Union Station construction: Where are we three years later?
It’s like being caught in a landslide.
No, more like that scene from The Lion King when the wildebeest stampede through the gorge towards Mufasa.
That’s how photographer Christian Lapid describes arriving at Union Station at evening rush hour and seeing the hordes of weary commuters flooding through construction-created chaos.
“It feels like I’m going to get run over or trampled. It’s tense,” he says. “I’m just trying to follow the body in front of me hoping they’ll lead me to the right place. Most of the time, I’m lost.”
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Like many of the 200,000 users of the GTA’s biggest transportation hub, he copes with his frustration with the recently reorganized GO train platforms and ever-changing staircases and exits by envisioning the station in 2015.
Spacious concourses complete with art installations, a new subway platform and glass roofs over the railway tracks and the “moat” between the subway station and the rail station.
Unfortunately, before it gets better, it’s going to get worse.
The good news is that change is more than six months away.
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When the York concourse — currently under construction — opens early next year, the Bay concourse (where the GO train ticket booths are) will close for its turn.
The GO offices and ticketing booths will move to the new area.
“That will be a huge change for our customers, probably one of our biggest changes in our history,” says Michael Wolczyk, the director of Union Station Rail Corridor Infrastructure at Metrolinx.
Next to the grand opening, that will be the biggest milestone, agrees city spokesperson Nancy Kuyumcu.
Transit users “will be rerouted in a number of different ways to the existing TTC entrance,” says Wolczyk.
A new connection to the PATH system being built by the city will open at the same time off York St.
“The new York concourse will also connect directly to the Great Hall (where the VIA Rail ticket offices are) which is something that isn’t available to people today,” adds Wolczyk.
But coming back to the present, construction is going 24-7 on the glass atrium roof over the railway tracks.
The last of the steel support columns on platforms 8 and 9 will go in by early July, with the atrium roof scheduled for completion by the end of next year. The full rehab of the 8.6-acre train shed’s roof won’t be done until the end of 2016.
Inside the rest of Union Station, not much will change over the next six months that commuters will see.
Beneath the feet of harried commuters, in the “dig down” started in June 2010 where a new pedestrian walkway is being created, work is humming along.
The city has excavated an area the size of three football fields and is almost done replacing and reinforcing the support columns for the York section (214 are done, 233 are left for the whole project). They will continue laying down new concrete floors for both levels in that section until the end of the year, says Kuyumcu.
And Union Station’s iconic Front St. façade will be able to ring in the New Year with a facelift.
The TTC station renovation is halfway done, says Malcolm MacKay, project manager for the Union Subway Station Revitalization. The west half of the new subway platform is close to structural completion. Part of the new concourse, two sets of doors and stairs are already open though unfinished. The final touches, including tiles, will be installed in 2014 to prevent damage as construction continues.
“Construction is a little behind schedule but tracking to completion in advance of the Pan-Am games,” says MacKay.
In the meantime Lapid is attempting to embrace the chaos.
“They’re under construction. It’s understandable there is less space to move in and clutter,” he says. “I just accept the confusion and disorientation as part of the experience now . . . I try to remember good things come from bad things. It’s only temporary.”
What's done?
