When trains carrying the first passengers on the Spadina subway extension start rolling Sunday morning, it will mark the opening of the first addition to Toronto’s rapid transit network in more than a decade.

But while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Kathleen Wynne, Mayor John Tory and the other dignitaries who gathered at the new Vaughan Metropolitan Centre station Friday to finally cut the ribbon on the project were all smiles, the journey to opening day was anything but smooth.

The completion of the line, an extension of the TTC’s Line 1, will extend the TTC subway outside of Toronto’s borders for the first time and was the culmination of a decades-long saga marked by political feuds, hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns, and a two-year delay. In the end, was the Spadina subway extension worth it?

For those who will enjoy service at one of the 8.6-kilometre extension’s six new stations, the answer is undoubtedly yes.

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Spadina extension has been in the works for decades

Students at York University, whose commutes by bus to the campus off of Keele St. and Steeles Ave. West are notoriously guelling, are celebrating.

“We’re more excited than you can understand. It’s a big deal,” said David Ampofo, a first-year software engineering student, who every day takes the subway from Wilson to Sheppard West station and then has to wait in a long, “painful” line to catch a bus to the university. Sometimes as many as 200 students could be caught waiting, he said.

He expects the extension to cut his commute from 40 minutes to 10. By 2020, the TTC predicts there will be close to 14 million annual boardings and alightings at the two stations serving the campus.

“This is something we can all look forward to and celebrate,” Ampofo said.

Officials in Vaughan believe the two new TTC stations within their borders will be transformational. They’re hoping a new city centre will take shape around the extension’s terminus at Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.

“We are presently living through Vaughan’s golden era where everything is perfectly aligned to provide citizens with the best city they could possibly dream of,” said Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua.

Around the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre station is 179 hectares — about 300 soccer fields — worth of development opportunities, Bevilacqua said. The city wants to see offices, retail space and residential units built up around the station, some of which has already begun.

Vaughan councillors have recently approved 11 condominium towers, an eight-storey office building, and Edgeley Pond and Park spanning 7.5 hectares. Last year financial giant KPMG opened a 14-storey office tower steps from the subway station.

“The subway is becoming the core of York Region,” Bevilacqua said.

The $3.2-billion subway project was jointly funded by three levels of government, with Ottawa contributing $697 million, the province $974 million, the city of Toronto $904 million, and York Region $604 million. The extension’s operating costs, estimated at about $25 million annually, will be borne entirely by the TTC.

But if the project came about because of intergovernmental co-operation, it was a point of political friction for decades after it was first pitched in the 1980s, with Metro council and then Toronto council flip-flopping on the idea for 30 years.

In May of 1988, York Centre MPP Greg Sorbara called for expanding the Spadina subway line to York University to better connect it to Toronto, boost TTC’s flagging ridership and make it easier for people to go to work. His words would be repeated, often falling on deaf ears, by York University officials and York Region politicians in the years to come.

By 1992, Metro Council had rejected the extension to York University in what the Star reported to be a shocking vote.

After another decade of officials squabbling over whether or not it would be worth it, York Region and the City of Toronto eventually pledged funding for the then-$1.5-billion extension. The province followed suit in 2006, but insisted the line continue all the way to what is now the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.

The original completion date was set as 2015, but construction started almost year-and-a-half late due to difficulty finalizing funding agreements. A harsh winter, coupled with tunnelling problems under York University, slowed progress.

The project’s darkest day came Oct. 11, 2011, when Kyle Knox, a 24-year-old backhoe operator, was killed when a drilling rig tipped over at the York University station site.

The ministry of labour closed the location while it investigated, stopping work for four months and adding to project delays.

By early 2015 the extension was in danger of going off the rails. The cost, which had already jumped to $2.6 billion as the result of the decision to extend the line to the centre of Vaughan, was set to increase by another $400 million, and the opening date of 2016, already pushed back once, was deemed unachievable.

In March of that year, a livid Mayor Tory described the project as a “fiasco” and said someone had to be held accountable. A week later, the TTC fired two veteran managers.

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The TTC turned over management of the project to Bechtel, granting the engineering firm an $80-million sole-source contract, which TTC CEO Andy Byford argued was the only way to ensure the opening date wouldn’t slip to 2018 or 2019.

Although the reset mitigated delays, the TTC is still settling claims from contractors who allege they’re owed money for work on the line, and will likely spend years sorting out payments. The transit agency says it’s confident settlement costs won’t exceed the existing budget.

Judged solely in terms of ridership, the extension doesn’t put up impressive numbers, and least not in the immediate future.

According to the TTC, the extension will carry 24 million riders annually by 2020. However, the majority of those are people who already take existing TTC services.

The agency predicts the extension will add just 1.2 million net new riders to the network next year, a small amount compared to the 535 million annual customers the agency already serves.

Steven Farber, a transportation geographer and assistant professor and the University of Toronto Scarborough, argues that despite the ridership projections the extension could have substantial benefits.

In a paper published earlier this year, he evaluated Toronto transit projects by determining the number of new people and jobs they would make accessible. The measure is important because the number of employment opportunities people can access from a transit stop will attract residential development to the area, and the number of people who can reach the area by public transit will draw businesses that need a supply of workers and customers.

He found that the Spadina extension would increase the number of new jobs and people accessible by 74 per cent and 50 per cent respectively.

“In terms of accessibility gains, it’s a clear success,” he said.

However, compared to other planned projects, the Spadina extension gives a lower return on investment. Farber calculated that every $1 billion spent on the Spadina extension would make roughly 760,000 jobs accessible to residents. By contrast, the planned Finch West LRT would make over 2 million jobs accessible for every $1 billion spent.

“The catch is that a subway is super expensive, and the cost for that amount of accessibility gain is pretty high,” Farber said.

Murtaza Haider, a Ryerson University professor who specializes in transportation planning, argued that Toronto shouldn’t be extending the subway network to the outskirts of the city before it addresses congestion closer to downtown. He noted the St. George interchange on the Spadina line is already crowded heading southbound on weekday mornings, and the Spadina extension risks simply adding more people.

“We continue to expand the system, adding capacity at the fringe, but not addressing the capacity constraints at the core,” he said.

“Without building the downtown relief line there’s not much merit going out extending transit to the suburbs.”

In an interview, Mayor Tory said he was “long past” debating the “wisdom” of building the Spadina extension. “I’m not sure I’d know,” he said.

He acknowledged that more development could have been integrated into the stations, which while architecturally impressive are stand-alone structures that don’t directly incorporate additional uses like office and residential space.

But the mayor predicted as long as Vaughan and Toronto enact policies supportive of new commercial and residential builds near the stops, development, and more transit users, will eventually come.

“I think you have too look at these transit projects in the longer term, you can’t look at them the day after they open, or the week after they open,” he said.

“The bottom line is, it’s built.”