Midtown residents are up in arms over damage to their homes that they say is being caused by Eglinton Crosstown LRT construction.
“I can show you where the cracks have widened and spiderwebbed,” said Byron Martin, noting the damage inside his house on Chaplin Crescent, just south of Eglinton Avenue West — and the site of a future underground Crosstown station.
Although Martin said his property has been damaged more than once during years of construction, the situation took a turn for the worse in early December.
At that time, Crosslinx Transit Solutions — the consortium responsible for building the light rail line for the provincial transit agency Metrolinx — undertook demolition work nearby to remove the base of a crane.
“The vibrations were unbelievable,” Martin said. “My garage … is kind of disintegrating,” he added.
Martin and his neighbour Michael Lampel have demanded an independent survey of the damage to their homes and, if the deterioration is deemed to be the result of construction, a payout to cover repair costs.
“We’ve been living with this for seven years,” Lampel said of the construction headaches.
“We are not people who just woke up one morning and decided we’re going to complain.”
For its part, Crosslinx, which Metrolinx directed Post City to contact over the Chaplin Crescent situation, said that it responded to residents’ complaints about noise and vibrations on Dec. 1.
The construction consortium noted that it has noise and vibration monitors at each of its active construction sites.
For the site near Chaplin, Crosslinx said it brought in acoustic engineers to conduct additional tests in response to concerns from local residents.
“The monitoring results repeatedly verified that noise and vibration levels were within the allowable limits during the demolition works,” according to a statement from Crosslinx.
Crosslinx also said that it switched to later-morning working hours for the early December project, dug a trench around the site to limit vibrations and offered to put affected residents in hotels.
That’s news to Lampel and Martin.
“We were never approached by them,” said Lampel. “There was no one who came knocking at our doors and said, ‘This is what’s about to happen,’” he said. There was no one who came to offer us hotel rooms.”
Crosslinx explained that, together with Metrolinx, it has a formal process for investigating damage claims.
“All of the directly impacted residents have also been notified that, with their permission, Crosslinx will arrange for a post-construction survey of their properties to determine the cause and extent of any claimed damages,” reads the Crosslinx statement.
A third party will conduct any post-construction surveys, Crosslinx confirmed.
Local councillor Josh Matlow has been an outspoken critic of Metrolinx and its repeatedly delayed and over-budget Crosstown LRT project.
Councillors Matlow and Mike Colle recently announced that they were going to move a motion at City Council in December demanding the Province of Ontario launch a public inquiry into the delayed and over budget Eglinton Crosstown project.
Matlow said he supports his constituents’ calls for third-party investigations.
“Businesses and residents have been treated like collateral damage by Metrolinx,” Matlow said. “I fundamentally believe that we need to build public infrastructure; we need to build transit,” Matlow continued. “But residents and businesses who are most directly impacted by that construction and whose lives and livelihoods and property are adversely impacted by that construction — there needs to be a plan to support them through it.”
