RAISING THE ROOF
Christopher Hume explains how a lack of foresight caused Metrolinx woes,
Sometimes, the difference between success and failure can be measured in inches.
Metrolinx found that out the hard way when it suddenly realized the historical train shed at Union Station will be centimetres short when GO service is electrified years from now. The designated heritage structure is being meticulously refurbished as part of the massive Union Station remake, but the dimensions being used anticipate only diesel locomotives. For a variety of reasons, electric trains need a bit more vertical space.
That room can only be gained by raising the original 1929 roof or lowering the tracks. Neither one is particularly appealing at this point in the process and will add tens of millions of dollars to the cost.
If the lack of attention to this issue earlier weren’t so appalling, such a glitch, if that’s the right word, would be laughable, another occasion to marvel at bureaucratic incompetence and, depending on your inclination, either laugh or cry.
In fact, the issue runs deeper than mismanagement. The missing couple of inches reveal the vast gap between Toronto’s future and our efforts to plan for it. Metrolinx’s assumptions never got beyond the past. Its idea was that things would pretty much stay the way they are. Diesel has been used for decades, so when the provincial transportation authority began planning in 2006, it saw no reason that wouldn’t continue.
In other words, Metrolinx planners proposed bringing GTA transit into the 21st century using 20th-century metrics. It anticipated a future that would be a continuation of the past, with no allowance for precisely the sort of technological advancements that enabled diesel to replace steam in the 1950s.
Had the Metrolinx brain trust been a bit more forward-looking, more in- formed, ambitious and even, dare one say, visionary, it might have imagined a transit system based more on where we need to be in decades ahead than where we were decades ago. The fact the province didn’t adopt electrification until 2011 is no excuse for not anticipating its eventual use.
By contrast, when the Bloor Viaduct opened in 1918, it included a lower platform in advance of a subway that wouldn’t appear for another half a century. Though it increased costs and was, therefore, controversial, it was added. As a result, the city saved millions when the Bloor-Danforth line was constructed in the 1960s.
“Unfortunately,” said Metrolinx spokesperson Anne-Marie Aikins, “the people that built Union Station weren’t thinking in terms of electrifying a service. They had diesel trains and that’s what they accommodated.”
But surely part of Metrolinx’s mandate is to look ahead to understand where things are headed, what other cities are doing and how technology is changing? Not only is this level of foresight rare today, it is actively discouraged.
Instead, we are content to make do with same old, same old. Ironically, our fixation on what’s cheapest typically ends up costing a lot more, and doesn’t deliver what’s needed.
Aikens may be right that, “No other work has to be undone, so we didn’t waste any money or time or effort,” but her comment is beside the point. The missing inches show just how small institutional thinking has become. No blue sky here, only the mud below.
We are supposed to be happy because the project has not gone over budget. If that is how we measure success in the 21st century, it’s little wonder we have accomplished so little.
If the viaduct were built today, any argument for a second platform would be dismissed as extravagance. We might have spent less, but it would’ve cost more. Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca