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Cost Confusion on the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown

Why can't reporters seem to agree on how much Toronto's most important transit project is supposed to cost?

By Steve Kupferman

The transit plan currently on the books for Toronto, based on a Memorandum of Understanding between the mayor and the province.

There’s a lot of uncertainty swirling around the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT these days, as two factions on city council war over whether or not portions of it will run above ground. Amid all the uproar, a weird inconsistency continues to propagate through news reports: some journalists think the project’s estimated cost is $8.2 billion, while others think the figure is $8.4 billion.

We’ve done some Googling and asking around, and we think we know what’s going on.

Quibbling over a $200 million slice of a project that will cost $8 billion and change may seem trivial, but consider the scale of the inconsistency. Tess Kalinowski, the Toronto Star transit reporter (and one of the most credible voices on Toronto public transit outside the transit agencies themselves) used $8.2 billion consistently, as did most of her colleagues at the Star, until Monday, when she switched to $8.4 billion. (City columnist Royson James beat her to it by almost two months.)

Every other major newspaper in Toronto has also wavered between the two figures. (So has Torontoist.) Some reporters have even used both in the space of a single article, without a word of explanation.

The confusion extends even to the Crosstown’s official website, where until yesterday $8.2 billion was used on one page, $8.4 billion on another. The inconsistency was corrected after we contacted the Crosstown’s media spokesperson about it.

The problem seems to have its roots in the press release about the project issued on March 31, the day Rob Ford and Dalton McGuinty jointly announced their deal to bury the entire length of the Crosstown’s Eglinton leg. It prominently says that the “cost estimate for the project is $8.18 billion,” but also says, somewhat less prominently, that “Ontario is contributing $8.4 billion to the revised Toronto transit plan.”

So what’s the difference between the two numbers? And which one is right?

The Crosstown has a designated media spokesperson, Susan Sperling, whom we reached by email earlier this week. Even she wasn’t sure of the difference between the two figures initially, but the next day she sent a response.

“$8.4 billion is the provincial funding commitment to the Crosstown transit project,” she wrote. “The $8.2 billion figure you’ve come across is Metrolinx’s estimated cost for the Crosstown that will be verified once the scope of the project, including the number of stations, has been confirmed.”

And so, to all reporters, bloggers, and commentators: for future reference, $8.2 billion is the amount Metrolinx has estimated that Rob Ford’s preferred version of the Crosstown will end up costing. It’s a made-up number. The provincial commitment (which is usually what we’re talking about) is $8.4 billion.

The latter is the number we should use from this point forward. At least, until they give us a new one.

Comments

  • Anonymous

    Prediction: if it’s tunneled the whole way, and it’s ever finished, it will come in well north of $12-billion.

    • Anonymous

      And the price difference would have been enough to pay for his holy Sheppard line extension. Although the irony will probably pass over Ford’s head.

    • Anonymous

      What are you basing that on? Toronto’s record for subway construction is pretty good. Sheppard was budgeted at $875 million and came in about 10% over, around $950 million. The Spadina subway extension is roughly on time and on budget.

      If we want to talk about severe cost overruns, then let’s talk about surface rail. The St Clair ROW project had an initial budget of $48 million, and ultimately came in over $100 million.

      So, based on the established track record of Toronto transit construction, I’ll make the following prediction:
      1. A buried Eglinton line, budgeted at $8.2 billion, will ultimately cost less than $9 billion, if built.
      2. A surface Eglinton line, budgeted at $6 billion, will ultimately cost more than the original $8.2 billion estimate to fully bury the line, if built.

      • Anonymous

        You must be the only person on planet earth (assuming…) who thinks tunneling is cheaper than surface.

        • Anonymous

          Not really. Let me be more precise.

          I think the underground version of the line will come in just under $9 billion. We’ve got lots of recent experience in this city with underground rail construction, and these projects tend to come in on schedule and nearly on budget; my estimate accounts for a 10% cost overrun, which would be typical for a Toronto underground rail project. Metrolinx — not Ford — believes it can do the project for $8.2 billion, with a safety margin.

          I think the half-buried version of the line (which I called the surface version) will come in around $8 billion. (I said more than $8.2 billion to be dramatic, so let’s go with $8.2 billion plus 1 dollar.) Three reasons for thinking this:
          a. Long before Ford was elected, cost estimates for the entire Transit City project spiraled upward from $6 billion (2007 estimate) to $7 billion (2009 estimate) to $8 billion (most recent estimate); of which $6 billion is allocated to Eglinton. There’s no reason to think $6 billion is the final number.
          b. The most recent major surface rail ROW project, the St. Clair ROW, blew its budget by over 100%.
          c. The history of major surface rail projects in Toronto is to over-promise and under-deliver. We are assured that lessons are being learned, yet the St. Clair fiasco happened, and design mistakes are being repeated (e.g., far side stops, traffic priority promised but not implemented). The mode most deserving of skepticism in this city is surface rail, not underground rail.

          If we take today’s estimates at face value, burying the Eglinton line comes at a price premium of $2.2 billion. I’m arguing that the as-built premium is much smaller given Toronto’s experience with both modes, more like $800 million.

          I’m wondering why you believe, contrary to available evidence and recent experience, that the underground version of the Eglinton line will blow its budget by 50%. The only major engineering challenge I’m aware of is the crossing of the Don valley. Do you believe a fair price for a bridge over (or tunnel under) the Don valley is $4 billion?

          • B4795221

            Thanks for this very lucid and intelligent comment, Andrew.

