TTC CEO Mandeep Lali has announced the Eglinton Crosstown LRT will finally open to the public, beginning with a phased opening on Sunday.
Lali made the Line 5 Eglinton announcement during a TTC board meeting Tuesday afternoon.
He said rides on the Eglinton Crosstown will be fare-free on Sunday. However, TTC officials said there won’t be a public celebration event to mark the beginning of service on Sunday unlike the launch of Line 6 Finch West in early December.
“It’s a gradual opening … we’ll be leveraging customer feedback again, taking on the lessons from Line 6, holding the right teams accountable. I think we’ve been working through that very, very diligently in the last few weeks,” Lali said, adding there are no outstanding critical safety items to address before service begins.
As part of the phased opening, up to 24 trains will run roughly between 5:45 a.m. and 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday with potentially a later start on Sundays. TTC buses will run along the corridor at all other times when trains aren’t running. Officials also confirmed there won’t be parallel shuttle buses running at the same time.
Lali said it will take 55 to 59 minutes to go from one end to the other on a train versus 105 minutes on a bus.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford teased the opening date during an unrelated news conference in late January. He told reporters that he was advised of the Feb. 8 opening date by the TTC. However, Lali refused to confirm that date during a subsequent event amid reports of unresolved operational issues.
“We inherited (the line), we took the responsibility. Thank God it’s opening. They’ve done hundreds of thousands of kilometres of testing, and it’s going to finally get finished,” Ford said on Jan. 26.
“I’m happy it’s done, that’s all I can tell you, because it’s been a nightmare for all of us I’m first to admit, but it’s going to be incredible.”
News of the official launch of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT came less than two months after “substantial completion” was declared, which happened when independent engineers certified that the 19-kilometre, 25-station line was built as designed.
Since that declaration, the TTC had full operational control of trains along the corridor and staff were conducting their own assessments. More than 1,000 TTC and Metrolinx personnel participated in a major test on Jan. 22 in an effort to assess readiness.
Getting the 19-kilometre, 25-stop Eglinton Crosstown LRT ready to open for riders has been nearly 20 years in the making.
The Eglinton Crosstown was first proposed under former mayor David Miller’s Transit City plan in 2007. Contemplated as part of a larger network of new LRT lines, the Eglinton Crosstown would connect Mount Dennis in the west with Kennedy subway station in the east along Eglinton Avenue.
It wasn’t until 2011 that construction formally began under the previous provincial Liberal government.
The mammoth project was supposed to be done by 2020. However, that finishing date was repeatedly pushed back due to various legal, construction and testing issues along with COVID-19-related delays.
As CityNews reported over the past several years, there have also been issues with poor construction, the signalling system that has required multiple software upgrades, and a small collision during the final testing and commissioning phase. At one point, provincial officials confirmed there were around 260 deficiencies that needed to be addressed.
Prolonged construction and road closures also took a toll on many small businesses in Little Jamaica and elsewhere along the corridor, sparking calls for financial support from the provincial government.
There have been multiple calls from opposition parties, municipal politicians, and community members for a public inquiry into the whole Eglinton Crosstown project, but the Ford government hasn’t agreed to call such an inquiry.
More to come.