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Rainforest said:
Honestly, I am not super worried whether the Crosstown comes into service in 2021 or in 2023. Either way, it is a dramatic, game-changing improvement for this corridor. A delay of a year or two is nothing, compared to the situations in many other major corridors that are waiting for their lines for decades, without any luck.
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Yes, it's better they take their time and make things go without a hitch than having it dogged with issues as seen with K-W's and Ottawa's rushed openings of their LRT lines.
 
I dunno...I am getting impatient to begin zipping across Eglinton. I have avoided the street for about five years and it has even affected how much I visit close friends, since it's so painful to get around on Eglinton and in the neighbourhoods close to. When you think about it, construction of this magnitude has demolished a generation of businesses.
 
I see you stirring
TransitBart said:
I dunno...I am getting impatient to begin zipping across Eglinton. I have avoided the street for about five years and it has even affected how much I visit close friends, since it's so painful to get around on Eglinton and in the neighbourhoods close to. When you think about it, construction of this magnitude has demolished a generation of businesses.
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crs1026 said:
^I would be good with the project taking however long it takes, provided there were transparency and candour about progress. Not many megaprojects come off on their original timetable.

This approach of whistling a happy tune and periodically rewriting history is what’s unfortunate.

- Paul
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Problem here is that a lot of these struggling businesses are working under the assumption that the heavy construction will be wrapped up long before September 2021; they're probably thinking they need to survive just another year and a half of this construction. Metrolinx's apparent lack of communication regarding the delay could really hurt these businesses.
 
I wonder whether the lesson learned from Crosstown (and TYSSE, frankly) is whether deep bore tunnelling is all it was said to be. There may be locations where it was unavoidable - but could we have done parts of the job cut and cover, and how bad would that have been compared to the current hell on Eglinton?

The businesses on Eglinton would probably agree in hindsight that two years of excavation would have done them less harm than five years of blocked sidewalks etc. We may be more willing to bite the bullet on cut and cover on future lines (Ontario Line, take note) where is was a non starter when these last projects were planned.

My longer term fear for those businesses is, what happens when the line opens and development intensifies? I expect rents will rise and many leases will be terminated so that new construction can happen. That kind of transition is part and parcel of creating a higher order transit line... it may come to Finch also.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
I wonder whether the lesson learned from Crosstown (and TYSSE, frankly) is whether deep bore tunnelling is all it was said to be. There may be locations where it was unavoidable - but could we have done parts of the job cut and cover, and how bad would that have been compared to the current hell on Eglinton?

The businesses on Eglinton would probably agree in hindsight that two years of excavation would have done them less harm than five years of blocked sidewalks etc. We may be more willing to bite the bullet on cut and cover on future lines (Ontario Line, take note) where is was a non starter when these last projects were planned.

My longer term fear for those businesses is, what happens when the line opens and development intensifies? I expect rents will rise and many leases will be terminated so that new construction can happen. That kind of transition is part and parcel of creating a higher order transit line... it may come to Finch also.

- Paul
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That's what we call gentrification
 
crs1026 said:
I wonder whether the lesson learned from Crosstown (and TYSSE, frankly) is whether deep bore tunnelling is all it was said to be. There may be locations where it was unavoidable - but could we have done parts of the job cut and cover, and how bad would that have been compared to the current hell on Eglinton?

The businesses on Eglinton would probably agree in hindsight that two years of excavation would have done them less harm than five years of blocked sidewalks etc. We may be more willing to bite the bullet on cut and cover on future lines (Ontario Line, take note) where is was a non starter when these last projects were planned.

My longer term fear for those businesses is, what happens when the line opens and development intensifies? I expect rents will rise and many leases will be terminated so that new construction can happen. That kind of transition is part and parcel of creating a higher order transit line... it may come to Finch also.

- Paul
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Any change on Finch (especially Jane-Finch) is welcome. It cannot get any worse.
 
crs1026 said:
I wonder whether the lesson learned from Crosstown (and TYSSE, frankly) is whether deep bore tunnelling is all it was said to be. There may be locations where it was unavoidable - but could we have done parts of the job cut and cover, and how bad would that have been compared to the current hell on Eglinton?

The businesses on Eglinton would probably agree in hindsight that two years of excavation would have done them less harm than five years of blocked sidewalks etc. We may be more willing to bite the bullet on cut and cover on future lines (Ontario Line, take note) where is was a non starter when these last projects were planned.
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Yea living near the corridor, I'd much rather have dealt with the strip of Eglinton by my house being unpassable for four to six months, than deal with having every major intersection torn up for six years. It really feels like the congestion is 90% as bad as it would be for cut and cover, so why not go with the shorter lasting disruption?

When we were going into this project, I was thinking that each individual intersection might be torn up for a year or two, before being returned to normal. I never would have dreamed that all the intersections would still be torn up 5 years after heavy construction began.
 
One of the supposed benefits of tunnelling is the the surface construction impacts are limited to the areas around stations only. However these construction zones around individual stations are so long that they might as well be amalgamated into a single large construction site. Eglinton two blocks away from a station site feels every bit as treacherous as the station itself.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Yea living near the corridor, I'd much rather have dealt with the strip of Eglinton by my house being unpassable for four to six months, than deal with having every major intersection torn up for six years. It really feels like the congestion is 90% as bad as it would be for cut and cover, so why not go with the shorter lasting disruption?

When we were going into this project, I was thinking that each individual intersection might be torn up for a year or two, before being returned to normal. I never would have dreamed that all the intersections would still be torn up 5 years after heavy construction began.
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Eglinton was much less chaos than St Clair was during its ROW construction though. ;)
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Problem here is that a lot of these struggling businesses are working under the assumption that the heavy construction will be wrapped up long before September 2021; they're probably thinking they need to survive just another year and a half of this construction. Metrolinx's apparent lack of communication regarding the delay could really hurt these businesses.
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Yeah, that's an important aspect. Let's hope though, that even if the service doesn't start in 2021, then at least all heavy construction gets completed, leaving only some interior work to complete.
 
Rainforest said:
Yeah, that's an important aspect. Let's hope though, that even if the service doesn't start in 2021, then at least all heavy construction gets completed, leaving only some interior work to complete.
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Yea totally. I can see the heavy construction at all of the non-interchange stations being done within a year (yay), but I don't see Cedarvale and Eglinton-Yonge stations finishing heavy construction anytime soon. Nothing would surprise me if their respective intersections are still torn up three years from now (2022). If Metrolinx said in 2011 that they were going to go from underpinning to substantially completing these two interchange stations in just three years, I would've said that was a ridiculously ambitions plan that probably wouldn't work out. Really feels like the heavy work should've been wrapped up a year ago.

Who knows though. Once excavation and underpinning is complete, they might be able to immediately pour the roof and the restore the road in short order. Construction of the interior could continue once the roof is complete. This is how some of the other cut-and-cover stations are being built. If that's the case, the surface disruption can still realistically be wrapped up by 2021, although I still really cant see these stations being fully complete on time.

I'm curious how Metrolinx originally intended for the construction of Cedarvale and Eglinton-Yonge to proceed. It's hard to believe they ever intended this to progress anywhere near this slowly, especially since these are the two most important stations on the line. If true, these two stations must be years behind schedule. What could possibly cause such a delay?
 
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