The TTC will shut down subway service on parts of the rapid transit network on the majority of weekends this year, and riders will have had to endure full weekend closures a whopping 38 times in 2025.
On Monday, the TTC briefed the media on its capital repairs report, offering a glimpse into the extremes the transit agency plans to go to in hopes of restoring public confidence in a cash-strapped and increasingly unreliable subway network.
Outages include 22.5 (the .5 representing the recent single-day closure in January) weekends without subway service on Line 1, and another 16 outages on Line 2.
This tallies up to 38 outages, though the TTC plans for 10 of these closures to overlap, meaning riders will only have to deal with 28 weekends without subway service.
Line 1 closures include three to accommodate work on Rogers’ 5G network, one closure for station expansion, five for enhancement projects, and eight for state-of-good-repair work.
On Line 2, there will be four closures for Rogers 5G work, six for expansion projects, one closure for work on an automated train control system, three enhancement-related closures, and eight state-of-good-repair closures.
In many cases, such as areas with higher-order transit alternatives, the TTC will likely not run shuttle buses for outages, similar to closures in 2024 where the TTC opted not to provide shuttle bus replacements.
If the full weekend closures weren’t enough of an inconvenience, the TTC also plans a whopping 217 early closures this year. Adding up weekday and weekend closures, there will be disruption on the TTC subway network for 293 of the 365 days this year, or over 80 per cent of 2025.
Somehow, the 38 planned weekend closures are a reduction from an earlier vision that called for 72 full weekend closures (obviously including overlap between Line 1 and Line 2 because of how many weeks there are in a year, duh!)
“Through aggressive internal coordination, we were able to reduce the total full weekend impacts to 28,” media attending the briefing were told.
The 2025 closure schedule is a significant increase over the 25 planned and one unplanned weekend closures on Lines 1 and 2, and 167 early/nightly closures in 2024.
A report from the City’s Chief Operations and Infrastructure Officer recommends that the TTC Board endorse the 2025 Subway Closures and Streetcar Diversions Forecast at its upcoming meeting on January 27.
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