A test train departs O’Connor Station during ongoing system testing for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in Toronto, Oct. 9, 2025. The trains are part of the system’s ongoing testing phase ahead of the line’s eventual opening.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
Historica Canada should consider producing a Canadian Heritage Minute celebrating Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown LRT, which began construction in 2011 and has yet to open.
Past Heritage Minutes have included the Battle of Queenston Heights, the Underground Railroad and Sir Sandford Fleming, who engineered four Canadian railways and, in 1879, invented the system of worldwide standard time zones.
Each minute includes an inspirational message from the hero. During Fleming’s Minute he stands abreast a railway car and says, “We’re not just building a railroad, gentlemen! We are building a country!”
The Eglinton Crosstown LRT Heritage Minute would depict Metrolinx executives holding a press conference in front of the LRT on a warm September afternoon in 2025.
“We aspire to start revenue-service demonstration on Eglinton this week,” Metrolinx chief executive officer Michael Lindsay would declare as he stands astride what appears to be a light rail transit system. “We’ve got to define what the ramp-up of the service plan looks like, right, with TTC and government. That has to happen. But we can now start to think about precisely that. I would stress as I always do that [the] revenue-service demonstration is a test. It has to be passed, right?”
If this is too grandiose, they could produce one set on March 17, 2007 when the Eglinton Crosstown LRT was being debated. On that day, a reporter from the National Post interviewed Minnie Karras, the owner of a hair salon on Eglinton Avenue close to Yonge Street, and told her that the TTC predicted the Eglinton Crosstown LRT would transport 53 million passengers annually by the year 2021.
Ms. Karras replied, “I’ll be dead by then, so I don’t care. Did you ever know of anything that moves very quick in Toronto? I don’t think so.”
What can we make of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT?
In September, it started a 30-day “revenue service demonstration” – the final testing phase where trains run on a full schedule, but without passengers. If it passes that? Well, maybe it will open, maybe it won’t. Metrolinx and the TTC give new meaning to the word opaque. Their official statements to the public sound like they were written by the Oracle of Delphi.
See if you can spot the difference:
Eglinton Crosstown LRT statement from Metrolinx or Prophecy by Pythia the Oracle of Delphi?
- “The one thing that I do know, is that I know nothing”
- “You have many allies in your city.”
- “When I give you a date it must be something I believe in.”
- “Give a pledge and trouble is at hand.”
- “With fresh eyes, what could we do in order to hasten the delivery?”
- “A way forward has been determined.”
- “Care for these things falls on me.”
- “We hope, yes.”
Answers: 1,2,4,7 are the Oracle of Delphi. 3, 5, 6, 8 are Metrolinx.
I’ve resisted writing anything about the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. It’s confusing. It’s confusing because it defies any semblance of consequences. How can a Light Rail Transit system (also know around the world as “trains that run in the city”) be so costly and delayed? It took the Romans between eight and 10 years to build the Colosseum and between four to six to construct the Pantheon. It took four years (1881 – 1885) to build the 4,000-kilometre Canadian Pacific Railway, a feat that required slashing through vast wilderness and blasting through the Rocky Mountains.
We have failed to compete a 19.7-kilometre light rail transit line in 14 years.
Some will criticize this column because I have not treated the Eglinton Crosstown LRT with the seriousness it requires.
I would counter that I have. We’re in a situation where the people responsible for building the thing have decided the best way to avoid missing deadlines is to stop setting deadlines. As a Metrolinx spokesperson recently said, “Specific opening dates will be communicated publicly when available.”
What can you say except: “Why? Not? Done? Yet?”
Who knows, when Historica finishes its Eglinton Crosstown LRT Heritage Minute it can end with a voice-over saying, “The Eglinton Crosstown LRT never did open, but it did go on to become the world’s first $13.08-billion 19.7-kilometre purpose-built Pedestrian Beltway.”