Crossing the Don River, not once but twice. Tunnelling under dense downtown districts. Serving a growing number of transit riders using smaller trains.Those are some of the challenges the provincial government will have to navigate to make its proposed Ontario Line a success. The light metro project is the highlight of the Progressive Conservatives’ blueprint for a $28.5-billion transit network spanning the GTA that Premier Doug Ford unveiled last week, and would replace the relief line subway proposal city council and the TTC have been pursuing for three years.The provincial government argues the 15-kilometre Ontario Line, which would run between Exhibition Place and the Ontario Science Centre via downtown and Leslieville, would achieve the 7.4-kilometre relief line’s goal of diverting passengers from the TTC’s overcrowded Line 1 (Yonge-University-Spadina), but could be built quicker and for less money because it would operate with smaller vehicles and would run above ground for part of the route.The government’s preliminary estimates say the line could be constructed for $10.9 billion and be complete as early as 2027. However, the project has yet to undergo the extensive planning and design work required to reach a firm budget and construction schedule, and key decisions about the type of trains and construction methods that would be used have yet to be made. Experts who spoke to the Star said the Ontario Line plan has some advantages over the city’s previous relief line plan, but could be more challenging and costly to deliver than the province has claimed.Bridging the DonExperts said one of the biggest advantages of the Ontario Line is that it would go as far north as Eglinton, where it would connect with the Ontario Science Centre station on the Crosstown LRT.By contrast, the $7.2-billion first phase of the council-approved relief line would only go as far north as Pape station on Line 2 (Bloor-Danforth), with a northern extens ...
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