Infra Insight Blog

Humber College students and Toronto West residents will soon be able to access Canada’s largest subway system in five years.  The CA$1 billion Finch West LRT project is slated to open in 2022.  The new dedicated light rail transit line will run 11 kilometres along the surface of Finch Avenue from Humber College’s north campus to the new Finch West subway station on the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension that opened yesterday.  There will be 16 surface stops and 2 below-grade termini at Humber College and the subway station.  The Finch West LRT project includes a maintenance and storage facility for the light rail vehicles.

Infrastructure Ontario and Metrolinx issued a Request for Proposals to three shortlisted bidders on February 20, 2016 to design, build, finance and maintain the Finch West LRT project:

• Humber Valley Transit Partners, including SNC-Lavalin, Graham, ACI;
• Mosaic Transit Group, including ACS, Aecon, and CRH; and
• FACT Partners, including EllisDon, Bechtel, and Herzog Transit.

Following an extension of the proposal due date, the procurement was stalled to allow time for the resolution of a dispute between Metrolinx and Bombardier over repeated delays in the supply of a light rail vehicle prototype and subsequent vehicles for Toronto-area lines.  Procurement restarted in May 2017 after Metrolinx announced that it had entered into a new supply contract with Alstom as the alternative supplier of the vehicles.

All three teams have submitted their proposals by the new deadline on December 13, 2017.  The preferred proponent is expected to be identified in Spring 2018.