Years behind schedule and $23-billion over budget: Meet Doug Ford’s flagship transit project

“We’re going to do it faster, better, cheaper.” That was Ontario Premier Doug Ford in 2019, unveiling his plans for the Ontario Line.

The 15.6-kilometre transit project, running from the east end of midtown Toronto through the downtown core, would save money by using smaller and lighter rolling stock than traditional subways, and building some of the line above ground. All would be up and running by 2027.

Cost: $10.9-billion.

Seven years later, the price tag has ballooned to $34-billion. Sorry – I mean $34-billion and counting. At least one major capital contract has yet to be awarded.

More fun math: Seven years into this eight-year project, the line is still at least six years away from completion. Metrolinx, the provincial agency responsible for transit planning and contracting with private builders, now says the line will be in service sometime in the early 2030s.

Here’s the most important number to keep in mind: $2.2-billion a kilometre.

That’s the current price for the Ontario Line.

Just down the road in Montreal, the Réseau express métropolitain, or REM, an automated light metro similar to the Ontario Line, is nearly complete – at a price of $140-million a kilometre.

Ontario accuses Ottawa of bowing to ‘small fringe group’ on island airport expansion

(The REM figure covers capital costs whereas the Ontario Line’s budget also includes a contract for future operations. However, capital is the lion’s share of costs on projects such as these.)

Announced in 2016, the REM has 64 of its 67 planned kilometres in operation, and 23 of 25 initial stations. The final cost, according to Quebec’s auditor general, will be $9.4-billion.

REM: $140-million a kilometre.

Ontario Line: $2.2-billion (and rising) per kilometre.

Vancouver’s Canada Line, which is also similar to the Ontario Line, was completed in 2009 for just over $2-billion. In 2026 dollars, that’s $157-million a kilometre.

Ontario used to do faster, better, cheaper. From the 1950s until the 1990s, Toronto built subways for around $100-million a kilometre, adjusted for inflation. But the Sheppard Subway, completed in 2002, cost roughly $200-million a kilometre. The Line 1 subway extension to Vaughan, opened in 2017, pushed that to around $400-million.

The province has since taken over decisions about what transit to build, where and how. That hasn’t delivered efficiencies or savings.

For example, the Eglinton Crosstown, which was designed to be cheaper to operate and faster to build because its rolling stock is basically streetcars and its tracks are mostly at street-level, opened more than half a decade late, while costing more per kilometre than the subway to Vaughan.

When Mr. Ford announced the Ontario Line, it was part of a package of transit projects, with a combined budget of $28.5-billion. The Ontario Line has now consumed every penny, and then some.

Opinion: Sure, the Romans built the Colosseum faster, but the Eglinton LRT finally provides some transit hope

The other projects are also late and over budget. For example, the Scarborough subway extension is not expected to open until 2033, while its cost has doubled, to $10.2-billion.

Leaving aside the question of why this has happened, voters need to get their heads around the fact that it has happened. This cake is baked.

Earlier this summer, there was widespread public outrage when it was revealed that several Toronto-area members of the Ford government had expensed hotel stays in Toronto, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars. The slow-motion fiasco in transit construction, which has consumed umpteen billions of dollars, has been met with a shrug.

There’s no arguing that the city badly needs to build new public transit. The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area has grown to more than eight million people; throw in the rest of the Greater Golden Horseshoe and it’s more than 10 million.

Speeding up travel cannot be done by adding more cars, or adding more lanes to Highway 401. It can only be done with more, faster, better, cheaper transit.

But if bad management and poor choices mean that the chosen transit projects cost taxpayers 15 times as much as they should, then we’re going to end up with one-fifteenth the transit we need. Or government is going to starve other priorities – health, education, policing, whatever – to pay for transit cost-overruns.

For anyone who thinks this must be the fault of those bicycle-riding pinkos at the City of Toronto, give your head a shake. This is 100 per cent on Mr. Ford and his Progressive Conservative government. They own the bus, and they’re the ones driving it.

If the Ontario Line were built on a REM budget, Queen’s Park could afford to build 15 Ontario Lines. Sit with that for a minute.

What happened to “faster, better, cheaper?” Maybe someday we’ll find out.