Jack Denton
Right now, debates in Toronto City Council are set to have a huge, direct impact on the average North Toronto student. The issue facing City Council is personal to any student that passes through Eglinton Station, any student who has ever smelled the sweet
smell of Cinnabon. Council is debating new transit routes and they are messing
with our daily commute.
The extension that will shake NT to the core is a new route currently dubbed the “Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown Line”. It is expected to cost the city at least $8.4 billion, and be finished by 2020, five years after this year’s grade nines graduate. The
operation is expected to create over 100,000 jobs, but a lot of congestion on
Eglinton.
The line will go underground, meaning that it must be built under busy Eglinton Avenue. Since Eglinton Station, so close to our school, will be one of four main stations currently
proposed, there will have to be another platform and tunnel built under the platform
many of us pass over everyday. Except the already busy station will become
almost unmanageable, with perhaps a hundred construction workers passing back
and forth through to the new platform. Thousands of tiles, rail sections, and
tunnel supports will have to pass through somewhere. And what about the tons of
soil that will have to be removed? A tunnel for workers to even get down to the
construction level would have to be built before anything starts. How do you
feel about adding that obstruction to your morning or afternoon commute?
Sometimes during subway extensions, crews are required to dismantle the street above the line in order to build a tunnel and stations from the top down. Should this happen at
Yonge and Eglinton, as it did for the construction of the existing Sheppard
line? It can push retailers out of business (as streetcar extensions did on St.
Clair and Roncesvalles), but would also funnel commuters up Yonge, making the
longest street in the world even more congested.
No matter what City Council decides regarding the logistics of the building of the
Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown line, construction will absolutely drastically
change how we commute to school everyday. I wonder how many more late slips
will be handed out.