portrayed as “overruns” and ran contrary to the dogma that P3 places all risk with the contractor (when in fact these risks do pop up in projects and have to be absorbed) - this is where the false narrative of “it’s fixed price and the contractor eats all the risk” fell apart - the political theatre benefits of “going to court” were too tempting even where the contractor’s claim was legit
- Covid created problems, obviously - but again, ML could not admit this without admitting an impact on budget and timing, so they went to court with bad arguments….. and lost
- ML was a “young” design organization with a lot of organizational flaws, and which recruited people from a wide variety of external agencies . In theory this ought to have brought a lot of talent to the table, but getting all those different backgrounds and work methods to a common denominator proved to be a bridge too far. That’s how you have people procuring trams with one wheel profile but rail with a different profile…. neither was “wrong”, but left hands and right hands didn’t connect. Plus, in the early years of Crosstown Ml had too many “planners” who only talked at high levels with little execution focus - and too few experienced designers and builders who actually knew the nuts and bolts and who could anticipate and solve problems.
- There was a pretty clear contempt for traditional ttc expertise and practices. In fact, in early stages of the project there was a belief that TTC would be brought into a “Superlinx” because they were seen as not capable. While TTC is widely guilty of a “not invented here” mentality, they do know a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Plus, the end product has to fit into TTC operating systems so it can’t be designed in the absence of TTC “realities”. I will be interested in what the TTC’s recent “supposedly non-ending list of corrections” contains….. I bet the majority are legit and the young, diverse, ambitious, overconfident ML people didn’t listen, or didn’t ask, out of contempt for TTC
Why is Finch running better ? It’s above ground, and there is far more local experience with building LRT tracks in the local contractor ranks than when Crosstown started. The Sloan thing is sloppy workmanship, but actually most of the Crosstown above ground construction has gone OK…. just a bit slow, which is understandable when you have so many trades working on LRt for the first time. There are only a couple of underground structures but none of the complex mix of deep cut and cover, mining, and boring methods…. no need to weave stations into existing buildings and heritage structures….. I hope that Finch (and hopefully Hurontario and Hamilton) prove to politicians just how much simpler and easy LRT is to build.
My biggest fear is that the same dynamics will play out on the Ontario Line construction. If we don’t have transparency, it will be even harder to execute.
- Paul
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T3G
Senior Member
A completely unjustified absolute statement. You can argue that Metrolinx has learned and that other projects are going smoothly (though I question how it's relevant to compare a complex underground project with above ground tram projects that even a monkey could build), and you can even say that things are *probably* going to be fine, sure, but saying the naysayers are "just wrong" as an absolute statement? Unless you have travelled in time to 2031 and can confirm for us that the project ended up being delivered on time, this is just bluster.
Never make an absolute statement you can't back up. If there ends up being a delay to the Ontario Line, you will look foolish.
Sunnyside
Active Member
I think there is an element of this, Metrolinx's latest projects have gone much more smoothly. Procurement models/contracts have changed a bit, and the Ontario Line is shaping up to deliberately avoid the problems of the Crosstown. However, Metrolinx can't just ignore the problems they've created from yesteryear; the failures of Crosstown still exist, are growing, and it seems like there is no plan to fix them. It doesn't matter how smoothly Finch W, Hurontario, or even the OL goes if they can't wrap up the showpiece project they started over a decade ago. There is something to be said for "sticking the landing" even if it takes a lot of effort to get there.
All the criticisms leveraged against Mx +/Crosslinx are therefore valid in my book, even if we accept that the Metrolinx that created this situation is different from Metrolinx today. Bad practices still exist internally, so they don't really deserve the benefit of the doubt. This is what happens when your procurement/construction model is fragile even under perfect circumstances, so it collapses when a real stress test comes around. An un-complicated project is small fries for them, but they clearly could not/cannot prevent and contain issues when they arise- we do not yet know if they will have actually learned in this regard.
Tangent about the entity of Metrolinx itself now:
While disbanding Metrolinx is a bad idea in my book (the future of transit in the GTHA cannot be without an integrated body) it needs serious reform if it wants to be the agency the GTHA needs. However, that issue is more politically entrenched, and I am willing to take slower changes if we see legitimate improvements. Maybe I'm too young to know enough about its formation, but Metrolinx should have, from the start, been a logical extension/expansion of the TTC in some capacity- using the best of the region's expertise, that is, and incubating it to grow and develop over time. I've placed faith in Metrolinx's ambition to overlay a provincial integrated transit system on top of the local agencies before. But, this experiment will only work if the emerging network is executed well enough to be worth the effort of departing from the tried-and-true way of the TTC prior. There cannot ever be another Crosstown, and Metrolinx should build and compile the expertise under its purview to guarantee that. There is simply too much to be built in the next 30 years to afford inefficiency like this.
Edit: @crs1026 says what I said at various points clearer and with more specificity.
Sunnyside
Active Member
I think Metrolinx has done enough to make sure that these specific issues will not play out again on the Ontario Line. However, in typical Metrolinx fashion, they have already spawned new problems (breaking new ground in lack of transparency) and might spawn a dozen more.
generalcanada
Senior Member
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Metrolinx learned in the sense that they couldn't get anyone to use this kind of P3 model with projects with similar levels of complexity - and what they could get through afterwards has a significantly higher price tag than originally envisioned.
AoD
AoD