Hamilton’s ‘shovel-ready’ LRT still two years away from major construction

Major construction on Hamilton's shovel-ready" LRT is still two years away, according to a project timeline circulated by provincial transit agency Metrolinx.

The city's off-again, on-again LRT project was infamously cancelled over budget woes in 2019 but resurrected last May thanks to a $3.4-billion funding partnership between the province and federal government.

At the time, bureaucrats and politicians at all government levels stressed the urgency of getting to work quickly on the project, citing post-pandemic job creation and economic development. Given our prior work, this is very much the definition of a shovel-ready project," Infrastructure Ontario president Michael Lindsay said last May.

Don't expect to see huge swaths of the Main-King LRT corridor dug up any time soon, however.

An example project schedule presented to a construction industry group last week shows no major construction starting before 2024. Most of this year and 2023 appear devoted to behind-the-scenes work on design and project tendering - although isolated enabling works" like relocating utility lines could begin as early as this fall.

Notably, the schedule shows Metrolinx splitting the 14-kilometre construction project into two main contracts: one that includes underground relocation of sewers, pipes and utilities and another for actual rail infrastructure, stations and operations.

Carving up the complex project into smaller contracts could help Metrolinx minimize risk and stay on budget," said Kris Jacobson, a former city LRT project head who now works for Metrolinx.

That would be a departure from the one-contractor-does-all bidding process that bogged down Hamilton's first failed LRT procurement. The Spectator previously reported one bidder on the original LRT bailed out even before the Progressive Conservative government killed the project.

But Jacobson also cautioned during an interview Wednesday the circulated schedule is very tentative" - as are still-unconfirmed proposals to split up construction. Still, he said it is fair" to assume no major construction will start before 2024.

That may seem like a long wait for a shovel-ready" project that has environmental approvals and funding in hand - and was in the middle of construction bidding just two years ago.

Jacobson said Metrolinx needed to do a little more work" to nail down the best procurement strategy for LRT 2.0 given past problems.

But he also noted shovel-ready" means something different for a 14-kilometre LRT line - the priciest infrastructure project in city history - compared to a typical municipal public works contract. He defined the oft-repeated term as ready to go to market" - which Metrolinx hopes to do soon, with a request for proposals potentially going out as early as this summer.

We're moving this project forward as fast as we can," he said.

It's not uncommon for multi-year, multibillion-dollar rapid transit procurements to stretch beyond a year, said Matti Siemiatycki, a transportation policy expert and University of Toronto professor.

And for all the criticism levelled at the province over its contentious transportation plans, when it comes to transit, this government, in many ways, really is focused on going quickly," Siemiatycki said. He pointed to the new Building Transit Faster Act, which is designed to speed up slow-moving bureaucratic processes like expropriation and municipal permitting.

Siemiatycki said it remains to be seen if splitting up the traditionally bundled" work of a complicated transit project will speed or slow overall construction timelines.

Metrolinx is not yet willing to publicly estimate an in-service date for Hamilton LRT - in part because the building schedule will depend on staging decisions of yet-to-be-chosen contractors.

But Hamilton transit head Maureen Cosyn Heath recently told councillors the city's HSR bus service is planning ahead on the assumption it will need to detour buses around LRT construction starting in 2024 - and potentially connect with an operating light rail line by 2028.

In the meantime, the city just hired its own LRT project director, Abdul Shaikh. He was most recently manager of rapid transit for Mississauga, where Metrolinx is building the Hurontario LRT.

City planning head Jason Thorne said Hamilton is now assembling an LRT office of around a dozen people.

The tentative LRT schedule suggests the first construction contract request for proposals will go out just a few months before the next municipal election.

The last city vote featured two main mayoral candidates duking it out over whether to proceed with the LRT project.

Hamilton Chamber of Commerce head Keanin Loomis, a very public LRT supporter, recently announced he will step down so he can run for mayor in the fall.

Incumbent and LRT supporter Fred Eisenberger has not yet announced if he will run again, while avowed light rail opponent and former mayor Bob Bratina has said he is mulling another run at council's top job.

Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter at for The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com