The TTC will close an over 8km stretch of subway for this entire weekend

Those Victoria Day weekend plans in Toronto could get a bit messy thanks to yet another major shutdown on the TTC subway, which will last from Saturday, May 18, through Sunday, May 19, 2024.

The transit agency will shutter service on Line 1 Yonge-University between St. Clair and Sheppard-Yonge for the first two days of the long weekend, reopening on Monday, May 20, by approximately 6 a.m.

The TTC blames the latest in a seemingly never-ending string of service disruptions on "planned station improvements and track work" spanning almost 8.2 kilometres of the line's total 38.4-kilometre length — approximately 21.4 per cent of Line 1.

Commuters looking to navigate the lengthy gap in subway coverage will be forced to suffer the indignity of shuttle buses, which the TTC pledges to run "every few minutes" to keep long weekend crowds moving during the closure.

Five of the six stations affected by the outage will remain open for TTC passengers to purchase and reload Presto cards or connect with surface routes. Lawrence station is the lone exception and will remain inaccessible for the duration of the closure.

The closure comes just days after a large portion of the TTC's Line 2 was taken out of service for the better part of a day due to hydraulic fluid spilled on the tracks, causing commuter chaos that spanned two separate rush hours.