The Eglinton Crosstown LRT — Toronto’s most infamous transit project — could open in 2025, PC Leader Doug Ford said at an election campaign stop on Friday.
“I’m really, really confident that we’ll be opening this year,” he said. “I can’t give you an exact day or month but it’ll be open this year.”
But Metrolinx, the provincial agency in charge of the project, pumped the brakes on Ford’s optimism.
“We continue to make progress on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, with testing and commissioning still underway,” said Metrolinx spokesperson Andrea Ernesaks.
“We need to have confidence that key milestones are being met, and once we have a credible schedule, we will share that with the public.”
It’s not the first time Torontonians have been told the beleaguered project will open soon.
The $13-billion project broke ground in 2011 and was expected to be in service by 2020, but has been delayed several times thanks to quality issues — plus legal battles between Metrolinx and the private sector consortium responsible for construction comprised of AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC-Lavalin), EllisDon, Aecon and Dragados.
“Promised opening dates have come and gone before,” said Nigel Morton, a spokesperson for the TTCriders transit advocacy group.
At a November meeting of Metrolinx’s board of directors, former CEO Phil Verster said he was “excited to keep moving the commissioning of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT forward toward an opening date” this year.
But over a year before, in August 2023, Verster had said he hoped to give Torontonians a general idea of its opening date later that summer.
"As we get closer to the end of summer, we'll be announcing what we think is the range of dates when we will have in service," Verster said on Aug. 10, 2023.
A month later, Verster promised he would give a three-month heads-up before the line would open. He also said he would hold regular updates every other month to track progress, which never materialized.
This past December, Verster resigned, the day before an auditor general report criticized the government for its infrastructure procurement policies.
On Friday, NDP Leader Marit Stiles promised to unveil the opening date on her first day as premier, if elected.
While Metrolinx is responsible for building the project, the TTC will operate the trains. The transit agency is budgeting for a mid-2025 opening date, but that is solely for financial planning purposes and has no impact on Metrolinx’s schedule.
The 25-stop, 19-kilometre transit line will run from Etobicoke's future Mount Dennis station in the west, through midtown Toronto, to Scarborough's Kennedy Station in the east. It will connect to dozens of existing TTC bus routes, four subway stations, GO routes, and the Union-Pearson Express.
Work has also started on an extension that would see the Eglinton LRT extend nine kilometres west of Mount Dennis into Mississauga.
