‘We have to decide something,’ said Ward 9 representative Gian-Carlo Carra. ‘There is no more runway’
This week’s city council meeting is expected to reveal long-awaited details about Green Line cost overruns.
After meeting in early July, the Green Line board made its recommendations to council’s executive committee this week on how to proceed with the multi-billion-dollar transit project’s design, delivery strategy and capital funding requirements.
And while council’s agenda for Tuesday — their last meeting before a month-long summer recess — includes three confidential items related to the Green Line, one councillor confirmed the group will have to “rise and report” after their in-camera discussion, meaning the details should finally become public.
“We have to decide something,” said Ward 9 representative Gian-Carlo Carra. “There is no more runway.”
‘No major infrastructure projects have been immune to cost increases’
In a statement on Thursday, the Green Line board confirmed the work required to deliver the first phase of the future CTrain’s alignment would exceed its current capital budget, which was approved three years ago.
“The infrastructure sector in Canada has become more challenging and the cost to build Phase 1, approved in 2021 by the provincial and federal governments, exceeds the $4.9-billion capital budget,” the statement reads. “No major infrastructure projects have been immune to cost increases and the board has been open about these pressures since May 2021.”
The board said the recommendations it made to council are based on collaboration with city colleagues to ensure the future LRT can “responsibly move forward within the current fiscal realities of the city,” and without additional funding from either the provincial or federal governments.
New federal transit fund
If the city does need to seek additional funding to complete the first phase of the Green Line, one source of support could be the federal government’s new $30-billion Canada Public Transit Fund.
Announced July 17, the fund will provide $3 billion a year over the next 10 years to expand public transit and make it more accessible across the country.
Mayor Jyoti Gondek hinted to reporters last week that the city will likely submit an application for the fund, but she wouldn’t confirm if the application would relate to the Green Line or another transit project.
“We always have plans to access money that is made available to us from the federal government,” she said. “We deserve to get our share of what we provide to them back, so we will absolutely be looking at what the parameters of this fund are and making any and all applications we can.
“All our transit projects in this city are incredibly important to us. If the federal government is offering us funding for all our priorities, we’ll absolutely be tapping into it.”
No additional funding from province
The provincial government has suggested it will not provide any additional funding for the Green Line.
In a scrum with media last week, Carra criticized what he called political “gamesmanship” that has stalled the project from commencing over the years and said he is worried those delays “have hurt the financial capacity of the current funding envelope to do as much as it could.”
The Ward 9 councillor also said it will never become cheaper to build the Green Line than it is now and that getting shovels in the ground on the project is paramount.
“We have an unprecedented amount of financial commitment from three orders of government,” he said.
“We have an independent board (and) a huge workforce. To say ‘getting shovels in the ground’ is a misnomer because shovels are already in the ground. I would suggest the Green Line is inevitable and we all collectively have to stop politicking and get on with the project of city-building.”
