‘AN INCREDIBLE MESS’: LRT construction hurts Mississauga businesses, mayor says

The $4.6-billion Hazel McCallion light-rail transit line project is “an incredible mess,” says Mississauga’s mayor, and city officials want answers from the provincial agency overseeing the work.

Mayor Carolyn Parrish, several councillors and senior city staff expressed frustration on Wednesday with ongoing construction delays on the Hazel McCallion Line (no deadline for completion has been provided) and with the messy state of the Hurontario Street corridor that’s making things costly for area businesses and difficult for motorists and transit bus drivers, among others.

At the outset of the massive transit project in 2020, it was pegged for completion in the fall of 2024.

Metrolinx, which is in charge of the 22-kilometre LRT route that’ll eventually whisk passengers from Port Credit in Mississauga’s sound end as far north as downtown Brampton, has not provided an updated deadline for completion since.

The agency has told INsauga.com on two occasions since late last year that “when construction nears completion and we move into the testing and commissioning phase, we will be in a better position to provide a specific opening date.”

That’s as close as Metrolinx has come to providing any updated timeline.

Mayor Carolyn Parrish says the current state of the Hazel McCallion Line project is “an incredible mess.”

Once patient with the huge project’s slow progress, Parrish, city councillors and senior staff at Mississauga city hall are now frustrated — and they want answers in short order.

Parrish, who told INsauga.com last October she wouldn’t be surprised if the new LRT line named for the city’s former iconic mayor of 36 years wasn’t completed until 2026 or even beyond that, didn’t mince words at city council on Wednesday.

“Once in a while I drive down Highway 10 just to torture myself,” she said, referring to the slow going due to construction.

The mayor further described the drive along Hurontario Street, noting “you can see there are workers’ cars parked in a cluster, so you get close and you think you’re going to see something going on, and there’s not a soul to be found. They just leave their cars and go somewhere else.

“Or then you go through a whole stretch where it’s all chopped up and nobody’s working,” Parrish continued. “Then you go through a little stretch where there are 43 people working on one little piece of something.

“It is the most incompetent, now I may not understand what’s going on there, but it is unbelievable watching that thing, and people have to drive by it every day,” the mayor said. “People who have stores along there are feeling the pinch … so this has really been a mess. And if we had it to do over again, I was off council when everybody voted for this mess, I wouldn’t have voted for it. I think we needed an east-west (rapid transit route) first and I think this has been an incredible mess.”

At the time of publication, Metrolinx had not responded to a request for comment from INsauga.com.

Mississauga City Manager Geoff Wright says he and his staff are frustrated by slow progress on the Hazel McCallion Line.

Mississauga City Manager Geoff Wright said he and his staff are similarly frustrated, and he’s reached out to the CEO of Metrolinx to set up a meeting, hopefully by the end of the year.

“It feels like, and I think Metrolinx has used this term on previous projects, but it feels like we’re in the middle of an operation and then everyone has just kind of walked away, and we’re lying on the table waiting for them to close us up. So that’s kind of how things feel,” Wright told the mayor and councillors.

“We’re all equally as frustrated with the duration that the (Hazel McCallion Line) is taking in terms of its construction, but also I think more recently … is the lack of construction along the corridor, so we’ve been working with Metrolinx to try to understand that.”

He added the city and Metrolinx need to have “an open conversation” about the project, “about some of the challenges the project has faced, but also what is the plan to get this project back on track and get it to a completion date.”

Wright further noted the lack of progress on the huge project “makes it difficult for us to plan because we have transit operations that are also operating in this corridor, which is very disruptive; we also have financial pressures that need to be baked into our future plans that are kind of unknown at this point. So it’s not a great story.”

Ward 5 Coun. Natalie Hart says hotels and other businesses in her ward are feeling the impact due to construction of the LRT line.

Ward 5 Coun. Natalie Hart said businesses in her ward are suffering due to the slow-moving LRT project.

“The lack of hoarding (temporary fences around building sites), or the state of the hoarding where there is hoarding, is dramatically different than the standard (Metrolinx) uses for the Ontario Line (subway project) or for the Eglinton Crosstown (West Extension) which tucks into my ward by the Renforth station,” Hart said. “The difference between the two that they use is dramatic and has an impact on these businesses who are faced with what looks like bad snow fencing and vegetation growing out past the fence lines.”

The councillor added the current state of the project “has a very large impact on businesses. There’s no point in having BIAs spend fortunes on beautification if right next to it is a dilapidated plywood thing leaning up against a half-up fence.”

Hart noted two hotels in her ward have been negatively impacted, financially, by the LRT project.

“In the case of one of the hotels, their revenue is down over 50 per cent. I don’t know of too many businesses who can take a hit like that year-over-year, and so we really need to be pushing (Metrolinx) to work on that aspect as well. They’re not going to magically finish construction, but they absolutely could hold themselves to the same standard they do on their other projects.”

(Image: Metrolinx)

Ward 1 Coun. Stephen Dasko said he hears frustrations daily from residents and businesses.

“It has been anything but smooth,” he said of the major project. “Of all the complaints I get in the ward from the QEW right down to the Port Credit area, it is clearly in the top three. It’s one that we hear time and time again” from residents and businesses.

Dasko noted residents have complained about a number of specific experiences, including blown tires in the construction area, while a number of area businesses are “going through some significant economic hardship as well.”

When completed in 2026, or later, by some unofficial estimates, the Hazel McCallion Line will travel 22 kilometres along Hurontario Street between Port Credit in the south end of Mississauga all the way north into downtown Brampton.

It will feature more than 20 stops along the route, including several in Mississauga’s downtown core by Square One. Metrolinx received the go-ahead from the province in February 2024 to extend the LRT line by three or four kilometres into downtown Brampton and reintroduce the “downtown loop” to the City Centre area of Mississauga. The latter component will add several stops to the route.