Part of the race for mayor is the contest to see which candidate can put shovels in the ground fastest on new transit for Toronto.

While most of the city’s transit plans have been hanging in suspended animation pending the outcome of the election, planning and transit experts agree that many of the projected construction schedules could still hold up.

Olivia Chow and David Soknacki say construction can begin immediately to build an LRT to replace the aging Scarborough RT. That would provide rapid transit at seven new stops by the end of 2019 for $1.8 billion.

John Tory and Karen Stintz want to move ahead with the Scarborough subway extension from Kennedy Station to the Scarborough City Centre. It would take until 2023 to open those three stops.

Meantime, Tory says he’ll build another 22 stops and 53 kilometres of transit based on the province’s plans to electrify GO rail. He’s promising to connect the airport area with Markham in seven years.

Tory says it will bring congestion relief to Toronto years ahead of the downtown relief subway that he criticizes Chow for classifying as a longer-term plan.

So how realistic are the timelines, and what’s the process for putting the plans into action?

Scarborough LRT:

Chow calls it “above ground rail.” She says construction could start in late 2015 after the Pan Am Games and be complete in 2019. That might be slightly optimistic, but generally the timeline still looks feasible.

To keep to the schedule, Chow would have to bring the dormant LRT project back to life as soon as she takes office as mayor.

The master agreement between the city and province still reflects terms for an LRT. But even some councillors who support the LRT agree that Chow would have to seek council’s affirmation of that technology choice.

Beyond that, the project remains a year away from being shovel-ready, according to Metrolinx, which says that work on the LRT stopped in October when council approved a subway.

Scarborough subway:

The 2023 delivery time is still achievable, according to a TTC report published in June.

But if Tory wins, it would be late in his term as mayor before he could literally put shovels in the ground on a subway, because the paperwork on the project hasn’t yet really begun.

Toronto’s director of transportation planning, Tim Laspa, says the the city is hiring a consultant this summer to run a public consultation process similar to the one in progress on the downtown relief subway. The Scarborough subway consultation is expected to begin in the fall and take about 16 months.

Once the consultation is finished, city staff will write a report that will go to council for approval in early 2016, about the same time as the relief study.

From there, it goes for provincial approval through the Transit Project Assessment Process (TPAP), which takes about six months.

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“Once that’s received, we’re into design and engineering, which on both projects could be two to three years,” said Laspa.

The TTC would use that time to buy up property, finalize the subway design and order new tunnel boring machines or retrofit the ones that recently finished digging the Spadina subway extension.

Construction would take from 2018 to 2023.

The TTC pegs the cost at $3.56 billion in 2020 dollars. Previous lower cost estimates of about $2.5 billion are based on 2010 dollars.

Downtown Relief Line:

While the city, Metrolinx and TTC are progressing in the preliminary studies and consultations of this line, its definition, timing and funding remain uncertain. Some preliminary answers may not be available until the fall just before the election.

Tory initially said he supported a relief line, leading many to believe he was talking about a subway that runs from the east end of the Danforth line, through the downtown and back up to about High Park. But then he changed course and released his SmartTrack plan, based on the pre-existing GO electrification plan. By using GO lines, Tory says, he will alleviate congestion faster.

Metrolinx has not determined the order in which the lines will be electrified, but it has a 10-year window for the project. So it’s not clear how Tory can promise SmartTrack in seven years. He indicated at a recent press conference that the province might be willing to negotiate on the electrification of sections that fit with the SmartTrack plan, given that the city would be contributing $2 billion.

Meantime, Chow’s campaign considers the traditional Danforth-to-High Park route as the downtown relief line but has taken criticism from the Tory camp for calling it a longer-term priority.

Chow’s spokesperson said Friday that she would begin planning the relief line as soon as she takes office. But, given that there is no funding for the project and the studies aren’t even done, she won’t make any false promises now about when the project might be finished.

Funding partnerships with the province and Ottawa would still need to be negotiated, and Metrolinx officials were clear at their June board meeting that the timing of a relief subway line is still very much in question.

The agency’s vice-president, Leslie Woo, said the subway would still be needed. But given the GO electrification plans for regional express rail, it wasn’t clear when a new subway should be built.

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