06.03.2026 03:23
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New Pape Station Renderings:
From the Mar 11 Audit & Risk Management agenda is management's response to the UITP review including this text re streetcar switches.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow confirms that enhanced signal priority is now being rolled out on Line 6 Finch West, with Line 5 Eglinton to follow soon. A huge step forward to maximizing the transit user experience on our new LRT lines!
We need to talk about what is causing this construction cost madness, where building a streetcar/surface LRT costs more than a fully tunneled subway with deep stations 20 years ago (inflation adjusted), and what we need to do to fix it. 5/5
When it costs $600 million to build a station at King-Liberty, over $1 billion to build East Harbour GO, and nearly $400 million to build Finch-Kennedy GO (which doesn't include the cost of separating the rail line from traffic), it'll be hard to build these much needed stations. 4/5
The story here isn't about the legacy of SmartTrack, it's that our transit agencies are incapable of building anything at reasonable costs. More GO stations in Toronto are needed, and should in theory be relatively simple and cheap to construct. 3/5
GO Expansion is a massive project, turning GO from 905 commuter shuttles to 5 regional subway style lines. In order for this project to have the maximum benefits, new stations in the city of Toronto need to be constructed. Construction costs are hurting our ability to do so. 2/5
SmartTrack was never a real transit plan. GO Expansion was planned to provide the intended transit service. In March 2016, council approved integrating SmartTrack into the GO Expansion project. Focusing on the legacy of this proposal is distracting from the real issue. 1/5
$100 million to design both King-Liberty and Finch Kennedy
In terms of money for project complexity the SmartTrack stations might be the most overpriced transit project on the planet. King Liberty GO, which is a simple surface station with 1 platform, was expected to cost $590 million, which led to it getting cut.
www.thestar.com/news/gta/met...
The opening of the Eglinton Crosstown marked a major expansion of Toronto's transit network after 15+ years of construction!
MTSO continues to support implementing active transit signal priority to speed up travel times on the line. In the meantime, here are some photos from the opening day!
Laird -> Keelesdale in only 20 minutes, which is 9.3km for a 28km/h average speed, comparable to the Bloor Danforth Line through the same stretch of the city. This is around what we should expect when all trains are running at full speed.
It appears that the Eglinton Crosstown is already running at 80km/h in tunnels, at least for some trips (probably trains behind schedule) youtu.be/pwIx90F9sqo?...
🚆 Join More Transit Southern Ontario tomorrow for a ride-along on the now-open Eglinton Crosstown (Line 5)!
We’ll kick things off at Mount Dennis Station and ride the full line to Kennedy, then head back west while touring all of the underground stations along the way.
The wait is finally over. The Eglinton Crosstown LRT will open this Sunday, and you can ride it for free on opening day!
With the train derailment that happened this morning, this is the updated schedule for GO trains this evening
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
union station approaches from the west, with a passing go train. a complex tangle of crossing tracks and switches can be viewed
this morning's GO train derailment brings up a number of issues people have been talking about for a while:
1) the union station approaches are old, complex, with a million crossovers, necessitating slow operating speeds to avoid derailments, and are long overdue to be rebuilt
1/3
Toronto example of timetable quirkiness.
GO Transit runs 2tph peak outbound Lakeshore West trains to Oakville calling all stations. These have to return to Union to form LSE services, so run empty express in front of local eastbound trains instead of being spaced out to give 4tph inbound on LSW!
missed another light cycle westbound at Atlantic because of the restricted speed policy under underpasses. This outdated policy was due to trolley poles losing contract with the overhead during elevation changes. We don't have trolley poles on tbe network anymore!!
"State Capacity" is when the govt is able to closely monitor the construction market and issue detailed sectoral indexes that can be used to escalate contracts based on actual market conditions instead of using core inflation of gross aggregate construction indexes
www.insee.fr/fr/statistiq...
In 2025, the ION LRT regularly exceeded 95% reliability for all trips.
In order to experience a high quality LRT, Toronto only needs to look to Waterloo Region. The ION LRT is fast and frequent, and has so many features that the TTC and Metrolinx can learn for LRTs and streetcars. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwJw...
Around 55 minutes end to end based on the information we have
Will the Eglinton Crosstown finally open this year after years of delays and budget overruns? What do you think?
TTC current service dashboard showing normal service for all LRT and subway lines
a little piece of good news:
line 6 is surprisingly still up and running despite the latest snowstorm. it hasn't seemed to encounter a service issue for the last 12+ hours
In this suburban community in Utrecht almost all grocery stores are located right on Tram/LRT stops. Imagine the convenience of stepping into a store to grab groceries on your walk home from the transit stop.
Do you want to share your ideas about Canada’s newest high-speed rail project?
In February, connect in-person with project experts from the ALTO team, ask questions, and learn about all aspects of the project. No registration required. Learn more at altotrain.ca!
The bad news is that the most expensive subway order in the history of the world just got more expensive, $2.3 billion has now turned into $2.7 billion for 55 trains.
news.ontario.ca/en/release/1... 2/2
Take a look at the new Line 2 trains. Today the province confirmed that Alstom will be building them primarily in Thunder Bay, and that the government is providing more funding to build Canadian. 1/2