Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit

Markets

Transportation
Services

Engineering & design

Consulting, strategy & advisory

Operations & maintenance

Project & program management
Location

Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Client

Infrastructure Ontario, Metrolinx
Collaborators

ACS-Dragados, Aecon, EllisDon
Completion date

February 2026

Bill Gifford

Executive Vice-President and Market Lead, Rail Transit Delivery Systems and Construction Management, Canada contact form

The new 19-kilometre-long Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit Line (ECLRT) in Toronto will move people up to 60% faster than existing bus services. For transit users, it will provide 25 new stations and stops, linking 54 bus routes, three subway stations and various GO Transit lines. The route stretches from Mount Dennis Station to Kennedy Station and includes a 10-kilometre underground portion in its central section between Keele Street and Laird Drive. The rest of the line runs at street level in a dedicated right-of-way transit lane, separate from regular traffic.

The ECLRT is part of the Metrolinx 25-year transportation plan to provide an integrated transportation and transit system within the region. By offering reliable, efficient, and sustainable public transportation between east and west Toronto, the ECLRT will address traffic congestion, enhance city connectivity, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and benefit residents, commuters, and visitors. Additionally, it’s expected to promote economic and urban development along its route.

AtkinsRéalis is part of the consortium that designed, built, partially financed, and will maintain this significant transit project. Due to its scale and segmentation, completing the ECLRT has required coordination across multiple stakeholders and evolving roles, with a strong emphasis on problem-solving, adaptability, and stakeholder goodwill.

A project of this magnitude with a timeline stretching over more than a decade has many milestones along the way. A few notable accomplishments include:

Moving the Kodak Building (a four-storey, 45-metre-long heritage building that was constructed in 1939) 60 metres in order to excavate beneath it, then sliding it back into place and incorporating it as part of the new Mount Dennis Station.
No permanent road closures during station construction.
The existing TTC Line 1 subway remained live during construction.
All 15 stations and 10 at-grade stops are fully accessible with escalators, elevators, and ramps to make moving between levels convenient.
Reducing damage to infrastructure during excavation (remedial works).

Eglinton Crosstown LRT project map

Artwork inside Mount Dennis Station

Control room

Inside Keelesdale Station

Inside maintenance facility

Maintenance facility

Street view - Keelesdale Station

Train at platform

City-Building Vision

Steady population growth in the Greater Toronto Area demands infrastructure development that can anticipate how to keep people moving between their work, their homes, and the rest of their lives. With the region crossing the 7-million residents mark in 2024, and expected to grow to over 9 million by 2051, this has never been more important. With support from subconsultants, the Design Joint Venture helped to bring this Metrolinx project to life.

Technical Feats and Challenges

Constructing projects in dense urban environments means working inside parameters focused on keeping people moving along existing transit routes and minimizing the impact of the building works on the community as much as possible, while also balancing costs and managing expectations for the disruptions that are unavoidable. During the project’s construction phase, we had to factor in one of Toronto’s busiest intersections at Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue, and also maintain traffic and subway service at Eglinton station, which is the major interchange of the ECLRT with the existing line.

Building a station under an existing and functioning subway line without interrupting the subway service was a complex undertaking. In mid-2019, the Cedarvale and Eglinton teams began the intricate engineering work of underpinning active TTC subway tunnels. This job involved suspending the tunnels on a cradle of steel supports so that excavation and construction could take place underneath. Numerous sensors were in place to ensure the work was done safely, while allowing the trains to continue running smoothly. CTSC teams at both stations worked diligently to complete underpinning safely and without impact to the public or TTC subway service.

We built stations such as Laird without surface disruption by using mining techniques to avoid 460 metres of open excavation, which required mining through glacial till and managing 10,000+ dewatering wells. Crosslinx Transit Solutions (CTS) excavated the station box under the roadway without disturbing the traffic above. In 2016, most of the preparatory work was completed, including demolition and relocating utilities. The next stage was mining excavation, which began in 2017 from inside the excavated entrances after the shoring was completed. The underground area was divided into manageable segments and the segments were excavated in a planned sequence. The excavation created a shotcrete-lined cavern underneath Eglinton Avenue East for the pedestrian platform as well as a turnback area and special track works. Within the cavern, the station box was constructed accommodating the rail tunnels, associated platform and rail infrastructure. In 2018, 24-hour mining commenced at Laird station, which was completed In September 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all aspects of life. There were global supply chain issues and labour shortages. Like everyone else, the project team had to adapt to a new normal. Major projects like ECLRT were deemed an essential service, so work continued during the pandemic, as much as was safe and possible.

Throughout the project, we encountered and handled the many challenges that arise when new construction interfaces with aging infrastructure. We also staged traffic across major intersections with minimal disruption. The project had over 35,000 design drawings and involved hundreds of thousands of documents.

Facts and stats

19 km

Light rail transit line

Stations & stops

Up to 60 %

Faster than current travel times

Bus routes linked

Systems Innovation and Future Operation

The first of its kind in North America, the trains on the ECLRT line uses a hybrid train control system, which is automated along some parts of the line, and driver-operated along other parts. Pairing this hybrid system with the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system, which uses 100,000+ contact points for real-time monitoring, allows maximum efficiency. Trains can run more often and closer together, which means shorter waits for passengers, and also travel at faster speeds, which means a shorter commute time.

The project was designed and built with long-term maintenance in mind and operational readiness for 30+ years. Crosslinx Transit Solutions Maintenance (CTSM), consisting of all four consortium partners, will maintain the new system. Their role includes daily cleaning and maintenance of the trains and maintaining the LRT system, including lifecycle repair and renewal of building and system components.

Community Benefits and Successes

At the core of every project are the people who design and build it. A major benefit of the ECLRT was the varied and plentiful employment and training opportunities it created for workers, who could further their careers and work on a project that truly benefits the community upon completion. During the most intense phases of construction, over 2,500 workers were employed on ECLRT sites, and there were additional employment opportunities provided through subcontractors and suppliers.

Training apprentices was a valuable part of the learning that happened on this project. The ECLRT Apprenticeship Program had ~85 apprentices and enabled many of them to achieve their Red Seal certification. The project managers celebrated diversity and inclusion, and there are some notable success stories among apprentices, like the apprentice who became the first Indigenous tower crane operator, as well as a female apprentice who overcame barriers and qualified as a tower crane operator during the course of the project.

Thirty percent of the staff on the project were women. Local high school students also benefitted from our outreach through being part of hands-on training we facilitated with social housing renovation groups. The Crosstown Community Benefits Agreement was first of its kind in Ontario, which means that stakeholders invented the model as they went, with no precedent, to bridge unions, contractors, and community groups and create a harmonious environment where everyone could contribute and find the best way forward for themselves and the project.

Investing in the communities impacted by the ECLRT was a priority, generating over $10M in community benefits and local business spending.

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Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit

Bill Gifford

City-Building Vision

Technical Feats and Challenges

Systems Innovation and Future Operation

Community Benefits and Successes

Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit

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