Ontario Line subway station looking spectacularly massive in new photos
Toronto's new Ontario Line subway is taking shape across various sites across the city, though much of this generational transit investment is happening deep underground, away from the prying eyes of passersby.
But Metrolinx is letting us all in on the behind-the-scenes action of this large-scale subterranean undertaking that will introduce the first new subway tunnels to downtown Toronto in generations, and relieve overcrowded TTC interchanges.
The 15.6-kilometre Ontario Line, set to connect Exhibition Place with the Line 5 Eglinton, will feature two separate tunnelled sections, two major bridges, and an elevated guideway, and add 15 stations to the local rapid transit network when it opens in the 2030s.
Construction of the tunnelled stretch through downtown Toronto has been one of the over $27 billion project's most mammoth jobs. Twin tunnel boring machines recently launched near Exhibition Place, while work continues on downtown stations below major intersections.
Among these underground downtown stops, the line's future King West station is rapidly beginning to resemble, well, a station.
The excavation of caverns below intersections — accessed via pits carved behind the sound cover of massive acoustic shelters — has progressed ahead of the tunnel boring machines' arrival at the station sites, and new behind-the-scenes photos shared by Metrolinx offer a glimpse at the colossal scale of the tube-shaped cavern below King and Bathurst.
Here's hoping we'll all be seeing these impressive underground voids in-person just a few years down the road.
Metrolinx
