An exciting glimpse at boring machines
Locals made sure to catch vast tunnelling devices’ brief above-ground appearance
It took two and a half hours to hoist the mammoth machine out from the depths of the underground.
She broke the surface around 10:30 p.m. Saturday — all 511,000 kilograms of her.
The colossal boring machine, nicknamed Lea, usually lives about 35 metres underground, busy burrowing tunnels for the city’s $4.9-billion Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit project.
Saturday marked Lea’s first night out, above ground, in about two years.
She emerged from the excavation shaft dusty and reddish-brown, stained by the earth she’s been chewing through.
About100 people lined fences along Eglinton Ave. W. to watch Lea being raised from the ground, slowly rolled across the closed-off road and then planted back beneath the earth, east of the Eglinton West subway station.
Words such as spectacular, monumental, wondrous and amazing were heard in the crowd.
For one little girl in a purple pyjama onesie, the late-night wait was “well worth it.
“I got to see history being made,” Jessica Lebow, 12, told the Star.
“I came here to see a 400-ton machine being rolled across Eglinton. I had no idea what it was going to look like, but it kind of looks like a bomb actually,” she said.
The cylinder machine’s cutterhead, or face, was on show with its dirty blades riddled with earth.
Lea was following the tracks of her twin brother, Dennis, who made the move Friday night. It was a weekend of transit muscle power — with Metrolinx, the provincial agency in charge of building the Eglinton Crosstown, lifting over one million kilograms of machine out of one tunnel and placing it back in another.
The 10-metre-long twin machines dig tunnels 6.5 metres in diameter, burrowing through the ground beneath the city at a rate of 10 metres a day. (The amount of earth that will be excavated for the Eglinton Crosstown project is enough to fill the Air Canada Centre to the height of the CN Tower, according to Metrolinx.)
Diane Plant has lived in the neighbourhood for the past 60 years and was at the construction site filming Lea’s move for her 5-year-old grandson, because it was past his bedtime.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It takes years to build these machines and to move this is an amazing feat,” she said.
Around midnight, Lea started to slowly inch forward and the crowds cheered.
“She’s moving! Come on, Lea, let’s go!” Greta Barett, 51, yelled from her motorized wheelchair.
Barett has been following the adventures of Dennis and Lea since spring 2013 and said witnessing the machines being hoisted up into the world was a “historical event.
“This is the first time and the last time you’re ever going to see a machine doing this kind of work,” she said. Even the construction workers toiling at the site had their cellphone cameras out, documenting Lea’s short journey above ground.
Originally, the massive machines were going to be disassembled before being lifted over to the east side of Allen Rd.; then construction experts figured out how to keep them intact, lift them onto a conveyor-type machine and slide them over and down the launch shaft on the other side of the subway station.
Dennis and Lea are expected to reach Yonge St. by the end of April 2016.
Along Eglinton Ave. West, for about a quarter of a block west of Bathurst St., the south lane is fenced off and filled with trucks, trailers, workers and machinery — with several red “danger” signs plastered on the fence.
Peer a bit closer and you can see Manny Virk’s Dollar Smart in the plaza behind the fencing. While the sidewalk in front of his store is still usable amid the Eglinton Crosstown construction, Virk says he’s seen a 30- to 35-per-cent dip in sales since work started on the south side about a month ago, compared to the same period last year.
“A lot of people see the big machines and go somewhere else,” Virk laments.
He’s not the only Eglinton business owner getting anxious about the construction. From clothing stores to flower shops, various businesses along the 19-kilometre stretch slated for light-rail transit say they’re feeling the financial sting of snarled traffic, limited parking options, reduced foot traffic and dusty sidewalks.
Helen Carvallo, who works at the French Collection at 253 Eglinton West, says she’s called 311 three times over the last year about dirty sidewalks in front of the clothing store. “We don’t have time to go sweeping and do the city’s job,” she says.
“It’s dusty, it’s dirty — it’s not a pleasant shopping environment,” echoes Melissa Guido, who has owned Bella, a clothing store west of Avenue Rd., for three years.
Guido says she first noticed a negative impact from the construction last summer. Then, over the winter, her store had a 20-per-cent decrease in sales compared to the average of the last three years. It’s not a typical drop even for the colder months, she says.
Ron Beben, co-owner of the Eunice Denby Flowers just west of Oriole Pkwy., hasn’t seen a noticeable dip in sales — most of his business is phone orders — but knows lots of other businesses that are suffering from reduced parking in the areas.
Motioning to Eglinton, he says traffic has often been blocked and parking is taken over by construction trucks along side streets. “If you look at this, it’s a constant battle,” he says.
On-street parking isn’t available within the vicinity of construction between Allen Rd. and Yonge St., according to Metrolinx.
But Jamie Robinson, director of community relations and communications for Metrolinx’s Toronto transit projects, says a lot of work has been done when it comes to parking issues. On certain side streets, he says parking regulations have been adjusted and hours extended on a tem- porary basis, thanks to collaboration between Metrolinx and the city.
As for the dust and dirt, Robinson says that’s a city issue. But Ward 22 Councillor Josh Matlow says the city and Metrolinx need to be co-operating. “If there’s a mess made by their project, they have some ownership over that too,” he says, adding business owners in the area are “living through a construction nightmare.”
“It’s hard for a business to attract customers when there are issues of parking or dirty streets — people don’t want to go there,” says Ward 16 Councillor Christin Carmichael Greb. There have been conversations with city staff about sweeping streets more often, she notes.
Metrolinx recognizes there’s been an impact on businesses, according to Robinson. “That’s a reality when you’re building a construction project of this size and magnitude,” he says, regarding the $5.3-billion light rail transit.
“But there’s a myriad of reasons why businesses may or may not be suffering,” he adds. “We’re just one of those reasons.”
Maureen Sirois agrees. As chair of the Eglinton Way BIA, which represents around 200 businesses from Chaplin Cres. to Oriole Pkwy., Sirois has heard various complaints and concerns from local business owners, but says other factors — like a particularly bitter winter — also had a negative impact.
And the biggest challenge, according to Sirois? The public thinks the construction is worse than it really is.
There’s nothing stopping shoppers from visiting, despite assumptions that the avenue is “torn up completely,” she explains.
“The customers, in the end, are the ones who are going to decide what happens to Eglinton and other main street retailers,” says Sirois.
“As much as we boast about how wonderful the Crosstown will be in a few years, we all need to be supporting the people who’ve invested everything into their businesses and are being severely impacted by this construction,” adds Matlow.