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Originally Posted by hipster duck
I heard through the grapevine that the Wynne Liberals - bullish as they are on Herculean transit expansion - are very leery about the DRL and are finding ways to kick that can down the road. I think it might have to do with the fact that a downtown subway line will be the most expensive, complicated and therefore most risky transit project in Toronto's history. The Spadina subway extension to Vaughan is much less complex in scope, and it has been plagued with delays and ballooning costs.
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This is more because of the TTC's flawed project management than anything else. Future projects are being constructed as P3s and are going to be much more efficiently executed. Look at Eglinton, the Confed Line in Ottawa, etc. All going much more smoothly and quickly thanks to P3 management.
The DRL is also way too early in the process to be funded now. It isn't even at the EA stage and won't be for some time. It won't even be tender ready until 2018-2019. Seeing as how the current funding has a cutoff of 2023 for project completion, the DRL is going to be excluded.
Politically it's also less valuable, as you said. It's also going to be needed a little less with RER drawing away a good chunk of DT-bound commuters and the ATC improvement allowing for substantial capacity increases on the Yonge line.
I can definitely see it being part of the next round of funding, though. Many of the funding sources in Wynne's infrastructure plan (such as the 7.5 cents gas tax) are permanent, so it's not like the current Move Ontario Forward plan is the end of transit spending. Plus there's tens of billions of infrastructure spending outside the scope of the plan, too. (Total infrastructure spending 2014-2023, under Wynne's plans, is going to be $135 billion, of which only $32 billion is from the famous Move Ontario Forward plan).
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