EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park
Premier Doug Ford said his government is going to "drill down" on the costs of building tunnelled construction projects in Ontario after some estimates have pegged the cost of his buried expressway plans at over $100 billion.
Ford announced last week he's ordered a feasibility study of building a buried expressway and transit line under Highway 401, from Brampton to Scarborough.
At a press conference Wednesday, he weighed in on a potential cost estimate for the project published by the Globe and Mail. Tunnelling engineers pegged the project at potentially $1-billion per kilometre for a four-lane tunnel — two lanes in each direction — but twice or three times that if additional lanes, or transit, would be included.
Asked if he is worried about adding that much to the provincial debt, the premier replied that rating agencies have favoured the province because it's not "squandering" money.
He also complained about the potential cost of the tunnelled highway.
"Why are we the most expensive in the world to build a damn tunnel?" he said and referred to a chart he has on his phone that compares tunnelling costs. "Why can Spain do it 1/5 the cost, and all the countries that are that are listed the fraction of the cost? Why is it so expensive? So we have to sit down and drill down. They have to explain."
Ford also indicated he'd based the scope for the feasibility of the expressway on conversations with Laborers' International Union of North America (LiUNA) — a construction union that's a strong political ally of Ford — and with a large construction firm he did not name. They had advised against building a second deck on top of the 401, warning that it would suffer from the same maintenance headache as the Gardiner Expressway, and advised tunnelling instead.
Ontario's opposition parties have been calling on the province to move truck traffic from the 401 onto the 407, by subsidizing the tolls or buying back the 99-year lease. Asked about that, Ford replied, "Everything's on the table right now."
However, he added that he was warned that if the province did that, the highway could soon be at full capacity. On the other hand, he complained about the high tolls people pay and repeated that "all options are on the table — maybe both options."
"I'm not walking back anything," he said. "We're getting it done. You know, sooner than later, we're getting it done. Then people will be able to get home sooner or maybe have a little fun, sit in the sun, whatever they want to do. But it's all about getting people moving from point A to point B and getting goods to market sooner rather than later."
Ford has cast the 401 tunnel as an election issue. When it first announced it, he correctly predicted it would be opposed by his political opponents.
The Progressive Conservatives focused their last election campaign on building Highway 413. It would stretch from the western edge of Mississauga, where the 407 ETR meets the 401, then curve around Brampton, and reach the 400 at the northern edge of Vaughan.
While the opposition parties oppose the 413 project because of its cost and environmental impacts, Ford and his ministers have frequently touted it as necessary for fighting gridlock, using the same traffic modelling statistics that the premier employed in his tunnelled expressway announcement.
Last month, The Trillium reported, based on internal government documents, that the 413 is not expected to alleviate the region’s crushing gridlock.
The documents show government modelling predicts incredibly slow typical commute speeds — in the teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s km/hr range on 400-series highways — to and from Toronto during peak travel times in 2041, whether the 413 has four, six, or eight lanes, and whether or not the Ministry of Transportation’s other potential projects are completed.
The 407, however, is the exception, with congestion-free travel predicted due to the highway’s high tolls.
