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Toronto Council Votes for LRT on Sheppard

On March 22, Toronto’s city council voted 24-19 to build light rail transit (LRT) on Sheppard Avenue East. The two options council was presented with were: use the available $1 billion to build two new subway stops at the existing Sheppard subway line, or build a 13 kilometre LRT from the end of the existing [...]

Expert Panel Recommends Toronto Adopt LRT Over Subway

A panel created by Toronto’s city council recommends that the city develop light rail transit along the Sheppard corridor. The panel was created on February 8th and was charged with developing a report that identifies the most appropriate method of transit development along Sheppard Avenue. The panel considered three options including: light rail transit, a [...]

Darlington Retube and Feeder Replacement Project

A joint venture of Aecon and SNC-Lavalin has been awarded a major contract for the refurbishment of all four reactors at the Darlington Nuclear site. The project itself has two distinct phases. In the first phase, known as the Definition Phase, the companies will undertake four key actions that will start in 2012 and run [...]

Pre-cast Concrete Segment Dropped at Port Mann Construction Site

A gantry that was moving a segment of pre-cast concrete into place experienced a malfunction at the Port Mann Bridge construction site. On February 10, 2012 the gantry crane malfunctioned and released a 90 tonne segment of concrete into the river below. One of the cranes supports was crushed and the gantry is now listing [...]

The Drummond Report: Electricity

Electricity infrastructure and generation is possibly the most singularly complex system in the province. It is also an incredibly expensive system to, not only maintain, but, expand and upgrade. The recommendations proposed by the Drummond report provide the province with the opportunity to increase efficiency and reduce the administrative burden on the province. Among the [...]

The Drummond Report: Water and Wastewater Infrastructure

According to the newly released Drummond report, the government of Ontario should immediately take a number of steps to ensure that infrastructure services are efficiently delivered to the public. Water and wastewater infrastructure assets were explicitly referenced in his report along with several recommendations. A full cost recovery model for water usage, similar to how [...]

The Drummond Report: Recommendations for Transit and Transportation

As much as the Drummond report explicitly outlines the transportation and transit challenges facing the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, it offers few actionable recommendations for improving the financial situation of these sectors. Yet, there are a number of useful comments, many of which infrastructure watchers are already well aware of. Importantly, Drummond highlights the [...]

Windstream Energy Selects Firms to Build Offshore Wind Farm

Despite an ongoing moratorium imposed by the Ontario government, Windstream Energy is moving forward on it’s plans to build North America’s first fresh water offshore wind farm. The company holds the only Feed In Tariff contract for generating offshore wind energy in Ontario. The company has selected four Hamilton area companies to develop the project, [...]

Canada’s Top 100 for 2012

This year’s list has the biggest-ever total: $114.2 billion in infrastructure projects. This isn’t all new investment—it includes 71 projects that were on last year’s Top 100. A project remains on this list until it is completed, which means some will continue to rank for a few years, maybe even a decade. Even so, the [...]

Environmental Groups Take Legal Action on Proposed New Nuclear Reactors

Ecojustice and the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), on behalf of Greenpeace Canada, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, CELA, and Northwatch have filed for a judicial review, in Canadian Federal Court, of the assessment undertaken for the proposed nuclear reactors at the Darlington Nuclear complex east of Toronto. The organisations suggest that the federal assessment does not [...]