When the Finch West LRT officially began service on December 7, 2025, anticipation in Toronto was very high. This is not surprising considering that it was the first new metro line to open in over two decades. Although its sleek and spacious trains and new and shiny stations made positive first impressions, people could not help but notice the elephant in the room - the line is painfully slow. And while most people thought it was part of the soft launch, it quickly became very clear that this is going to be a permanent thing unless the politicians and both transit agencies operating the line - Metrolinx and TTC - sit at the table and fix it once and for all. The good news is that most of the much-needed changes are not too difficult to implement and require just a political will.
What Works Well
The LRT uses Alstom's modern and accessible train cars. They are wide, light-filled, and equipped for bicycles and accessibility. I don’t want to dwell on this too much, as it’s kind of expected from a train in 2025. Coincidentally, these are exactly the same trains used on the Confederation Line 1 in Ottawa, which have been plagued with issues since its opening in 2019. Toronto's weather is not as extreme as Ottawa’s, but I’m still wondering if the lessons learned in Ottawa were incorporated into the Finch West LRT line.
There are only two stations at each end of the line: Finch West and Humber College. The rest are just regular stops with covered shelters. Both stations are bright, spacious, and utilitarian. I really like the red tiles. Being run by both TTC and Metrolinx, this line was the first where I had seen the full GTA metro system map that featured trains from both networks. Very cool!
Both Finch West and Humber College stations are designed with future growth in mind: they can accommodate two-car trains, though for now, half the platform is sealed behind a temporary break wall that will be - that's right - broken when (if) longer trains are introduced. Intermediate stops, however, are limited to single cars for now.
Both terminus stations offer clean and warm bathrooms. I hope it stays this way, as the washrooms at some TTC stations are quite filthy.
What was surprising was the choice of a ceiling design at the Humber College station. It’s half covered, half exposed to all weather elements. The result was unfortunate: while it was snowing outside, the platform floor was slippery, which made me wonder how safe the station was for passengers and staff.
Announcements and all signs are in both English and French, unlike the rest of the TTC network. It's a welcome change and quite unexpected of Toronto.
What Feels ‘Painfully Slow’
Alright, my glass is usually half-full, but this is huge so I have to talk about it. The line is painfully slow. I can't even call is "rapid". TTC operates 11 streetcar routes in Toronto, and I think some of those routes are faster than this new LRT line.
Although Metrolinx, that built the line and just recently handed it over to TTC, projected that the end-to-end travel time for an 11-km line should be around 33 minutes, most people, myself included, spent 50-55 minutes on average. Just think about it: an average speed for this train is 11 km/h! I can walk 6-7 km/h.
Thankfully and ironically, there are shuttle buses that are as frequent as the trains themselves. And I think more people actually take shuttle buses, because they are faster, even in traffic with other cars. The line cost 3.5 billion dollars to build which is ridiculous considering the train is slower than a bus it was supposed to replace!
There are a few obvious oversights that cause the problem. First, there is no signal priority. Trains regularly stop at red lights and ALWAYS yield to cars turning left. Seriously - a single train car carries a few hundreds of passengers, and yet all those people have to wait for single rider cars?
Second, the stops are spaced very close from one another, sometimes no more than 200-300 metres, which does not make any sense for a metro line. Whoever planned this line clearly did not know what a rapid transit even is. You don’t have to go far: take Calgary or even Waterloo as an example, and you’ll see what a decent rapid transit should be.
There have been a couple of other issues that surfaced in the first few days of the service. For example, the service frequency is not consistent. You can wait for a train 5 minutes or 10 minutes, depending on your luck. On the very first day, just ten minutes into launch, an “operational problem” halted westbound service at Finch West station. Two more midweek mornings saw no service between Finch West and Humber College due to switch issues.
Bottom Line: Not Quite Rapid… Yet
I think Line 6 has a strong foundation: state-of-the-art vehicles, well-designed stations, and promising infrastructure. But its launch has been plagued by slow speeds, too-frequent stops, and service issues that force frustrated riders to opt for shuttle buses or cars instead.
How the new line evolves depends on the city’s, TTC’s and Metrolinx's ability to quickly implement transit signal priority, fix service schedules, and remove artificial speed limits. If these steps happen, the line has potential to fulfill its promise: to connect students from Humber College, the Jane and Finch community (long struggling with crime and poverty), and beyond with truly rapid transit.
And as what's coming next, while Line 6 currently connects only with Line 1 at Finch West Station, I believe there are plans to extend it to Pearson Airport and link it with Line 5 Eglinton, which is scheduled to open in early 2026. I also hope the line will eventually extend into Scarborough along Finch Avenue.
My other posts about the metro systems in the world:
North America
Europe
Asia
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