Toronto's Eglinton Crosstown LRT clearly still has issues just days from opening

Toronto's Eglinton Crosstown LRT is set to finally welcome its first riders this Sunday, Feb. 8, after a 15-year wait fraught with delays, cost overruns, legal challenges, and just about every hiccup and setback you could imagine for a transit project.

Though commuters are finally breathing a sigh of relief on the heels of news that the line is indeed opening this weekend, there are some pretty clear signs that the 19-kilometre light rail line is still experiencing challenges behind the scenes.

It seems the transit agency has learned from the hype-building that led up to the December opening of the TTC's new Line 6 Finch, only for the LRT to fall flat with painfully slow travel times and frequent closures. 

When the Crosstown opens as Line 5 Eglinon this weekend, there will be no fanfare, no ribbon-cutting, no opening-day memorabilia handed out to riders. Heck, there wasn't even an official announcement of the line's forthcoming opening.

The line will operate on a reduced schedule for its initial rollout, and TTC Chair Jamaal Myers has made a point of stating that the line's surface sections won't benefit from transit signal priority until later in the spring. 

It's almost as if the TTC predicts opening-day challenges, and is, perhaps, trying to soften expectations of a line that has already earned a pitiful repudiation as a case study in how not to build transit.

But you don't have to read between the lines to see there is potential trouble brewing on Line 5. 

Just days ahead of the line's opening, Mount Dennis Station was inundated with flood water, and even featured an indoor waterfall. Not a great look for an indoor station serving an electric-powered rail line.

New attraction at Mount Dennis Station
by u/kalfun in TTC

A video of the flooded station shared on Reddit adds to the swirling maelstrom of doubt that the line's debut will go smoothly this weekend. While the flood, attributed by Metrolinx to a broken sprinkler, was quickly fixed, the Reddit post has spurred over 150 comments from frustrated commuters who just want this nightmare to be over already.

Many commenters turned to humour to stress their lack of shock over these 11th-hour issues.

"Ooooo a water feature," wrote one commenter, adding, "I bet the TTC opened a ticket with Metrolinx and now we wait."

While much of the shade has been directed at the TTC, others rightly pointed out that it was Metrolinx that was responsible for the Crosstown's blunder-riddled construction, while the TTC has merely been waiting to kick off revenue service for the line.

One commenter noted that Metrolinx's oversight of planning and construction for new TTC lines is a large part of the issue at hand.

"The only problem is that the TTC has been purposefully starved from doing its own construction for so long that it now lacks the skilled labour and experience to be able to do it," wrote the user.

"Even with that I think it would be worth it even if it takes decades because the alternative is relying on this and P3 [public-private partnership] nonsense forever. We gotta start somewhere and it's only going to get worse the longer it takes," they added.