Hamilton residents fire back after province boasts about Toronto LRT

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Published December 30, 2019 at 1:45 pm

Two weeks after Ontario’s Minister of Transportation announced the cancellation of Hamilton’s LRT project (and fle

Two weeks after Ontario’s Minister of Transportation announced the cancellation of Hamilton’s LRT project (and fled with a police escort), Caroline Mulroney tweeted a blog post from Metrolinx that provided an update on the progress of Toronto’s light rail transit project along Finch West.

The Dec 28 post was captioned, “#GettingOntarioMoving along Finch West!”.

Expectedly, many Hamiltonians were irked by Mulroney’s enthusiasm for Toronto LRT after their city was dealt a crushing blow. 

The killing of the LRT project in Hamilton created a holiday seasons stir among residents and local politicians. In fact, manure was dumped outside the office of Ontario Premier Doug Ford by Hamilton protestors.

Ontario’s Auditor General recently announced that she will now be looking to see if the LRT was costing as much as the Doug Ford government has claimed.

Bonnie Lysyk sent a letter to Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath in response to a request from Horwath for the AG office to look into the costs of the project presented under Ford’s and the previous Liberal provincial government.

The Tories estimated that it would cost $5.5 billion over a 30 year period to build and operate the Hamilton LRT, and used that as the reason why they were cancelling the project.

In a press release soon after that decision was announced, the NDP said they believe that construction of the LRT should continue, with the province paying for 50 per cent of the operating expenses.

Besides Lysyk looking into the numbers, the Laborer’s International Union of North America (LiUNA), a union which endorsed Doug Ford in the 2018 provincial election, announced that they would be doing their own study on how much it would cost to build the Hamilton LRT system, according to the CBC.

The LRT would have run from the west end of Hamilton at McMaster University for 14 kilometres to Eastgate Square, running along the Main and King Street corridors.

An estimated $184 million dollars has already been spent in the early stages, with approximately $80 million of that being spent on full or partial purchases of properties along the proposed corridors.

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