            One point I’d like to make that seems to be implied, but not adequately discussed; we’re not talking about:
            *’above-ground’* _versus_ *’underground’*

            We’re really comparing:
            *ROW* (lane separated but crosses intersections like surface vehicles) _versus_
            *‘separated from traffic’* (no intersection with street system)

            Re: the former: none of our subways are completely underground. But all of them are completely separated from our street systems. And a big point that everyone seems to be missing is the implications of making ANY part of the line ‘in-traffic’: it negatively impacts the entire line and drastically increases the operating costs. It’s my understanding that running in traffic (ROW) imposes smaller trains and less frequency due to traffic light restrictions when crossing intersections. Unless we are running the LRT as two completely separate segments (where the ‘out of traffic’ trains never come above ground) the implications are that we are handicapping the entire line to the restricted capacity and reduced frequency required for the ‘in-traffic’ portion. Perhaps more important than the reduced speed for the in-traffic portion, this *drastically* increases operating costs for the entire line. It also removes any possibility of ever making the line driverless (as is the Vancouver Skytrain).

            You seem to be more familiar with transit and the TTC than the average. I’d appreciate if you’d also comment on the difference between operating costs of ROW vs. ‘traffic-separated’ transit.

      • http://twitter.com/matthewfabb matthewfabb

        Well, originally there was a potential of $650 million left over that Rob Ford wanted to use on Sherpard subway extension and that’s apparently all gone now. Then there’s the complications of getting across (under? over?) the Don River. Also I imagine it will be the section of the Eglinton Crosstown that is in the core of Toronto (which is in both plans) that will end up costing the most because of all the infrastructure there. I have my doubts that it will pass $12 billion, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it surpasses $9 billion.

        • Anonymous

          My understanding is that the $650 million safety factor is still in place, but the province wisely doesn’t want to release it until after the project is built.

      • Anonymous

        Man, so much disinformation out there.

        Your $6 billion Eglinton line is half-buried. If it was 100% surface it’d be cheaper.

        • Anonymous

          That’s what I meant, the half-buried line.

      • Guest

        If you’re the same Andrew posting in other Toronto area blogs and forums, your prejudices are perfectly clear. You can’t include the price of other trash like street beautification and burying hydro wires in that tally. The TTC’s track reconstruction has stuck to budget pretty well. If they had just reconstructed the track on St. Clair with the ROW as per the original plan without any of the extraneous fluff foisted on to them by the city and NIMBY’s, I’m sure it would have come in on budget.

        • Anonymous

          I don’t know, there are a lot of Andrews? Yes, I’m skeptical about LRT in Toronto. Given the track record of street-level rail in this city, I think everyone should be at least as critical of the grandiose claims about Transit City as they are about subways. We’re talking about a multi-billion-dollar project here, however it’s built.

          But more to your point, even if we agree that the extra stuff forced by NIMBYs should somehow be accounted for outside of the overall project (which I don’t), the project itself went well over budget and over schedule. And are there no NIMBYs on Eglinton?

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=787180326 JayBee Gooner

        Will you stop posting this lie? The St. Clair cost overruns was a number of factors, to blame the cost overruns solely on the streetcar ROW(which actually did not really go into overruns) shows your uninformed bias.
        How come no one talks about the cost overruns with the Spadina,and Harbourfront streetcar lines, or the track reconstruction? Yeah, exactly.
        Surface rail does NOT automatically equal overruns.

  • Anonymous

    I just find it hilarious that the bury-our-future crowd are blithely tossing out figures like “$6-billion” and “$9-billion”, when barely two months ago they were miserable penny-watchers who couldn’t stand the idea of giving disadvantaged kids a free breakfast, and public health nurses.

    Heck, they are actively cutting transit in this city — and that’s very, very real.

    I guess they think transit funding for future projects is ‘free’ money, ‘someone else’s’ money, whereas social programs and our current transit needs come out of our precious tax dollars?

    How does that work, exactly?

    • B4795221

      Interesting take on this. However…

      The truth is that the Executive council did in no way ask for funding cuts to social programs for the most needy, including your straw-man argument that they “couldn’t stand the idea of giving disadvantaged kids a free breakfast, and public health nurses”.

      What they DID in fact do is ask every department across the board to find 10% savings in their departmental budgets. Which, considering our economic times and city finances, is a more than reasonable request. It was the departments themselves who appear to have been the heartless actors who chose which services they put up for cuts – largely, it would seem, on the understanding that this would inflame public opinion which could be inappropriately laid at the feet of the mayor and executive.

      • Anonymous

        Are you a numbered corporation?

        • B4795221

          Well, that witty(!) comment barely warrants a response.

          However, I will say I am a professional who was formerly one of those “disadvantaged kids” everyone likes to use as proxy for their own issues (people who FTR usually can’t stand to actually sully themselves by interacting with those self-same disadvantaged kids). I can tell you from first hand experience that many, if not most, of those programs for “disadvantaged kids” are far more for the benefit of those who work IN those systems (& serve to further whatever politically correct ideological agenda of the day is popular – whether right wing or left), than they are for the recipients.

          And, FTR, the description “penny-pincher” does not automatically denote “miserable”. Oft times as not it implies “prudent”.

          • Anonymous

            Gosh.

  • Doug

    For more information on the Eglinton line take a look at Top100projects.ca

  • Joe-fiore

    well no cost should be the cost of this great city. Is toronto a world class city? is toronto a city on the same level as new york or london england. One of the best undrer ground systems is in london. putting an above ground system here in toronto is the biggest mistake the city can do. it will cause traffic, and people will not use the system, we are a megacity we need to get around as efficiently as possible. if we are a world class city we need the infastructure of a world class city. Gta has grown and its now at 5 million this city is going to keep growing. we need to easily get around in the city. and we must think of our future when the city is at 10 million. if the system is fast people will use it. its not worth driving in london. and thats the type of world class city this should be.