Chris Selley: A perfectly typical tunnel is just too much for Toronto's puny imagination

National Post

08-05-2025

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Progress has erupted in Toronto. At the request of city council, municipal staff this week delivered a 27-page report titled 'Improved Active Transportation and Water Access to Toronto Island Park,' in which they contemplated heresy: A permanent link between the 240-hectare isle and the city's mainland, which would involve constructing a bridge or tunnel across roughly 250 metres of water.
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For the record, the Channel Tunnel between England and France is more than 50,000 metres long.
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A 'fixed link,' as we call the idea here in Toronto for some reason, would have many benefits. No more interminable queues at the ferry terminal on beautiful summer days. No more having to pay $28 for a family of four to visit the city's greatest park — arguably the city's greatest thing — while still having to subsidize the ferry operations. (In 2019, the ferry service's operating expenses exceeded its operating revenues by $1.3 million.)
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If this bridge-or-tunnel endeavour were taken to its natural logical conclusion, the city could get out of the ferry business altogether. (There are already many private water taxis.) Privatization would liberate the ferry service from city council's insane decision-making.
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Because the city's current ferry fleet is ancient and decrepit, in 2020 council approved the purchase of two new ferries from a Romanian shipyard. Naturally they had to be electric ferries. Also, the ferries would have to be cosmetically similar to the current old-timey ferries.
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'For the love of God,' you might ask, 'why'?
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Well, see, most Toronto city councillors, having ample backyards of their own, if not cottages as well, view the Toronto Islands less as an important civic amenity for parks-starved downtown residents than as a sort of twice-a-summer nostalgia trip — like a day out on a steam train that comes with a souvenir conductor's cap. They like that it's inaccessible.
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In any event, it recently emerged that plans for the new electric ferries, which are already (you'll never believe it) nearly three times over budget — $92 million for two stupid boats — had not hitherto included any provision for charging the ferries. D'oh! Another $50 million down the drain for that, subject to cost escalations.
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Torontonians don't get much for their 27-page 'fixed link' report. Most of it just rehashes year after year of council decisions with respect to the ferries and the park, including a new recent 'master plan' for the Islands that managed not to contemplate a 'fixed link.' Staff do go into great detail explaining why this idea is probably doomed to fail, though.