The future of Toronto’s Bloor-Danforth Line 2 subway has been secured.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was at the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) Greenwood Yard on Friday to announce $758 million in federal cash to help the city purchase 55 much-needed new subway trains.
The total cost of the trains is nearly $2.8 billion.
Queen’s Park and the city each already committed $758 million to the train car purchase as part of the new deal for Toronto that was announced last November.
However, the provincial portion was contingent on the federal government committing to matching funds.
Premier Doug Ford has been publicly demanding Ottawa come up with the cheque. In July, he joined forces with Unifor national president Lana Payne to put pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.
“Thousands of workers in Thunder Bay, where the subway trains are made, and millions of transit riders are depending on the federal government funding its share of the project,” Ford said in the summer.
If the TTC had not secured the money by March 2025, it would have been forced to switch to a contingency plan that involved repairing existing trains and signalling infrastructure past their end-of-life date. This would have put service at risk.
The city said 419,000 transit riders board Line 2 on a daily basis, a number that is expected to grow to 661,000 by 2041. To service that many riders without the subway line, the TTC would need to provide close to 600 bus trips per hour.
“Torontonians deserve reliable transit to get around our city. With today’s announcement, we can buy new subway cars, update the signalling system, and welcome more riders onto Line 2.” said Mayor Olivia Chow.
The current subway train cars on Line 2 are 32 years old.
According to a September report from the TTC Board, delaying the procurement by five or six years would have doubled the overall cost of restoring the line to over $4 billion because the city would have to pay for the interim upgrades, as well as eventual new train cars.
“In all scenarios we need to buy trains. Delay just means it becomes more expensive, the opportunity cost is higher,” the board’s report said.
Metrolinx is also reliant on the TTC procuring the 55 train cars as seven are intended for use by the Scarborough Subway Extension and eight for the Yonge North Subway Extension.
