Brand-new TTC Line 6 Finch West keeps shutting down and causing chaos

TTC commuters started the work week with a groan of frustration, as the newly-opened Line 6 Finch West LRT suffered yet another in a series of outages that have plagued its first few weeks of operation.

Toronto's newest transit line debuted to much fanfare on Dec. 7. But the excitement quickly wore off, and a double-whammy of first-day hiccups and brutally bad reviews was just the start of a bungled rollout that has left riders in the lurch on many occasions.

Line 6 has now been operational for roughly five weeks, and a Jan. 12 outage on the line marked just the latest in a series of blunders that have left the City rushing to find a fix, and commuters in a near-perpetual state of annoyance.

The TTC announced at 5:11 a.m. that there was "No service between Finch West and Humber College stations due to a switch problem," which was a pretty delicate way of phrasing that the entire 10.3-kilometre route was shut down just ahead of the Monday morning rush.

Shuttle buses were deployed to cover the unplanned full-line closure, and it wasn't until shortly before 8:20 a.m. — well into the heart of rush hour — that service was finally restored after over three hours of issues.

Line 6 Finch West Regular service has resumed between Finch West and Humber College stations. https://t.co/OPP2W4fEzn

— TTC Service Alerts (@TTCnotices) January 12, 2026

Granted, based on the line's brief operational history, those shuttle buses may have actually been an improvement for commuters.

Even when the line is actually functioning, its operational speed has been criticized as laughably slow. Putting riders' frustrations to the test, we recently raced the line's full distance on a parallel bus route, and the bus was so much faster than the LRT that there was still enough time to grab a snack.