Members of the public queue for a bus along Eglinton Avenue, as a test train that will carry LRT passengers rolls by in early October, 2025. The delay-plagued LRT is set for a phased opening on Sunday.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
The chief executive officer of the Toronto Transit Commission has confirmed that the city’s troubled Eglinton Crosstown light-rail line will undergo a “phased opening” on Sunday, with free fares for passengers on its first day.
TTC CEO Mandeep Lali told a meeting of the transit agency’s board on Tuesday that there were “no unaddressed safety-critical concerns” for the delay-plagued line, which has taken 15 years and $13-billion to build.
Officials had for years refused to commit to a firm timeline for opening the Crosstown to passengers. Just last week, Mr. Lali had declined to confirm widespread reports about the Sunday opening date.
How the Eglinton Crosstown LRT went so wrong, for so long
The Globe and Mail had reported that the TTC had raised safety concerns with the province’s Metrolinx transit agency about a handful of incidents in which the Crosstown’s test-run vehicles had their automatic emergency brakes deploy for no apparent reason. But after meetings on Thursday, the TTC was said to have been satisfied that its concerns had been addressed.
On Tuesday, Mr. Lali officially confirmed plans for a soft-launch opening of the line, with reduced hours – trains will shut down at around 10:30 p.m. instead of midnight – and slower-than-planned speeds at first. Vehicles will be limited to 60 kilometres an hour in the tunnelled sections of the line, instead of 80 kilometres an hour.
Opening day, which the TTC said Tuesday will not kick off with any kind of ceremony, could be fraught, given the tortured history of the line.
The Crosstown project has cost more than double its early estimates, and is more than five years past its initial 2020 completion date.
A Globe investigation found that the Ontario government of the day had ignored warnings that stripping construction from the TTC and handing the project to Metrolinx to build using what is known as a public-private partnership would result in delays, higher costs and legal wrangling.
The launch also follows in the shadow of trouble the TTC has had with the opening of the similar but smaller Finch West LRT last year. That line has prompted complaints about slow speeds, problems with frozen switches and the need for transit vehicles to be given priority at traffic lights, something the TTC says it is addressing.
Both lines are public-private partnerships, built and designed by private-sector consortiums. Both are being operated by the TTC but are owned and overseen by Metrolinx.
Test trains park at Wynford Station during system testing for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT on Oct. 9, 2025.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
While test trains have plied the tracks along Eglinton since last year, the TTC formally took control of the line in December and has been running further tests to prepare it for full operation. Private companies have been contracted to maintain both lines for 30 years, instead of the in-house mechanics the TTC uses for its other lines.
Mr. Lali told reporters on Tuesday that the TTC had raised concerns about seven automatic emergency-brake deployments in January testing. (The brakes are designed to fire when a vehicle goes through a signal point on the tracks where it should not have, to ensure a buffer distance between trains.)
After meetings last week between the TTC, Metrolinx, trainmaker Alstom and the designers of the emergency-brake system, the TTC was able to find out why the brakes had activated in each instance, Mr. Lali said. He said he was confident the system was operating as it was designed to.
“The brakes will apply when the system recognizes an emergency,” he added.
He also said the vehicles will have decals, and on-board announcements, reminding passengers to hold on in case of a sudden stop. But Mr. Lali said there had been no further concerning or unexplained emergency-brake activations on the system since last week.
He also pledged that the new line would be faster than the buses it is set to replace.
City Councillor Josh Matlow, who sits on the TTC’s board, said he was not satisfied with Mr. Lali’s assurances about the emergency brake issue. He noted that the TTC CEO had told him that any more detail about the problems would be “proprietary” and needed to come from Metrolinx.
“If our CEO, if our staff, can’t provide the very information that persuaded them to believe that the line is safe, I do have a problem with that,” Mr. Matlow told reporters.