After more than a decade of dusty, noisy construction, people who live and operate businesses along Toronto’s Eglinton Avenue were looking forward to the new Crosstown light rail transit (LRT) line finally opening this fall.

However, just over a week ago, Metrolinx, the provincial agency responsible for regional transit in the GTA, announced in a blog post that the $5.5 billion project’s completion is once again being pushed back. They said the consortium hired to build the line has “fallen behind schedule, (is) unable to finalize construction and testing.” No definite timeline for when the new LRT will open was provided.

“It’s disappointing, but people were not surprised. There’s construction materials on the street and hoarding every where. There was no way they were going to meet their timeline,” said Louroz Mercader, who manages the York-Eglinton Business Improvement Area (BIA), which is home to the hard-hit Little Jamaica neighbourhood.

“There’s no end in sight. It’s hard for us as a business community to plan ahead. We can’t look to the future. It’s such a mess. We can’t plan anything.”

The new transit line was initially slated to be completed by 2020 but construction has been plagued by delays.

In October 2020 the consortium responsible for the line’s construction, Crosslinx Transit Sollutions, filed a lawsuit against Metrolinx and Infrastructre Ontario in which they argued that they should not be held accountable for delays or cost overruns because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A judge sided with the consortium and the two sides renegotiated an agreement in December 2021 that would have seen the line substantially completed by September 2022 and in operation several months later.

The project, however, has been delayed and once again the patience of people who live nearby has evaporated.

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