Mayor John Tory says construction delays on the new streetcar yard on Leslie Street are “profoundly exasperating” and further illustrate the need for “more change” at the TTC.
Tory made the comment to reporters on Thursday morning; one day after the TTC confirmed that the never-ending construction along Leslie Street will remain in effect for at least another month after a contractor installed a stretch of new streetcar tracks about nine centimetres too high.
The delay is just the latest setback in the construction of the new streetcar storage yard, which was initially expected to be open by 2014.
“I just wonder was nobody checking to see if it was three inches too high or three inches too low the entire time this was being done? That’s a management question,” Tory said. “You can’t blame it entirely on the contractor. It is the responsibility of the customer, the client to be checking the work.”
Leslie Street between Queen Street and Eastern Avenue was expected to reopen in three weeks’ time, however the TTC says that the road will now remain closed until mid-July as the contractor digs up the pavement and reinstalls about 60 metres of track.
The cost of digging up the road and reinstalling the streetcar tracks is expected to be covered by the contractor but Tory said money is not the issue.
“It isn’t even so much about money; it is about people’s time and it is about the disruption in that neighbourhood where it has gone on for a long time and I am not happy about it,” he said. “You know, I saw one of my council colleagues this morning saying the TTC just can’t get the management of these big projects right and I would say yes there is a problem there. There have been some personnel changes in that area to account for the fact that we are just not satisfied with the way things are being handled and I think we have to have more change.”
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