Edward Keenan: Toronto built entire subway lines in less time than it´s taking to install elevators at Dupont
(The Star Toronto Raptors)

In honour of this week’s kickoff of Toronto’s construction season — announced in a press conference Monday by Mayor John Tory — let’s take a quick trip down memory lane. The city broke ground on the University subway line — extending from Union station at Front St. to St. George up on Bloor (and including a now-unused length of track to a station under Bay) — in November 1959. That line opened for service on Feb. 28, 1963. So that entire subway line took about three years and three months to build. Then there’s the Spadina line extension. The city approved that project in January 1973. It included the curved, mosaic-tiled walls of Spadina and the strobing light-show responsive to the subway movements at Yorkdale. There was an electricians strike that delayed things for a few months. It opened to the public in January 1978. From approval to service in five years. Hmmm. Maybe construction wasn’t always viewed as a dubious thing to celebrate in this town — an unending season of endless projects and headaches to endure. But it sure feels like that’s what it’s become. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to get things done.Consider the present-day example of the elevators at Dupont subway station. The project to install three elevators to make the station accessible began with a series of public consultations in spring 2014. Five years later, the project is still underway, the roads at the busy intersection around the station still partially closed. Apparently, this seemingly modest construction project is just over half done: “Right now about 54 per cent of the work is complete,� TTC spokesperson Stuart Green told the CBC this week. It may, everyone hopes, be done some time next year. But the projected finish has been pushed back by years more than once already.Installing elevators at Dupont has taken longer than building the entire subway line that station is on. Something is wrong with ...