What’s going on with the Union Station revitalization?

The revitalization of Union Station began nine years ago, and it still isn’t finished.

Originally, it was supposed to be finished in 2015, but that date keeps getting pushed back, and the price tag keeps going up.

“Any time you’re doing renovations in a historic building like this, it takes time, it takes money, and it takes patience,” said Anne Marie Aikins, a spokesperson for Metrolinx.

Union Station is considered Canada’s busiest transit hub, serving 65 million customers a year, and that number is expected to almost double by 2031.

The consensus is that an expansion to Union Station will be worth it in the end, but in the mean time, it can be a confusing experience for riders.

“I just arrived by train from Windsor, and I’m seeing four different signs for the subway pointing in different directions,” said one traveller.

“We just got here from Brazil. We went here and we got to this dead end, and we didn’t know what to do,” said another man. “We’re looking for the Line 1 subway.”

Tourists are not the only ones who are confused; Torontonians who regularly pass through Union find the labyrinth confusing.

“I was just trying to get from Longo’s in Brookfield Place to here, and I still got turned around,” said a local man. “But, it’s a little pain for a lot of gain. The gain is a better Union Station, they’ve already made it a lot better.”

The gain will be new and improved concourses, new shops and restaurants, and restoration of the building’s historic features.

But the cost has ballooned since the revitalization began. The original price tag was $640 million, which later jumped to $800 million, with the timeline pushed back to early 2018.

In January, a City of Toronto report revealed that the price tag would actually be $823 million and the current expected completion date is late 2018.

The City is in charge of the overhaul, with the participation of transit agency Metrolinx.

Aikins said there’s a number of reasons for the delays and cost overruns.

“You find things out while doing the renovations that you hadn’t anticipated, because it’s so old,” said Aikins.

The current building is actually Toronto’s fourth Union Station.

The first three sat on a site slightly to the west and were open in the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. Design and construction for the present building and the surrounding rail tracks started in 1906. The new terminal was opened in 1927.

“You find old wiring and all kinds of cool things,” noted Aikins. “Doing construction here is challenging at the best of times.”

Contract disputes have also been contributing factors to the project’s cost overruns and delays. Aikins said conflicts with contractors are common on major construction projects. She adds that Metrolinx is aware that the construction is causing confusion for customers.

“We try to manage it efficiently, both the budget and time-wise for the construction, and to make sure that all transit customers – whether they’re TTC, Go, VIA, or if you’re just walking through, that you can do that seamlessly,” says Aikins. “That’s a challenge during construction.”