Build, baby, build: Canada used to know how to do that

Globe and Mail

2 days ago

The Last Spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven on Nov. 7, 1885, at Craigellachie, British Columbia. It was the fulfillment of the National Dream – we used to do things in all caps – of a ribbon of steel binding the country together, and securing our independence from the United States. It was the world's longest rail line at that time, and an exceptional engineering feat, driven across the forbidding Canadian Shield and through a wall of mountains in B.C.
And building it took just three and a half years.
The first spike was driven in Bonfield, Ont., 3,500 kilometres east of Craigellachie, in the spring of 1882. Three and a half years to make a National Dream.
Are we still able to dream big? And make big things happen?
With the nation's first ministers meeting on Monday to talk about Prime Minister Mark Carney's goal of 'build, baby, build,' it's worth remembering that, until not so long ago, Canada knew how to do that. We could build big, we could built quickly and we could build at reasonable cost. Sometimes all three.
Here are a few examples.
Construction on Canada's first subway began on Sept. 8, 1949. Toronto's 7.4-km, 12-station line was opened to passengers on March 30, 1954. That's four and a half years from start to finish.
Even if we date the start to when the citizens of Toronto agreed to the project in a plebiscite, in January, 1946, it was just eight years from idea to execution.
Fast forward to the present, and the Eglinton Crosstown. It's been under construction since 2011. It's light rail – not the heavy rail of a subway – and much of the route is on the surface, as a scaled-up streetcar. It's still not open.
Or consider the creation of the Montreal Metro. In November, 1961, the city decided to build a subway system, all underground. Construction started in the spring of 1962 and three lines, with 26 stations, were fully open by the spring of 1967. That's five years from decision to completion, or four and a half years from first shovel to first passenger.
And then there was Expo 67.
The 1967 world's fair was originally awarded to Moscow, but late in the game it pulled out. Montreal submitted a last-minute bid and was awarded the fair on Nov. 13, 1962. Construction started on Aug. 13, 1963.
Here's what that entailed: Enlarging an island in the middle of the Saint Lawrence River. Creating another from landfill. Building a three-station, 4-kilometre Metro line, running under the river. Building the Expo Express, a five-station, 7.5-km rail line – a surface subway, with rolling stock similar to the Toronto subway – which was also North America's first computer-controlled, driverless transit line. Building the Pont de la Concorde bridge. Building a 25,000-seat stadium, the Autostade. Building mass transit within the Expo site, known as the Minirail, an elevated, driverless monorail. Building 90 exposition pavilions, some of which were large and architecturally advanced, including the 20-storey tall U.S. geodesic dome, which the Minirail passed through, and Canada's giant inverted pyramid, Katimavik. And building Habitat 67, a futuristic experimental housing development.
Expo 67 opened on April 27, 1967. That's four and half years from conception to completion, or just 44 months from the start of construction the big reveal.
The fair expected 12 million visitors. It got 55 million.
Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Toronto's School of Cities published a report on the massive cost escalation in one of the things we must build more of – public transit. Current projects in the Toronto area, which are overseen by the provincial agency Metrolinx, have a price tag seven to ten times higher per kilometre than the original Yonge subway, even after adjusting for inflation.
The researchers found that, from the 1950s to the 1990s, the cost of new high-capacity transit lines in Toronto was stable at around $100-million per kilometre, after adjusting for inflation. Thereafter, costs exploded. The extension of the subway into Vaughan a decade ago cost nearly $400-million per kilometre. Planned subway extensions to Scarborough and York region are budgeted at almost $800-million a kilometre. The under-construction Ontario Line is expected to clock in at over $1-billion per kilometre.
Even the Finch West LRT – it's light rail running at street level, which is supposed to be cheap and easy – is expected to cost twice as much per kilometre as a tunnelled subway did a generation ago.
Many advanced countries – South Korea, Finland, France, Spain and others – build the same or better transit at lower cost, and often much lower cost. Canada tends to tie itself in knots in various ways, so that we end up spending more but getting less. It happens in transit, and beyond.
Build, baby, build? It's not impossible. Others do it. We used to.
The first scheduled passenger train on what was then the world's longest transcontinental railway journey left Montreal's Dalhousie Station on June 28, 1886. It arrived at Port Moody, outside Vancouver, 136 hours and one minute later.
It was one minute behind schedule.