AT LONG LAST
Leslie St. opens again after two years, $105-million construction project,
Two years after construction began on Leslie St., the TTC has confirmed the road is being reopened on Saturday, south of Queen St. to Eastern Ave.
That stretch of Leslie St. was closed in May 2014 so the TTC could install new streetcar tracks for its incoming fleet of Bombardier vehicles, which will use the street starting in late September to access the giant car house being built on Lake Shore Blvd. E.
The job was supposed to be complete last fall but has suffered a series of delays, the latest when 60 metres of foundation for the streetcar tracks was improperly installed by the contractor Pomerleau. The track and the road had to be torn up and rebuilt.
Word that three lanes of traffic will be open on Saturday began leaking out among residents and businesses this week, said condo owner Janet MacDonald.
“It’s kind of exciting. But we still don’t know when they’ll be finished outside our condo,” she said.
The entrance to the garage has been cracked and needs repairing, and street parking won’t be restored yet either, MacDonald said.
“For people with disabilities and seniors, that’s a big deal. When you can only park in an underground garage, bringing all your groceries up is difficult,” she said.
Despite the delays, MacDonald said the TTC isn’t a villain. With at least two contractors, AECOM and Pomerleau, involved, “the TTC’s hands are tied,” she said.
Councillor Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth) called the opening — a little ahead of the mid-August date the TTC had been promising — "the best news ever.
“The merchants and residents will be thrilled to bits,” she said.
The TTC still has to hang the wires that will power the streetcars across the road, but says the traffic disruption of that work should be minimal.
The new Leslie Barns car house will be used to store up to 100 of the city’s new low-floor streetcars. The storage tracks at the facility are supposed to be complete by the end of September, and eventually the entire fleet of 204 new streetcars will be maintained at that site.
In the short term, there will be lots of room since there are only seven new vehicles plying Toronto streets so far.
Parts of Leslie St. have been closed for more than two years for construction that grew beyond the streetcar tracks to include sewers and other utility replacement, pushing the overall transit improvement cost to $105 million from the originally anticipated $14-million.