Given the City staff report from this week that the province is thinking of introduction legalisation to help with the delivery of the four big transit projects including the OL, any guesses on what exactly that legislation may do/provide/amend etc?
 
Given the City staff report from this week that the province is thinking of introduction legalisation to help with the delivery of the four big transit projects including the OL, any guesses on what exactly that legislation may do/provide/amend etc?
I will not be surprised if they bypass the EAs and open houses and go straight into construction. Of course they can't really do that if the Feds are chipping in.
 
^ Why couldn't they do that if the feds are chipping in? Or if fed money is provided, there's an automatic requirement for a certain process?
 
The EA would have to be approved by the feds too.

Depends if it is just a "rubber stamp", or a "checking that the spelling is correct, the "t'''s are crossed, the "i"'s are dotted, and the lawyer have okayed every word and sentence.
 
They already have a set of open houses scheduled in the next few weeks.. I would be surprised if those are eliminated.

My best guesses would be the elimination of a lot of EA requirements to speed the process up.
 
^ I think I know what you mean but just to check, do you mean future open houses or the specific four open houses in January?
 
They might do what the Quebec government did for the REM and create a special law that allows these projects to bypass a lot of the current requirements and shield it from civic action. I can't grasp the details but I think this is the document that's doing that:

ACT RESPECTING THE RÉSEAU ÉLECTRIQUE MÉTROPOLITAIN
5. The provisions of this Act take precedence over the provisions of any other Act.
From
 
They might do what the Quebec government did for the REM and create a special law that allows these projects to bypass a lot of the current requirements and shield it from civic action. I can't grasp the details but I think this is the document that's doing that:

ACT RESPECTING THE RÉSEAU ÉLECTRIQUE MÉTROPOLITAIN

From

That must've been controversial....were there news articles about that?
 
Ridership totals is also a misleading figure for rapid transit anyway, because the three lines mentioned would all have different commuter patterns. The Relief Line (when built to Sheppard) was projected to exceed both YUS and BD in ridership at morning and late afternoon peak hour. Meanwhile, both YUS and BD will have more mid-day, afternoon, and evening ridership during the non-peak periods, which when added together, increases their total ridership numbers to surpass that of the Relief Line.

For me, it's a moot conversation. The Relief Line/Ontario Line will serve its purpose by improving commutes for those who use it, and importantly, expands rapid transit coverage to larger parts of the city. The only real question is if the Ontario Line as proposed by Metrolinx will have the capacity to handle peak hour ridership on day 1 (and on day 10,001).
The answer is maybe for day 1 and no for day 10,001.
 
That must've been controversial....were there news articles about that?
Yes, many. But in the end the opposition came from a minority and the judge ruled that the opponents (google translate): "They accompany their factual allegations, which are few in number, with a hodgepodge of assertions, statements of principles, value judgments, innuendo of conspiracies, their own opinions,".

EAs were properly done for the REM, it's the public audiences (BAPE) that were reduced to a period of 60 days (hopefully it'll be 0 for the next projects). The main complaint was that not every detail was known before construction, and that conflicted with the design/build of the REM.
 
^ Sorry what's BAPE?
Bureau d'Audience Publique sur l'Environnement. Public Input for EAs.

 

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