[Chaplinurbex]

I realize I'm a day late to the party but wanted to share some of my thoughts from opening day:

- The underground portion is real quick. For my use case, I live at Chaplin and generally just need to get to Cedarvale or Eglinton stations, perhaps a bit further now that it is easy to do so. I can get from Chaplin to either of the Line 1 connecting stations in less than 5 minutes. No more waiting for a 32 bus that is 20 minutes late, no more waiting on Allen on ramp traffic.

- I think that stations are beautiful. Maybe a little sterile, but they are big, bright and clean. They feel very modern.

- Everyone was in a pretty good mood yesterday and having fun with the new line. Saw everyone taking pictures and videos and being impressed.

- I was surprised how busy it was, I took it to do stuff all day; morning, afternoon, and evening. It seems everyone came out to use it. Just shows how desperately it was needed. Though I think some of it at least were people taking it for fun and because it was free. I feel day to day it won't be so crazy crowded.

- There was a glitch at eglinton station where the station announcements were playing english and french overtop each other back to back without stopping. It was maybe kind of annoying but honestly funny hearing the computer have a meltdown. I'm sure that can be easily fixed.

- Shouts out to the guy yelling "Happy New Line" at every stop. Love the energy first thing in the morning.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I'm most interested to see how this line will impact travel patterns, particularly north-south routes that previously were forced to feed into line 2.

I suppose, in the West end there's capacity on line 1 to take on passengers at Eglinton W. So some passengers, particularly those near the Eglinton corridor would see improved travel times vs heading down to Line 2, with the same or marginally changed number of transfers.

In the East however, Line 1 is operating at capacity and the geography of the region puts Line 2 and Line 5 very close to each other. In fact the two lines interchange at Kennedy station. Plus with Go services (LE, ST, & RH) where the West (especially the far North West) of the city lacks Go service.

So I can see some change in travel patterns in the West, but in the East less so.

 

[Corktownie]

Money is always an issue. 7 km of the line is overland tram line. Converting this to a subway would add a few billion extra to the project, and every penny spent on one project is a penny not spent on another project.

We can discuss whether that money would have been well spent (as a user of GO transit, I vehemently disagree), but it's not as though conversion to full subway could be done for the same pricetag we have here, or with the same repercussions.

Building the whole line as a tunnelled subway would have been crazy expensive, but of course that's not the only option. The eastern part could have been elevated, like the Ontario Line, REM, or Skytrain. For that matter, the western extension from Mt Dennis to Renforth should also be elevated instead of tunnelled. I would be very interested to see a cost comparison of elevating both the east and the west vs. the current weirdness of building the east as a tramway and putting the west in a tunnel.

 

[SkyScraaaper]

All I can think about when I took this line was...this was $13B? Looks like a $2B line or maybe max $5B line...which is absurd. We need an Audit on where the money went, every cent because I can't see anything best of breed. Even the concrete finishing or lack thereof looks bare bones.

 

[Cambry Ardship]

Took Line 5 three times yesterdays, for relatively short errands in the tunneled section. I thought it was really quick and that it will make trips that require going to Yonge way faster and easier. My two biggish disappointments were with the tiny doors on the LRT and the indirect, labyrinthine stations. The doors feel too underbuilt and the stations feel too overbuilt.

But I'm so happy it's finally open, and overall I was quite impressed. It's going to make a positive difference to my daily life.

 

[thettctransitfanatic]

After riding yesterday, I thought the line was very good. It moves very fast in the underground portion. The stations are nice but are largely a bit bland, but the screen at Mount Dennis was cool, as was the artwork at Eglinton, Don Valley and Cedarvale. Above ground moves faster then Finch but obviously, signal priority should (hopefully) fix the issues at lights of long waits. Some issues with audio on the Flexities and lack of heat in stations. Also I feel like capacity is gonna become an issue fast, and it showed yesterday. Yes it was an crowd for opening day, but that is a reflection of what rush hours will be like, and it would be wise for TTC/Metrolinx to start thinking about adding a third car to the vehicles. There was a delay on a car I was on in Scarborough due to ''something on the roof'' around 5:20-5:40 PM yesterday and it sounded like someone was on top of the vehicle but I believe it was an overhead issue of some kind. It was very quickly resolved, though. So all in all, opening day went about as well as it could.

 

[pw20]

You are misstating the history. There was a subway, until Harris cancelled it. And one for Sheppard, until Lastman cancelled most of it (he only cared about the North York segment, and nobody cared about Scarborough....which gave rise to Ford's eventual platform). The cancellations were publicly known, but there was no blowback and little advocacy to challenge those decisions.
The political mood of the day was very much about not spending money on subways because they were considered too expensive. Love him or hate him, Ford fought for an underground line on Eglinton. But in general, LRT was all the voters would accept.

