Riders at the Woolwich station on London's new Elizabeth Line, on May 5. Woolwich, where armaments were manufactured for some three centuries, is one of many unexpected destinations travelers could quickly reach by taking the Elizabeth line to escape tourist-clogged central London.Jeremie Souteyrat/The New York Times News Service
Many Toronto residents shook their heads and rolled their eyes this spring when workers put up barriers around Queen and Yonge streets to allow for construction of a station on the Ontario Line, an ambitious mass transit project.
Cars won’t be able to pass through the busy intersection. Streetcars will take a time-consuming detour around it. The shutdown is set to last for close to five years. Yes, five years. And it’s all happening right in the heart of the city, next to the Eaton Centre mall and close to the soaring towers of the city’s financial centre.
That wasn’t the only bit of bad news, either. Eyes were still rolling over the revelation that another big, messy transit project, the Eglinton Crosstown, had been delayed yet again. In fact, transit authorities had admitted they could not actually say when the multibillion-dollar line would open.
Before they despair, though, Torontonians should glance across the pond at London’s new transit jewel, the Elizabeth Line. At first called Crossrail, then renamed after Queen Elizabeth, it spans the capital region, running more than 100 kilometres from Reading in the west to Shenfield in the east, with a spur line to Heathrow airport.
Like so many modern mass-transit projects, it suffered delays and budget overruns. Digging huge new tunnels through the old earth of historic London was a gargantuan undertaking. Teams of archaeologists were employed to sift through the artifacts dug up along the way. Engineers had to figure out how to connect the new stations with the old, snaking around pipes and sewers and utility lines.
The price tag rose from £14.8-billion to £18.9-billion, or about $32-billion. Construction began in 2009 and was expected to take about 10 years, but the line had its official opening only a year ago. The Queen herself attended, smiling broadly and using a walking stick.
It was well worth the wait. The Elizabeth Line is a marvel – sleek, efficient, well designed and built to last.
It has 41 stations, 10 of them altogether new. Its trains can carry 1,500 passengers, nearly twice the number on older lines. It links up with the subway and the rail lines at a host of busy transfer points, increasing the capacity of the system by around 10 per cent. When the full schedule of service took effect last month, trains in central London began running about every two-and-a-half minutes.
The stations are vast and well lit, a nice contrast with the narrow warrens of the London Underground, the world’s oldest subway. For safety reasons, they have platform-door systems to wall off the tracks.
Londoners love it. They lined up to try it out on the first day last May and have been flocking to the Elizabeth Line ever since. About 600,000 people ride it on a typical weekday. The construction delays and overruns are largely forgotten now.
Toronto should keep that in mind as it grinds its teeth over the evolving mess at a downtown intersection. London decided to go big with the Elizabeth Line and it paid off like a winning thoroughbred at Ascot.
The Ontario Line is a big bet, too. A favourite project of Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford, whose brother Rob, then mayor of Toronto, famously promised to build “subways, subways, subways,” it will traverse Toronto, linking up with the Yonge and Bloor lines and taking pressure off the most crowded parts of the system.
The cost is staggering – up to $19-billion, according to some estimates. Construction is only getting going in earnest and the opening date has already been pushed back to 2031.
People in Toronto have every right to worry about further delays and overruns. The foul-ups in the Eglinton project have made everyone wary. Transit authorities find themselves fighting an ugly finger-pointing battle with the overdue project’s contractors. Those authorities need to be much more disciplined and transparent about the progress of the Ontario Line.
But Toronto and its region are growing by leaps. As the city comes back to life after the pandemic, its existing transportation system is groaning under the strain. It needs better public transit. It needs the Ontario Line, even if it means five years of frustration at Queen and Yonge.
Marcus Gee