Hazel McCallion LRT tracks being installed, but line will likely miss 2024 contractual date

As the Hazel McCallion LRT construction project makes headway with the beginning of rail track installation, officials say it’s not likely the line will meet its September deadline for substantial completion.

CityNews recently visited the 19-stop, $5.4-billion line that runs between Port Credit GO station in Mississauga and the Brampton Gateway Terminal at Steeles Avenue East to check out progress made throughout the past year and look ahead to what’s coming in 2024.

“We’re well underway towards that, but we’re not quite there,” Metrolinx vice-president Duncan Law told CityNews during a tour, describing the line as currently being in the final third of the overall project.

He said September is the contractual date for most of the civil and engineering work to be done. Law said crews on the 18-kilometre project, which began the tendering process in late 2016 and started construction in early 2020, encountered delays due to COVID-19 and aging infrastructure.

“We work as fast as we can and as safely as we can through these processes … we’ve gone through the pandemic (and) lots of us have seen various different challenges as a result of that,” he said.

“On the more localized basis, just dealing with old utilities that have perhaps failed that we didn’t know about.”

Law said work is underway with Mobilinx Hurontario General Partnership, the private-sector consortium charged with building the line, to address contractual claims and to agree on a new, substantial construction completion date. A projected finishing date wasn’t provided.

“Challenges are throughout the alignment really and I think it’s important for people to understand wherever we’re working, we’re trying to be considerate of the businesses and the people in the communities in those areas so it means that we change the schedule quite a lot,” he said while talking about the process of coordinating all of the remaining work.

When it comes to progress on the Hazel McCallion LRT line overall, Law said 2023 was notable for a couple of different reasons.

The biggest engineering feat came at the line’s south end at Port Credit GO station, which is the only below-ground facility along the route. Crews had to create a small tunnel underneath the existing Lakeshore West GO train line for light rail vehicles to get into the future station building. To do that, a temporary rail bridge had to be built during occasional train line closures and crews used a “push box” to slide the pre-built tunnel into place.

“We moved around 6,500 tonnes of concrete structure under a live railway, so huge, huge planning success,” Law said while standing alongside crews working on building the future station.

The second major area where headway has been made is with the large bridges being built near Square One and over Highway 403. This will allow for LRT vehicles to run between Mississauga City Centre and Brampton Gateway Terminal.

“The architecture, how it looks, how it sits in the landscape, is going to be just as important as the job is there to do,” Law said.

Other achievements on the Hazel McCallion LRT line have included building an operations and storage facility for the line’s trains. Tracks and station platform work at certain locations began too. Outside Brampton Gateway Terminal, construction ramped up.

David Cooper, a principal with Leading Mobility and a transportation planner, said the line is important for growth in Peel Region.

“Hurontario is one of the busiest transit corridors in the 905 and to have that connectivity from Port Credit through the city centre up to Brampton, I think will help Mississauga keep evolving into more of an urban city,” he said.

Despite what the future LRT line will be able to service, Cooper said it’s incomplete by stopping at Steeles Avenue West.

“One of the things that we need to figure out with that project too is that how is it going to get to downtown Brampton? That project is not finished,” he said.

“When we look at ridership recovery on transit, Brampton has been excelling in that compared to transit agencies all across Canada and North America.”

Less than a decade ago, there was talk of bringing what was previously called the Hurontario LRT to Brampton’s centre. However, city council at the time voted against that.

In 2019, work on a new concept to extend the line north began. A couple of years ago city council voted to go ahead with doing 30 per cent of the design work for an above-ground and a below-ground alignment. The plan for an extension is still unfunded.

Law said with the way the station is being built at Brampton Gateway Terminal, crews have tried to “future-proof” it.

“There’s always an opportunity to add to them. If we look at the operations, maintenance and storage facility that we built, the new train depot, that’s got future capacity in it. More vehicles will be able to be used using that facility in future,” he said.

So what can we expect next? Law said the focus will be on finishing the extensive underground utilities work, building tracks and stations, and then the extensive, months-long testing and commissioning process will follow.

“As you go south of the 403, it’s still heavy utilities work that’s taking place … we’re moving traffic out to the side of the road where it’s going to stay in its new future state. That allows us some free space in the centre where the guideway is actually going to be created,” he said.

“The LRT project, we see (it) as being a game-changer. It’s going to mean that people can travel using the LRT system as opposed to congested traffic.”

This is the fourth story in a five-part series called ‘Transit 2024,’ which looks at several of the Ontario government’s major GTA transit expansion projects. The final story will focus on the GO Transit expansion program. Click here to read part one, click here to read part two (the Ontario Line) and click here to read part three (the Finch West LRT).