- Paul

I don't think that's correct either. By the time Lastman advocated to save Sheppard it was never going to go to Victoria Park. The Network 2011 plan, the original subway expansion plan, was for a FULL Sheppard Subway from Yonge to Victoria Park. Network 2011 was NEVER funded. The full Sheppard subway was again included in the Liberal governments 1990 "Let's Move" plan, which was ALSO unfunded. The Liberal government fell, Bob Rae's NDP government was elected and they adjusted "Let's Move" truncating Sheppard to Don Mills. This plan, the "The Rapid Transit Expansion Program", WAS funded by the provincial government, and the citym but again only included a 5 stop Sheppard subway. Lastman only advocated to save the part of the subway that was funded.

 

[Northern Light]

All I can think about when I took this line was...this was $13B? Looks like a $2B line or maybe max $5B line...which is absurd. We need an Audit on where the money went, every cent because I can't see anything best of breed. Even the concrete finishing or lack thereof looks bare bones.

Ummm, I'm as critical of Line 5 as anyone......but your sense of cost needs some tweaks.

The lowest tunnel cost anywhere in the world is 200M per km currently, and the average much higher.

That would get you over the 2B mark, w/o the surface section, the stations, the MSF and the rolling stock.

Over 10km of tunnel, 19km route length, 25 stations stops, 15 underground.

The cheapest you could get would be in the 9B range and that's unrealistic.

***

Yes, the stations could be finished more nicely, no question. But that doesn't get you an 80% price discount.

 

[Obsidian]

We could afford to build a subway. Money was never an issue. The issue was that politicians simply didn't want to build a subway because they didn't want to be seen supporting Rob Ford.

Had the city council voted in favour of a subway along Eglinton, the province and Feds would have helped with funding. Just like they did with this LRT project.

Money is always an issue, that's why Sheppard is half the intended length, that's why Finch is half the intended length.
Eglinton as a subway would have been half as long as cost twice as much if Ford had his way.
And the cost probably would have killed the Ontario line.

 

[81-717]

What’s with the French on every announcement? Does the Montreal subway run English on every stop?

Good point, one that's been made before.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Behold, the most useless staircase of the TTC network

 

[facepalming_brooklynite]

Behold, the most useless staircase of the TTC network

View attachment 714123

Have you seen what they have done to the staircase at York University station? I don't have a picture now, but half of it is blocked in a similar way

 

[crs1026]

Behold, the most useless staircase of the TTC network

Assuming that pillar is structurally unavoidable, the handrail configuration is about the best that it can be. Merging on a staircase is to be avoided for safety reasons.

I am surprised however that the ML publicity machine hasn't bragged about this space as a new drop-in recreational space for disadvantaged youth. Or 20 new housing spaces for the housing deprived.

Yet.

- Paul

PS - Seriously, with a little tweaking , it ought to be better used. It could become the perfect platform for subway buskers. I bet the accoustics are actually pretty favourable.

 

[McGillicuddy]

This is exactly right.
Rob Ford came on board wanting the B-D extended to STC. There was a lot of support for that. A year later, Ford agreed to the connected Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown. Obviously that wasn't his idea, so it show he was willing to compromise, as long as transit didn't interfere with cars. They already had the money for this plan, using a Billion from Finch and a Billion from Sheppard LRT.
But then council killed it, along with the Provincial Liberals killing their own plan just to defeat Ford.
A classic case of defeating Rob Ford regardless of the cost. (and that cost now is a $10B B-D extension.

This is fanfic my dude.

He didn't "have the money". He cancelled a bunch of other projects and then asked the province to reallocate it to the project he wanted.

The province said "no", in part because Ford had demonstrated that the city was an unreliable partner, and partially because other levels of government don't take marching orders from the Mayor of Toronto.

 

[Northern Light]

Nolan Xuereb has a good Front Page Story up on Line 5's launch, its successes, shortcomings and solutions to the latter. Well done.

Eglinton Line 5: Major Game Changer Opens, Awaits Tweaks | UrbanToronto

After more than 15 years of construction and over $12 billion, Eglinton Line 5 carried its first passengers on Fabruary 8, 2026. While 'the Crosstown LRT' has finally opened to the public following over half a decade of delays, it has not yet reached full service levels, with frequencies and...

urbantoronto.ca

On the latter, he links to a piece by Scarborough activist, past and possible future candidate for Council, Kevin Rupasinghe, here:

Improving the Eglinton LRT - Fewer Intersections

An ongoing question we'll need to answer: How do we modify the at-grade portion of the Eglinton LRT so that the experience and operations are more like the underground portion?

kevinrupasinghe.substack.com