John Lorinc is a journalist in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ and the author of “No Jews Live Here†(2024).
Late last week, the Ford government took over four school districts, including ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½â€™s public board, alleging untenable spending. In the case of the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ District School Board, the current deficit figure is $58 million — not a small sum, to be sure, but equivalent to just 1.6 per cent of the TDSB’s entire budget.
Now consider the comparables for Metrolinx’s major transit projects, which have been financed and executed through opaque public-private partnerships orchestrated by Infrastructure Ontario. If the TDSB deficit is a rounding error, then most of Metrolinx’s projects are off by orders of magnitude.
The star-crossed Scarborough subway, originally estimated to cost $3.3 billion, has now lumbered across the $10 billion threshold with no finish date in sight. The Eglinton Crosstown LRT, budgeted initially at $9.1 billion, is close to $13 billion. The Finch West LRT: $2.5 billion, with the completion date still a mystery. The Ontario Line subway: $27 billion to build and operate, up 43 per cent from just three years ago. And on and on and on.
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examining the drivers of transit-cost escalation concluded that outlays in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ and other large Canadian cities were growing “at a rate far beyond inflation.†The per-kilometre capital cost for our subway and LRT projects far exceeds those in countries such as Spain, South Korea and Italy.
The problems don’t only involve money. The Crosstown, for example, has been stalled for years due to technical glitches and legal fights among the members of the consortium tasked with building it. And last month, Metrolinx had to abruptly pull the plug on a European-led consortium tasked with carrying out a major expansion to GO Transit’s rail services.
To my mind, the burning question is why Premier Doug Ford hasn’t ordered a full public inquiry to examine what’s gone so extravagantly wrong inside the two agencies — Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario — responsible for overseeing these major infrastructure initiatives. Surely there’s a story here that desperately needs telling, and Ontario taxpayers, who are forking out tens of billions more than they’d bargained for, have a right to get to the bottom of what looks like a mismanagement and spending scandal for the ages.
Instead, the premier is still doing photo ops for new Metrolinx projects, . And now he’s , the long-time head of IO, to run Metrolinx. How can the executive who be expected to fix what ails Metrolinx? The appointment makes no sense, at least to me.
The fact is, something has gone profoundly wrong with the triple-P model, which is supposed to deliver tens of billions of dollars’ worth of transit infrastructure to a region choked with traffic congestion. The original assumption — that IO and Metrolinx and their corporate partners could deliver transit megaprojects on time and on budget — is a punchline at this point.
Opposition parties have, on occasion, called for more oversight, including full audits of projects gone sideways. Even the Ford government itself established a into the botched construction of the Ottawa LRT, a project marred by delays, buggy technology and a lack of testing that caused the network to seize up on its first day of operations. The inquiry’s 664-page final report, written by a judge and released in 2022, confronted tough questions and demanded answers.
Queen’s Park now needs to apply that same independent scrutiny to its GTA projects, given what we already know. Certainly, Ontarians have a right to understand what’s caused this mess, be it corruption, inept bureaucrats, a fatally flawed procurement system, over-reliance on a handful of huge engineering firms that know how to manipulate multibillion-dollar deals to their maximum advantage, etc.
The Ford government has a fiduciary responsibility to the residents of this province to get to the bottom of a calamity that has not only severely exacerbated gridlock but is also turning the GTA into a global laughing stock. The status quo is not option. As the old saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
John Lorinc is a ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ journalist and author of “No Jews Live
Here†(2024).
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