The Toronto Region Board of Trade continues to explore options for improving the transportation systems of Toronto. It recently hosted its annual Transportation Symposium with experts from government, transit agencies, contractors, and suppliers, among many others, attending.
Board chair and CEO, Jan De Silva, opened the event by declaring that congestion is a crisis in this city. She explained that the “Toronto Region is Canada’s commercial capital. We represent 20 percent of the country’s GDP [gross domestic product], house 40 percent of Canada’s corporate headquarters and 25 percent of the population. The City of Toronto is the fastest-growing city in the US and Canada. And that’s not all. Just last month. Toronto was named the third most congested city in North America. And not only that — we’re the seventh worst in the world. Quite simply, we’re leading on growth and choking on congestion.”
De Silva is quoting data from transportation analytic firm Inrix, which showed that Torontonians lost 118 hours waiting in traffic last year. That’s an almost 60-percent increase over 2021 data, when the city ranked 22nd globally for the highest traffic times. De Silva continued, “And this is not a Canada thing. This is a Toronto thing. Consider Montreal: 40 percent less population; 45 percent more transit. Or, Vancouver: only one fifth of our population, yet one of the largest integrated transit systems in North America.
“[We hope to] shine some light on the congestion crisis facing our economy. And my use of the term crisis is intentional. Because here’s another very important statistic: 57 percent of the large companies in our region are foreign-owned. This means their headquarters have a world of choice in where to place their operations and their investments. Consider GM and Oshawa. Six years ago, their CEO told me congestion made it the most expensive manufacturing site for them in North America. They had to use the 407 toll highway to get their supply chain inputs to their Oshawa production line just in time. Or, post-pandemic, the recovery of Downtown Toronto seriously lags major centres due to inflation and congestion.”
The Board planned this event to address ways to meet the mobility needs of today and tomorrow. It says that Toronto’s reputation as the third most congested city in North America is simply incompatible with retaining and growing foreign-owned businesses in this market. Its organizers hoped to examine our region’s transit system by exploring topics like the transit landscape after the COVID pandemic, important projects like GO Rail Expansion, the Waterfront East light rail transit line, and how they benefit the region’s economic competitiveness and livability.
Take GO Expansion for example–a plan to offer suburban commuters fast rapid transit to and from the regional core in downtown Toronto. Metrolinx is already working on expanding GO Transit‘s rail lines into a regional commuter-rail service. Early works and off-corridor projects to expand GO are underway. An expert panel discussed some of the obstacles Metrolinx faces to complete the project and explored lessons that it can learn from similar projects elsewhere.
Stephanie Davies, Chief Capital Officer at Metrolinx, described GO Expansion as a project that’s “all over the place.” She continued, “We are transforming our rail network from a traditional commuter system to all-day bi-directional, high-frequency service. So that that is really the essence of it. Sounds really simple, right? Just run more trains and run them faster as well. But to do that… requires many, many different elements. [Some] statistics: 200 kilometres worth of new rail electrification, up to 14 new stations across our network, either expanded or brand new — and, obviously, new rolling stock and fleet to make the frequencies work and to make the trips faster.
Davies elaborated, “We have $11 million worth of early works underway. We’re already building stations. Last year, we built twin tunnels under the 401 adjacent the rail corridor on the Kitchener line. So we’re making progress … to bring high-frequency service. Fifteen-minute headways were what was in our reference concept design, but we’re hoping to do better than that. My partners that are working right now on our climate-change service-plans are looking at, potentially, frequencies of up to 10 minutes on some corridors. So it’s really exciting, really transformational and really, really impactful for our region.”
The ten-minute frequency mention was a surprise for many observers. Early plans for GO Expansion suggested service that would be even more frequent than every 10 minutes. At the same time, Metrolinx has insisted on only committing to “15-minute-or-better” service in its public documents during recent years.
Another member of the panel was Souheil Abihanna, President, Alstom Canada. Alstom manufactures TTC streetcars, GO railway cars, and the light-rail-transit vehicles that Metrolinx will use on its LRT lines, including the soon-to-open Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown service. Abihanna touted the importance of powering GO trains with electricity.
He explained, “When you have an electrified system, you will always have a reliable system that is always fast and available. One of the other advantages [is]… the time of acceleration and deceleration… It helps you secure the transportation service you want to give to the end customer. One other advantage of an electrified system independent of the network is the reliability of the system compared to previous [operations].”
Abihanna expanded: “When you start thinking about how we can increase the headway between the different [trains], [by electrifying] it becomes very, very easy to accomplish. [It’s also a] green mobility… system. It’s absolutely in the trajectory of that journey the whole planet is taking toward a green, environmentally friendly system.”
Will GO Expansion be a success? Will enough passengers return to GO trains, return to commuting into and out of Downtown Toronto after the pandemic to justify its cost?
