Major service disruptions are expected on Line 1 on Sunday and Monday as the TTC races to complete “critical infrastructure” work ahead of the FIFA World Cup.
With a little over a week until the first match at Toronto Stadium, officials with the TTC spoke at a news conference on Tuesday, laying out the work it will complete on the subway system to improve reliability for customers during the tournament and beyond.
The TTC is shutting down subway service between St. George and Sheppard West stations on Sunday and running single-line service between Lawrence West and Wilson stations on Monday.
Single-line service means both northbound and southbound trains will only run on the northbound tracks. Shuttle buses will supplement service.
“I know closures cause frustrations. And I want to just add a thank you note to our customers for their patience and understanding but this work matters,” TTC CEO Mandeep Lali said.
Lali noted that riders should plan to add up to 20 minutes to their commute as a result of the service disruptions.
He said the work will eliminate four more reduced speed zones on Line 1.
“Every reduced speed zone removed means faster journeys, fewer delays, and a more reliable subway for the hundreds of thousands of passengers and customers who rely on Line 1 every single day,” he added.
The TTC’s new CEO said he has been “aggressively” targeting low speed zones since he started 10 months ago, reducing the number from 30 to just six.
The TTC said they are hoping to remove a reduced speed zone in one additional area, southbound between Eglinton to Davisville stations, before the start of the World Cup, but that work has not yet been scheduled.
“We are doing things to strengthen the system ahead of FIFA,” Lali said, noting that this work will help customers well into the future.
Although the service change will have an impact on commuters getting to work on Monday, Lali said choosing to do work on that day still does minimize the disruption as peak ridership levels are seen on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
When asked about why the projects were not completed sooner, Fort Monaco, the TTC’s chief operating and infrastructure officer, said the work was not “last minute.”
“We always had a plan to try to get all the critical work done prior to FIFA. There have been some movement and shifting in our schedules. One of them is the… grounding of the work cars which did cause us to re-plan, and re-shift and refocus,” he said.
The TTC was forced to take all of its work cars out of service in April while it investigated two hydraulic fuel spills that occurred during overnight work on the subway system. Not all work cars are back in service.
Monaco said another thing that has hampered some work is changes to scheduled city events.
“We also try to minimize impacts to other city events so in doing that, there have been a few changes to our closure plans we have had to forgo some weekend closures or single-day closures to make that happen,” he said.
“So it just part of the dynamic process that we undertake in terms of planning but the intention was always to get to FIFA with as low a number of restricted speed zones as possible.”
