TTC takes over Eglinton Crosstown LRT ahead of opening

If you've lived in Toronto for any length of time, you may not believe what we are about to tell you, but it is indeed true: After some 13.5 years of active construction, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT is actually about to open in the coming weeks.

It was just revealed that work on the ill-fated east-west transit line — which has been riddled with seemingly endless distressing delays — is finally wrapping up, with Metrolinx formally handing the 25-stop, 19-km-long route over to the TTC last week in preparation for it to debut in the fall.

Metrolinx CEO Michael Lindsay, who took over after Phil Verster stepped down from the arguably disgraced position last year, broke the news during a press conference about the forthcoming East Harbour Transit Hub on Tuesday morning, saying that "major milestones have been met in respect of the progress on Eglinton Crosstown."

"All civil infrastructure for the project is complete. In April, I talked about operator driver training resuming on March 17. That happened, and it is complete: all drivers for the TTC are now trained for this project," he told inquiring reporters.

Then, he shared that about a week ago, the provincial agency "moved control of the line from the backup operations command centre to the TTC's command centre at Hillcrest," meaning that "as of today or tomorrow, movement of trains on the line is actually governed by the TTC as it will be when the line's in revenue service."

TTC staff are being re-deployed for potential July 2025 opening of Eglinton LRT https://t.co/hmAIyBEc5m

— blogTO (@blogTO) March 9, 2025

It's huge news for a public that has been waiting on the infrastructure since its original projected opening date in 2020, and that has been so let down by Metrolinx's missed deadlines that the Crown corporation actually stopped releasing social media updates or providing any timeline at all for the route until it was certain the dates were 100 per cent guaranteed.

As we all well know, the work on Line 5 has created enough of a mess along Eglinton Avenue to thwart local businesses and render the thoroughfare the worst road in the city for many years in a row since it all started in 2011.

The whole project became enough of a joke that memes abounded to help us all laugh through it, with international corporations poking fun at how long it was taking — so long that many residents lost faith in any of the Province's LRT promises.

Eglinton Crosstown LRT opening could now be delayed to Septemberhttps://t.co/pHjuPb6wZt

— blogTO (@blogTO) March 14, 2025

While confirming this great news, Lindsay added that there is still much to do, including vehicle and system stress testing before public launch — one of the final steps to check that it will "perform the way that we want it to on the day that it opens" — which is currently taking place and "is going pretty well."

After crews are completely satisfied with the line's end-stage test operations, there will be a 14-day period of "formal trial running," followed by a 30-day revenue service demonstration, during which the full fleet of LRTs will run exactly as they will once the Crosstown finally debuts, just without passengers.

Finally, there will be a betting-in period for the very last pieces of safety and reliability testing, which will culminate in a September 2025 launch (which blogTO reported would be the case back in March), if everything goes smoothly.

But, Lindsay was sure to cover the agency's butt by stressing that he "cannot open that system if it is not going to perform, because hundreds of thousands of people will rely upon it."

"The trend line is good, but it is always subject to revision depending on what we find through systems testing," he said.