Building ION to Cambridge, Costs and Benefits

Things are heating up on ION stage 2, with more voices for LRT and with Regional Council hearing next week about the preliminary results of the Initial Business Case. In November, staff will share the full results and ask council for a decision on what option to move forward with.

The Business Case

The report considers several shorter route options as well as a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) option, finding the full length LRT option to have the highest economic benefits and strategic value, while the BRT option would have lower costs but not achieve the Region’s strategic goals. The partial LRT options miss the mark on connecting the region and on shaping growth in Cambridge, while BRT maintains a transfer at Fairway, impeding seamless connectivity.

A few things aren’t in the economic benefit calculations. One is that back when Cambridge representatives got on board with the phased ION light rail approach, the promise was that Cambridge would get trains in stage 2. A connecting busway instead of a light rail extension may be cheaper but it will be seen as a downgrade in experience and travel time. Going the cheaper route – not that $2+ billion for a busway is cheap! – would create tension between Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge within Waterloo Region instead of resolving it.

Beyond that, those strategic goals are important in monetary ways as well. ION has always been about shaping land use first and foremost, and ION stage 1 has shown that people and companies are eager to live along the line, and to invest in development along it accordingly. A busway can work well to move people, but it’s unlikely it would attract nearly as much development in the corridor. That affects how many people will end up living in these denser, more walkable and transit-accessible areas, which in turn affects how much of the Region’s growth will instead be spread out in places that require more expensive roads and utility infrastructure per capita.

The Funding Problem

The big question of course is around costs and funding. The capital cost estimates for the full LRT route are down slightly to $4.3b in a cost-escalated 2033 estimate or $3.1b in 2025 dollars. These numbers have big error margins, but the report indicates that the estimates are consistent with recent LRT projects in Ontario, which is true, but doesn’t mean it is not a problem.

We want to see a lot more ION built in Waterloo Region, so we need to understand how to get more transit from sums like those. The transit cost scholarship indicates a need for stronger in house project management with more efficient procurement and hands-on cost control.

TriTAG put in a Freedom of Information request to the Region back in July on the details of the cost estimates to understand what exactly changed from the earlier $1.36b estimate. A third party requested an extension before anything is shared, so we are still waiting. Presumably that’s GrandLinq, the consortium behind Stage 1 construction and operations, but we don’t know for sure. But if so, the difficulty in knowing what the costs are and why of our public transit project is an illustration of the absurdity of going further down the path of public-private partnerships.

Build More Than Stage 2

Our hope is the Region hears loud and clear from the public, business community, institutions, community leaders, and so on that we need to build LRT all the way to downtown Cambridge as originally planned. We will be asking that the Region take control of its transit destiny. Make the requests for the same levels of funding as Hamilton and Mississauga and other cities. But don’t build in the same way, and do set up the funding agreements in such a way that we can build more ION than just stage 2 with those funds if we’re smart about it.