Toronto school community frustrated with lack of detailed Ontario Line info, safety plans

Parents at a Toronto elementary school along with other community members say they’re frustrated with a lack of detailed information and planning being provided by Metrolinx as early work begins on the Ontario Line.

“Right now there (are) literally trucks backing up next to children who are playing on the playground. I think they are choosing speed over safety,” Daniel Miller, who sits on the Ontario Line sub-committee of Pape Avenue Jr. Public School’s parent council, noted during a recent interview with CityNews on Langley Avenue.

“At this very minute, there (are) people working and building netting around the school, which is a construction site.”

As Miller was discussing concerns about construction, crews were fencing off trees in front of the school.

He said the parent council’s subcommittee has met with Metrolinx several times, but he described the outcome of those meetings as “less than satisfactory.” Metrolinx is the provincial transportation agency overseeing the planning of the 15-stop, 16-kilometre subway line that will connect Exhibition Place and the Ontario Science Centre.

Miller said they have been asking for a detailed safety plan to keep continuous access to the school and the attached daycare ahead of all work.

“They say a lot of things, but they don’t offer a lot of actual answers and there’s not a lot of follow-through with the answers they do give us. It’s often very vague,” he said.

“I think what we want is Metrolinx to provide us with a safety plan that allows the school to stay open throughout the year and without interruption – the school, the daycare, all of it.

“There’s no accountability and we as parents expect there to be accountability because I have really deep concerns about what the safety protocols are going to be.”

RELATED: Metrolinx plan to cut trees at Osgoode Hall for Ontario Line on hold

Sara Ehrhardt, who was elected as the TDSB trustee for Toronto–Danforth in October’s municipal election, said she has been hearing from parents since she was sworn in a month ago. She also described a recent public meeting on the project in which Metrolinx staff attended.

“I’m only echoing what I’m hearing from the community and they’re saying that it’s lacking. I will say that I could sense the emotion in the meeting that I attended. I think what’s happened is, what they call in Metrolinx terms, pre-construction work underway, and the community didn’t feel they were sufficiently informed,” she told CityNews.

“There is no construction committee that has been setup, there has been no health and safety plans presented, there has been no traffic plans presented, so it does feel like work is happening before planning has happened with the community.”

Ehrhardt said the worries being expressed are reasonable in the absence of more fulsome communication.

“We live in Toronto, we’re no stranger to long-term construction work, but if systems aren’t in place for everyone to know what’s happening, when it’s happening, how it’s going to happen and how we mitigate risks to health and safety, particularly for children that’s going to turn the temperature up,” she said.

Toronto–Danforth Coun. Paula Fletcher, who said she was at the same meeting, echoed the frustration.

“It’s a 110-year-old school so if I had a child there I’d be a little worried that the walls might come tumbling down, so they need to really understand what’s happening, what are the risk, how are they being mitigated, what’s the traffic patterns in the neighbourhood and have a conversation with the City about the property the City has,” she said.

Fletcher said much of the process is in the hands of the Ontario government and Metrolinx. She added the City of Toronto will need to relocate a sewer as part of the early utility relocation work.

During a recent meeting of Toronto city council, she and other council members passed a motion calling for Metrolinx to setup a community liaison committee and for better safeguards. They also directed Toronto Water staff to gather feedback relating to construction and traffic.

Fletcher said the Riverdale Shopping Centre at the northeast corner of Carlaw Avenue and Gerrard Street East is set to close for six years and added it will serve as a major site for dirt removal during tunnelling as well as support other construction work related to the Ontario Line.

“I find that that’s about the only way to break through the Metrolinx shell,” she said, referring to getting City of Toronto staff involved even though its not a municipal project.

“Once these things start, there’s very little ability to fix them.”

RELATED: Documents show costs for Ontario Line have doubled to almost $20 billion

CityNews contacted Metrolinx early Wednesday to ask for an on-camera interview to discuss the concerns being raised, but officials declined.

In a statement issued on behalf of Metrolinx, a media relations spokesperson said the organization “takes safety on its projects very seriously.” They said Metrolinx staff have been conducting regular site visits and safety reviews while working with parents and the TDSB to create a construction safety management plan. Other measures, such as temporary sound barriers, are set to be in place too.

While they didn’t respond to criticisms over not releasing more details to date, the statement said staff are working on creating a construction liaison committee specifically for the school and it will involve school officials, parents and the City of Toronto. It said the committee should be up and running sometime in 2023 and will meet biweekly.

Officials said the work happening to date near the school has been for checking soil, surveying and relocating utilities that would interfere with the Ontario Line.

Meanwhile, Miller and others said they’re not the project and what it will do. They said they just want information in timely and fuller way.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find anybody in this community who isn’t pro-transit and I think that they’re often painting us in that way, but the reality is everyone here needs better transit and we need more density. I’m fully supportive of that, but if you’re going to choose this path with the tunnel-boring machine this close to the students, you need to have the plan to keep them in school and safe,” he said.

“The community really deserves accountability and transparency from Metrolinx, especially in light of what’s happening on the Eglinton line. To get into the Ontario Line, we really need them to up their game.”

“Does anyone want transit to impact children? Does anyone want transit to impact? No, not in a specific instance, but overall we support transit and we’re a community that values transit and so the real issues here are how this takes place in a way that reduces risk to the health and safety of children and the broader school community,” Ehrhardt added.