The head of the Ontario government’s transit agency insists the years-delayed Eglinton Crosstown LRT is “relentlessly progressing” and has ticked off some “significant milestones” but remains without an opening date.
Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency, has refused to confirm when the line will open for more than a year, promising it will announce a date exactly three months before trains begin carrying passengers.
On Wednesday, Sept. 4, Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster again declined to say when the line would open, meaning trains won’t run until at least Dec. 5, 2024. That leaves just weeks for the government to unveil a date that guarantees the line will open this year.
Asked if the LRT could still feasibly open in 2024, Verster said guessing or speculating was not helpful in delivering the project.
“By starting to speculate about dates, you create fictitious sort of deadlines and the like,” he said at a news conference touting progress on the Ontario Line.
“I’m not going to speculate on dates because that gets us into a messy place but I will give you the assurance that when we open we will operate reliably and we will operate safely. And that’s the priority.”
It has been roughly a year since Metrolinx stopped attempting to assign an opening date to the years-delayed Eglinton LRT and more than a year since it admitted that hundreds of technical problems were still plaguing the route.
Since that admission — which came in the spring of 2023 — Verster said progress has been made in many areas.
One issue with the software that would help direct trains and signals along the route saw a breakthrough at the beginning of the summer. Meanwhile, Verster said that in July, 75 per cent of the fleet was able to operate in testing running for eight hours straight, four days in a row.
Driver training work has now been underway for four weeks, although it did see some “issues with the signalling control system,” Verster said.
“For me, that’s a stabilization of the project because operator driver training takes us to substantial completion,” he added.
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria acknowledged the Eglinton LRT had been a “frustrating project,” particularly for those living in the area, but promised lessons were being learned.
“There have been challenges since day one that predate our government, there have been challenges since we have been in government,” he said Wednesday.
“But it’s important for us to take those lessons, learn from those lessons and apply them against the new projects that we have put forward in this province. I think from our measure, it’s making sure that we don’t repeat those same mistakes moving forward in the future.”