To partly answer those questions, attendees heard about another, similar project in the United Kingdom that could provide an insight into the future success [or failure] of GO Rail Expansion. They heard from John Williams, President, Bechtel Infrastructure, Northeast US & Canada, Bechtel Corporation. Bechtel was the lead proponent for the Crossrail project in London.
Crossrail is a railway-construction project that provides a high-frequency, hybrid commuter-rail and rapid-transit system crossing the city from the eastern and western suburbs, by connecting two major railways terminating in London. Construction began in 2009 on the central section and connections to the major railway lines that became part of the east-west route. (A similar north-south route remains on the drawing boards.) The east-west line has now been branded the Elizabeth line to honour of Queen Elizabeth II who performed one of her last acts of public service by officially opening the line in May 2022.
Williams said, “I’m going to speak on two questions. One is: do major megaproject investments still make sense in the post-COVID world? And second: what can [project managers] do to give themselves the best chance to be successful… when it comes to the delivery of these mega projects? Some people have started to question the business case, the economics, for commuter rail, I think in particular, in this post-COVID, hybrid, work-from-home world.”
He stated, “In my experience, business cases for major rail speeds rarely conform to meet cost-benefit spreadsheets. Economics is, for good reason, part art as much as it is science. There is no doubt that the pretty unpleasant cocktail of events that we’ve experienced — COVID, war in Ukraine, heightened energy prices, inflation, supply-chain pressures — all of these are conspiring to test business case appetites and political results.” He explained that, despite this difficult period of events, building mega projects like the Elizabeth Line illustrate the old maxim of “If you build it, they will come.” Williams spent three years working on the project, which, he said, “had been a gleam in urban planners’ eyes in London since the 1940s. I don’t know how much typewriter ink was probably sacrificed on… business cases before it finally got the go ahead in 2009.”
Williams called the line in action “an engineering, construction and, critically, a technology model.” It consists of 100 kilometres of railway, 42 kilometres of tunnels, 10 new major stations [and] significant upgrades to the legacy network. It expands the “commuter-shed”, with faster, more frequent services directly through Central London and connects two of the city’s airports. It brings 1.5 million people within a 45-minute commute of central London by “a very unique metro level of service” with very tight headways of about 24 trains per hour. (That means trains drop off or pick up passengers in stations about once every two-and-a-half minutes.)
“And, today, it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: To raise the bar for commuter rail in London, the UK and globally as well,” he said. “And it is impacting how people transit in the city. So what we have seen since its launch is that our ridership numbers were way in excess of the original forecast, a month into operation.” The Elizabeth line experienced its 100-millionth passenger journey during its first six months of service and now serves as many as three million passengers a week. “I think it should be clear to politicians, policymakers, business leaders around the world, including here in Ontario, that high-quality public infrastructure will stimulate new forms of demand, create new patterns of travel and help reduce carbon emissions.”
Williams’ then described four major lessons that he and his team learned from the Elizabeth line project that planners can use for other major transportation projects such as GO Rail Expansion.
First, the project needs what he called “Goldilocks sponsorship” — political leadership at just the right level — not neglectful, but also not overwhelming. “With enough political leadership, the project stays very firmly on board. Too much ‘political love bombing’ risks overwhelming project leadership.” He advises project leaders to “find [their] inner Goldilocks.”
Second: Have the right people with the right skills at the right time. Expertise certainly matters. Megaprojects need “domain knowledge” to succeed, not outsiders. By that, Williams meant that rail projects require top-level managers who have expertise in the rail industry, not managers who have project management skills, but no prior transportation experience.
Third, Williams said, one team must “own” the entire project. He said, “all major projects experience tough times. And I don’t think that’s a fatalism. It’s just a realism. These projects are very complicated… and there’s plenty of unknowns. The test of a healthy project culture is how folk react in the tough moments… Stuff happens. Difficult, unexpected things will be thrown in your way. But how the organizational culture responds in these moments is something that you can control. What makes [these projects] compelling is the energy of the team, the nimbleness, the creativity, and, critically, the closeness to the work itself.”
Finally: Know the contractors and the “OEMs” (original equipment manufacturers). That’s because, as he explained, “I don’t think there’s ever been a more volatile time to price risk in the marketplace… Large linear urban rail infrastructure projects are, by definition, significantly more complex or risky ventures than [any other projects contractors may have previously completed]. Those inherent challenges are compounded by today’s economic reality.”
Williams concluded by asserting, “I think the future of regional rail is is very exciting. Especially here in Ontario, with the population growth that’s expected. The evidence of what we can see from first-class rail infrastructure assets being launched in recent months like the Elizabeth line, I think we can be hugely optimistic that the demand will be there. But, can we learn from others to make sure that the supply of these assets can be equal to the decade of delivery that is in front of us?”
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