Earlier this week, the TTC released a report that outlines their plan for weekend and evening closures in 2025. It immediately garnered attention from the media, and fairly so. The report outlines the need for 38 closures over 28 weekends (some weekends will include closures on both Line 1 and Line 2, which are counted separately). This is up significantly from the past few years, and it rightfully causes frustration amongst transit users and drivers alike. So why are these weekend closures necessary?
Toronto’s transit system is the busiest in Canada, moving over 1.6 million people every day. It’s also the oldest—the Yonge Line dates all the way back to 1954. As the TTC continues to age, it requires regular maintenance to remain safe and functional, just like any other piece of vital public infrastructure. The issue is that chronic underfunding of our transit system has led to a backlog of necessary repairs.
The TTC has faced significant funding challenges for decades. It is more reliant on fares than any other major transit system in North America—a major reason why the pandemic was so devastating to transit here in Toronto. The lack of stable financial support from other orders of government and years of underinvestment has led to track issues, signal failures, and an increase in “slow zones”, particularly on Line 1.
This year’s City Budget invests billions of new dollars to improve our transit system. With this funding comes the requirement to deliver on our promises and actually make our system better. To do so, we need to undertake major projects and those require intermittent closures. While these disruptions certainly feel inconvenient in the short term, they are necessary investments in the safety, reliability, and long-term health of the TTC.
The upcoming repair work includes a range of projects, from upgrading aging tracks and signals to ensuring our stations meet modern safety and accessibility standards. These aren’t just cosmetic upgrades—far from it. They’re essential to keeping our transit system running.
Let’s bring it back to the Yonge subway line. It’s the backbone of our network, and one of the busiest and oldest transit corridors in North America. As such, it needs immediate and significant investment to ensure it can continue to run reliably. Without this investment, Line 1 will only continue to strain under massive ridership, leading to more frequent breakdowns and delays. Our subway systems are just like anything else—the longer you put off the repairs, the worse the problem gets. Once these critical infrastructure projects are complete, riders will experience smoother, faster, and more dependable service. Better a little inconvenience now for decades of significant benefits.
Investing in repairs now is also essential to ensure our transit system will be able to support our future growth. Toronto’s population is set to expand significantly in the coming decades, and we need a transit system that can keep up. Modernizing our infrastructure will allow us to increase transit capacity, reduce congestion, and deliver the transit service a world-class city like Toronto deserves.
At a time when we’re struggling with congestion and mobility across our city, we can’t afford to let our transit system falter. Every bus, every streetcar, and every subway takes dozens or hundreds of cars off the road and out of the way of drivers for whom transit is not a viable option. When we plan for growth here in Toronto, we want to plan for it to be as smooth and sustainable as possible. Creating space for future residents on our transit system is the most reliable way to keep our city moving.
Now, let’s get back to the question I posed at the top of this column: Why do these closures have to happen over the weekend? Can’t the work just get done overnight? Here is a very handy and succinct explanation from the TTC’s most recent report:
“A full weekend subway closure offers the equivalent of approximately five weeks of regular night work as it provides up to 50 uninterrupted hours of work, allowing for multiple work groups to participate.”
Think about it: Undertaking work always requires a certain amount of set up and take down. Doing that every night results in far fewer hours to actually get work done. If you were renovating your kitchen, for instance, would you rather the workers come in every night for 5 weeks or get the same amount of work done over one weekend? Every closure requires the same work to set up, clean up, and re-open, but with a 48-hour closure you get far more bang for your buck.
Weekend closures also allow for better coordination of work. It is far more efficient and cost-effective to conduct longer closures where multiple teams can work on projects simultaneously and actually make significant progress. Weekend closures are a pain, but they’re necessary if we want our transit system to keep running and actually improve in the year ahead. It’s also essential that we coordinate this work with other construction and take special events into account. This is particularly true for weekend subway closures—the TTC Board needs to take a close look at the report to ensure these won’t coincide with major road closures or large-scale festivals.
The other factor we have to grapple with this year is the World Cup coming to town in 2026. You’ll see this crop up in other capital work across the city, including road repairs. I’ve written before about the work underway to prepare for FIFA, how we came to host the matches, and why it’s important that we make this event a success. One of the requirements of hosting the World Cup is to have a blackout period for construction work in certain areas around the event in 2026. This means we have to go into construction overdrive in 2025 to make sure we’re World Cup ready come next summer.
The TTC and the City are acutely aware that this transit work is frustrating and inconvenient for riders and drivers. We have our work cut out for us to ensure that we’re stepping up communication and helping residents and visitors navigate the system during these closures. When you feel frustrated by this work, as I’m sure we all will at some point, try to remember just how essential it is to keeping our city moving in the long run. If you experience significant challenges during this period, please don’t hesitate to reach out—I want to make sure your voice is part of the conversation, and continually monitor this work to ensure it goes as smoothly as possible for our residents.