The Ontario Gov (seemingly at least) is not playing a zero-sum game with the 4 priority lines they are pushing. They are pushing all 4 forward at a reasonable pace (pandemic included). They have improved the SSE (more stations, longer, finally reaches Shepherd ), the EWLRT (complete grade separation, protection for the future capacity to the airport employment area), and the Ontario Line ( longer phase 1, more stations in phase 1, shallower stations, ability to be run close to GO Trains, ground level and elevated in some sections to save costs).
As a transit enthusiast, I can't complain about getting more grade-separated transit. Decreasing the capacity of one line by 15 percent but having it built sooner and faster is not a bad trade-off.
I agree that 15% (about 4500 PPDPH) is a significant amount. But starting an Ontario Line system in Toronto makes adding more lines easier in the future. As I keep repeating, look at Vancouver. They have built so much transit in such a short amount of time because they use smaller trains/stations. They even have stations fully funded by developers because they can build them so cheaply. ($40 million for elevated, under $100 million for underground) The Skytrain system is lower capacity than what Toronto needs, but there is a middle ground here. We don't need to build huge stations like the Spadina Extension when we can built more reasonably sized stations faster.
I'd be really curious to see an analysis of how train size would actually impact the project costs here. I'd expect longer trains to have a substantial impact, no doubt, as the station boxes themselves would have to be larger, but I wonder how much of a financial impact we'd see from wider trains. We know that tunnel boring costs aren't very sensitive to tunnel diameters, and I suspect that adding a few feet of width to the stations wouldn't have an outsized impact on cost either.
Also I largely agree with what you've written above, but I don't believe for a second that Toronto's relative lack of transit expansion had much to do with cost
Between 1954 and 2020, Toronto has built a grand total of two rapid transit lines of substantial length. For most of that period, transit expansion has been relatively dirt cheap. More than anything, the issue has been the tremendous degree of political meddling, and a lack of commitment. The Ontario Line, until proven otherwise, is a particularly egregious continuation of this long standing legacy.
We've seen this story play out over and over again: (1) new government comes in, (2) scraps all the old plans and (3) proposes shiny and ambitious new plans. A few years go by, (4) costs are higher than expected, (5) lines are truncated and delayed indefinitely, (6) until the next government comes in and scraps all the old plans. We are currently at step 3, and will likely be at step 4 by mid next year. Time will tell if we reach step 6.
I have absolutely no idea how the Ontario Line is going to progress from here. But depending on its fate, its either going to be looked at as:
A) A brilliant shakeup of the transit building process in the GTHA
or
B) Yet another underhanded cancellation of a well-developed transit plan
To date, this government has achieved nothing more than the cancelation of the Relief Line, when, after a century of planning, we were closer than ever to getting built. Until we see contracts signed and shovels in the ground, there is nothing celebratory about that. We've been through this same song and dance too many times.
