LILLEY: How cost of the Ontario Line went from $10.9B to $34B
· Toronto Sun
How does a subway project’s price tag increase from $10.9 billion to more than three times that amount at more than $34 billion? That’s a legitimate question many are asking in the wake of news that the cost of the Ontario Line in Toronto appears to have gotten out of control.
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The answer, if we’re being truthful, won’t satisfy supporters or opponents of the subway expansion, or the Ford government, but there are still enough juicy bits to make jaws drop.
When the Doug Ford government announced the Ontario Line subway project in a story broken at the time on the front page of the Toronto Sun , the original price tag was $10.9 billion . The problem is the government’s original price tag covered only the design and construction of the line.
They excluded train cars, land acquisition and expropriation costs and long-term operating expenses. In short, the public wasn’t given the full cost of the project.
“The Ontario Line will cost $10.9 billion and will be delivered by 2027,” said the news release issued on April 10, 2019.
Now it will cost $34 billion, likely more, and won’t be open until sometime in the early 2030s.
Original price tag never told whole story
What went wrong?
First off, there was that initial price tag pushed by consultants inside Metrolinx, the provincial agency responsible for transit in the GTA.
According to multiple sources inside government, that lowball figure of $10.9 billion was pushed by so-called “super consultant” Brian Guest, a favourite of former Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster , the man who bungled the Eglinton Crosstown and left in disgrace at the end of 2024.
By the end of 2019, Metrolinx had presented its first all-in estimate of $24.5 billion, including land, rail cars and operating costs.
The fact that the Ford government put out a definitive statement saying the subway line would cost less than half of the full price is on them. They were either hoodwinked by slippery consultants or they were incompetent. Neither look is good.
By the end of 2019, though, there was a full sticker price in the window. Then the pandemic hit.
Between construction delays caused by the pandemic, supply chain disruptions and other pressures, the post-pandemic price tag climbed to $29.5 billion. That total included an expected $7 billion for operating the line over 30 years.
Pandemic costs and management failure
When you see cost comparisons for other transit systems, they normally don’t include the cost of operating the system for three decades.
There were problems in how the project was presented to the public and there have also been cost overruns stemming from poor management.
Verster bears much of the blame. He left Metrolinx in disgrace on late 2024, but is reportedly angling for a role with the federal ALTO high-speed rail project. That should worry anyone hoping the project will succeed.
Another major driver of costs has been endless consultations, court challenges, local grievances and repeated interventions by the City of Toronto itself.
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City hall’s costly interventions
The cost of using, renting or acquiring land from the city to facilitate construction of this subway line, which will eventually be turned over to the city, is north of $300 million. That’s right, to use city land to build Toronto a subway, the province has been charged close to a third of a billion dollars.
When Metrolinx wanted to remove trees planted at Osgoode Hall in the 1960s , the city joined protests aimed at stopping a subway station from being built there. Court challenges, construction delays and politicians such as Josh Matlow joining the ultimately futile fight added millions in costs.
After Metrolinx consulted on and put forward a plan for construction of Exhibition Station, the City of Toronto intervened to ensure that hauling dirt from the tunnelling operation became far more complex and significantly more expensive. The resulting changes imposed by the city added another $60 million in costs to that one component of the project.
None of this excuses the Ford government’s decision to sell the public on a $10.9-billion subway that was never going to cost $10.9 billion. But neither is it honest to pretend the Ontario Line suddenly exploded from $10.9 billion to $34 billion because of incompetence alone.
The real story is the public was given a partial price tag, then years of inflation, delays, bad management, lawsuits and political interference piled on top.
This isn’t one scandal. It’s a series of failures stacked on top of each other. Politicians, bureaucrats, consultants, activists and city hall all own a piece of it.
Taxpayers get the bill.