During its meeting last Wednesday, October 24, the Toronto Transit Commission considered a TTC staff report, updating them on the status of the project to extend the Spadina branch of the 1 Yonge - University - Spadina subway to York University and Vaughan. It also advises the Commissioners that due to a number of factors, the new subway will not open on schedule. It extends the opening date from “late 2015” to “fall 2016”.

According to the report, the TTC had already compressed its schedule for building the subway. For example, building the 4 Sheppard subway line, which includes five stations and extends 6.4 kilometres, required 5.7 years to build from the start of tunneling in February 1997 until the opening of the line in November 2002. The TTC originally proposed a more agressive schedule for the Spadina project, expecting to finish in 4.9 years a line that has six stations and extends 8.6 kilometres. (Tunneling started February 2011).

Moreover, a fatal accident at the site of the future York University Station Tuesday, October 11 affected the work by a sub-contractor to the general contractor for the Highway 407 Station and the Northern Tunnels, including York University.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour initially closed all of the sites where this contractor was working, reopening all except the York University Station site within a week. However, the Ministry kept the York University Station site in area of the accident closed until Ministry staff finished investigating the incident in February 2012. This impacted the schedule — including tunneling — by about four months.

Here’s the status of the various components of the project: