More than 5,000 days after construction began in Toronto, the Crosstown LRT will finally begin carrying passengers along Eglinton Avenue.
Around 7:30 a.m. Sunday, the first train will start its journey westward from Kennedy Station in Scarborough, past connections to the Yonge/University subway line, to terminate at Mount Dennis Station in the west.
The train will leave the station without pomp or ceremony as part of a phased opening to the line, Toronto’s transit agency is trying to play down as a soft launch, managing expectations for the six-year delayed project.
The Eglinton Crosstown LRT was first pitched by former mayor David Miller as part of his Transit City vision in 2007 and, after being briefly dashed by his successor, Rob Ford, began construction in November 2011.
Construction on the line was led by provincial transit agency Metrolinx in a public-private partnership with a construction consortium. The two parties presided over a myriad of delays, legal cases and cost overruns.
By 2023, Metrolinx had given up on providing the public with an opening date, promising only that the public would get three months’ notice before the line opened. Ultimately, that didn’t happen.
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Metrolinx instead announced in December 2025 that it finally believed the project was complete and accepted it from the construction consortium, handing it to the TTC, which will run its timetables and operations.
Behind the scenes, the provincial transit agency aggressively campaigned to open the Crosstown before the end of 2025, but a more restrained approach from the TTC won out.
Its CEO privately pushed to open the line on Feb. 8, during a December meeting, but publicly refused to confirm the date. CEO Mandeep Lali finally announced the same opening date at a meeting on Tuesday, after Premier Doug Ford had told reporters that was when he expected the line to open.
Until the eleventh hour, Lali would not confirm Sunday’s opening date, complaining that unexplained activations of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT’s emergency brakes left him concerned the system was not ready.
Sometime in the week leading up to the opening, he said he was given a satisfactory explanation for the emergency brake incidents, and said he was ready to open the line.
Still, the TTC is framing the opening almost as a pilot. The agency said trains will initiate and terminate service earlier than intended and travel at slower speeds during a phased opening.
The line will operate from roughly 5:30 a.m. on weekdays and 7:30 a.m. on weekends. It will close at 11 p.m. daily.
“As part of the phased opening of Line 5, the TTC is advising customers that there will be no grand opening ceremony, formal event, or commemorative merchandise on Sunday at any location,” the transit agency wrote in a statement.
Despite the low-key nature of the launch, the TTC admitted it expected crowds to ride the line all day Sunday.
Premier Ford chided journalists for being “negative” about the long-delayed Crosstown ahead of its launch on Friday and urged Torontonians to celebrate the fact it has finally opened.
“You’re beating a dead horse here; we’ve been going through this for years, the same old questions,” he said. “Let’s celebrate a new line.”
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