Article content

Listening to Tim Kocur talk about the new LRT line, you start to feel like Toronto’s waterfront is really, finally coming together.

Article content

Kocur, the executive director of the Waterfront BIA, said the transit line is “of existential importance” on the eastern half of Queens Quay. A decade from now, Toronto’s lakefront district should be world class, he said, with commerce and entertainment stretching from Ontario Place in the west to the Port Lands near the mouth of the Don River.

Article content

Article content

“The real sign of a great waterfront is usually that they have a continuous water’s edge walk,” as in Baltimore or Sydney, Australia, he said. “We are getting there.”

You hear Kocur talk about Toronto’s Waterfront East LRT project and you start to feel like $3 billion for 3.8 km of rail isn’t the craziest idea you’ve ever heard.

“Once it’s all built out, it’s gonna be a 10-km waterfront-wide experience,” Kocur said, rather than a string of unrelated neighbourhoods that happen to be close to Lake Ontario.

Article content

“If people see the waterfront as a place where they can go for three straight days and do different things each day, that’s what you can use to position Toronto as a waterfront city to the world,” he explained.

The line has been in the planning stage for years, and it’ll be many years before it’s done. But on Monday, the city secured federal and provincial funding for the project, in addition to the $1 billion the city will spend putting down rails from Union Station along Queens Quay to Cherry St., then down along Commissioners St.

The city expects the line to be finished in the early 2030s, but the project will roll out in phases. There’s still no firm timeline, but City Council will be updated as the work goes on, City Hall told the Toronto Sun in a statement. (The city declined to make a representative available for an interview.)

Article content

Article content

‘Absolutely gorgeous’

City Hall is selling the $3-billion project as an investment that goes far beyond commutes and gridlock.

It will enable the creation of 75,000 new homes, transforming Toronto’s eastern waterfront, and is projected to serve 50,000 daily riders, create 100,000 jobs and provide $13.2 billion in “economic value,” according to a City of Toronto press release.

Michael Bethke, president of the East Waterfront Community Association, is a big believer in what the LRT will do and how it will link the city with Lake Ontario.

“This is an investment not just in our area,” he said. “I can see that it’s going to free up an awful lot of traffic. It’s got a great plan for the public realm. It’s gonna look absolutely gorgeous.”

Article content

In late 2023, “we had the duck down here,” Bethke said, referring to a six-storey inflatable rubber duck attraction that first visited Toronto in 2017. “You know, that kind of a thing can swamp an area with traffic.”

But Bethke also admitted there’s an element of “relief” in knowing that the transit line, for years just an idea in city documents, will be done sooner than later.

Queens Quay has long been centred around the condo, and parking is already scarce. Many of the new homes going up on the waterfront are in condos that will have far fewer parking spaces than has been typical in Toronto.

Walkable and bike friendly as it is, the eastern waterfront has been built around the LRT, even though for years it hadn’t been clear that there would be money to pay for it.

Article content

“We need to have transit,” Bethke said.

‘Built around Union’

Kocur made a point to emphasize that the LRT line will integrate with the existing Queens Quay streetcar route west of Union Station, and people who live in the Port Lands will one day be brought to Billy Bishop airport, Exhibition Place or the western half of TTC’s Ontario line without having to transfer.

But the streetcar is an afterthought at Union, and any increase in passengers will overload what little space has been devoted to it. Changing that requires expensive, complicated construction in the bowels of the station.

That’s how 3.8 little kilometres turns into $3 billion.

“They’ve made a decision here, the TTC, that the best way to have this transit line function when it gets expanded is to continue having people go directly in and out, and only have to get on and get off once at Union Station,” Kocur said.

Article content

“It’s basically being built around Union Station, which of course is the biggest transit hub in the country. That’s the right thing to do. It’s hard to argue.”

Key to the city’s eastern waterfront strategy is the redevelopment of what had been known as Villiers Island. In 2024, Mayor Olivia Chow rebranded that as Ookwemin Minising, and perhaps to help sell the renewal, the City of Toronto routinely refers to that chunk of land, with all its rusty industrial history, as the waterfront’s “new island.”

The LRT line is due to end in a loop on Ookwemin Minising, which the city is reimagining as a mixed-use neighbourhood.

Bethke raves about the island’s destination green space, Biidaasige Park, which opened last summer.

Article content

Kocur said he “can’t stress enough” that LRT is just one big piece of the work to better connect the east waterfront with the rest of the city. As one example, a striking pedestrian bridge is expected to link Parliament St. with the new island by 2028.

Digging in

Kocur said there has been talk about construction as soon as this summer. Torontonians who endured years of complicated rail work on Finch or St. Clair Aves. – to say nothing of the Eglinton Crosstown – may sympathize.

Unique to the waterfront LRT is the geography. With no streets to the south – only water – it’s harder to avoid the construction.

Bethke said on top of all the property development, construction over the next few years will make it “an interesting time” for Queens Quay.

Article content

“It’s great news,” Kocur said, “but then we immediately have to think, wow, if the construction starts soon, how is that going to be mitigated? How are the businesses still going to be successful?”

“We want to be optimistic,” he added. “The city has, hopefully, learned a lot about how to do this construction through Queens Quay West 10 years ago, through Eglinton, through Finch.”

Once it’s all done, he said, people may look at the waterfront differently – even those who rarely take transit.

“Once this waterfront transit is built out, 7-km wide,” Kocur said, “for someone from Toronto, we’re hoping that they see the waterfront as a place where they can visit multiple different areas of it within one quick transit trip. We’re hoping that they’ll go to something at the Harbourfront Centre and then maybe go for lunch on the eastern waterfront, and then on the way home, you could even go to one of the new things that’s going to be at Ontario Place.”

“If we can see people spending a day on the waterfront in three different parts of the waterfront and using this transit line to get back and forth, like, that’s going to be the real win,” he added.

jholmes@postmedia.com

Article content