Ontario Line construction sites starting to actually resemble subway stations
Construction on the game-changing $27 billion Ontario Line subway is pressing forward, set to add 15 stations to Toronto’s rapid transit network along 15.6 kilometres of track, linking Exhibition Place in the southwest to Don Mills and Eglinton in the northeast.
The generational transit investment is making steady progress ahead of its central tunnel through downtown Toronto, which will include stations at King/Bathurst, Queen/Spadina, Osgoode, Queen, Moss Park, and Corktown.
These underground stops — expected to be among the busiest on the TTC network once operational — are being constructed using a range of methods before the twin tunnel boring machines begin their journey eastward from a launch shaft in Liberty Village.
Construction methods include mining operations deep below to carve voids that will become future station platforms, as well as top-down excavations. While much of this work is conducted out of the view of passersby, Metrolinx has shared a series of recent updates that show a few of these sites now starting to resemble actual subway stations.
Over at the future Moss Park Station site on Queen Street East, Metrolinx has completed the station’s excavation and recently began construction on permanent elements for the subway stop. Though it takes a bit of imagination to picture, the photo below shows a raft of steel rebar, which will reinforce concrete supporting tracks and platforms.
A centre platform will be built right down the middle of this concrete slab, with the tracks flanking on either side.
The future King-Bathurst Station looks a bit closer to a cave than an actual subway stop as of fall 2025. However, it is not too difficult to picture trains zipping in and out of its massive cavern, etched 40 metres below a busy downtown intersection.
A giant pit at Parliament and Front marks the future site of the Ontario Line’s Corktown Station. Crews have etched out a void below Front Street, where the future station’s tracks and platforms will sit just a few years down the road.
The Ontario Line is primed to relieve Toronto's overburdened interchanges at Bloor-Yonge and St. George by providing a direct link in and out of the downtown core from the east, bypassing the cramped bottleneck at Yonge and Bloor.
Future passengers will have to wait a few more years to hop on board the line’s futuristic trains. But even in construction, the line is already reshaping landscapes across town through its enormous acoustic shelters and a pair of impressive new bridges soon to span the Don Valley.
The Ontario Line is expected to open in 2031.
Metrolinx
