Toronto's Eglinton Crosstown LRT will not open in 2024

Metrolinx's beleaguered Eglinton Crosstown LRT will not open in 2024, pushing the delay-plagued project into year 14.

Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster had previously pledged to provide an opening timeline three months before the route's opening. When pressed on the issue in late summer, Verster once again declined to provide a date.

And with September now officially in the books and October begun, the radio silence from the provincial transit agency can be read as a clear admission that the line will not open in 2024, despite construction now being all but complete.

Almost nobody believes Toronto's Eglinton Crosstown LRT will open this year https://t.co/GdZwgh0LKl

— blogTO (@blogTO) April 23, 2024

Construction for the future TTC Line 5 commenced all the way back in 2011, and a series of setbacks, including construction delays, litigation, and a global pandemic, have all pushed back the project's initial estimated completion window of September 2021.

It has been a full three years since this date passed, and despite several recent milestones in the line's slow trek toward completion, Toronto residents still have no idea when their new ride will arrive.

Would-be riders of Line 5 have been hungrily awaiting the big opening announcement but have had to settle for a slow trickle of information emerging through reports and board meetings.

The latest Crosstown news emerged during Metrolinx's September board of directors meeting, which included a report on the transit agency's capital projects covering the latest project milestone.

Eglinton Crosstown LRT crosses huge milestone but 2024 opening looks unlikely https://t.co/SyTFDz6CI4

— blogTO (@blogTO) September 16, 2024

According to that board meeting, "operator driver training began on August 12" following a 28-train stress test, marking a critical step that Metrolinx boasts will bring Line 5 "closer to operational readiness."

Metrolinx also provided an update on the since-resolved software defects that had been plaguing the Crosstown's signalling and train control system and prevented the start of training for the 110 operators who will be needed to keep the line running smoothly.

Training of those drivers has been ongoing for well over a month, which serves as evidence that Metrolinx at least plans to open the line at some point in the not-too-distant future. 

However, that date will not occur within the next three months, and future Line 5 riders will be stuck riding buses for at least a bit longer.