Feds announce $758 million in funding for new Line 2 TTC subway trains

The TTC will get funding from the federal government to replace aging trains on Line 2, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has announced.

Ottawa will send $758 million to the city as part of its $30 billion Canada Public Transit Fund. The city and the province had previously put forward $1.52 billion together to fund the 55 new trains.

Prior to Friday’s announcement, the TTC had said that the absence of a federal commitment to upgrading the trains on Line 2 presented a “serious issue.”

Unlike the newer trains introduced on Line 1 in the early 2010s, the trains on the east-west line will be approximately 30 years old, and at the end of their design life, by 2026.

"We know how important the TTC is, we know that more than two million people a day rely on this important subway, and we know that Toronto is growing, and we need to have public transit that grows with the needs of our growing city," Freeland said at a news conference in Toronto.

Freeland noted that the funding announced Friday is included in the $1.2 billion earmarked for the TTC over the next decade through the Canada Public Transit Fund. She said the new trains will be built in Thunder Bay, however interim TTC CEO Greg Percy said that the Request For Proposal (RFP) to bring the new trains to market has not yet been released.

At least $300 million of the funds announced Friday will go towards the operation of the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West LRTs, neither of which are currently open to the public.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who was also present at Friday's announcement alongside Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy and Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria, called the money a “generational, once-in-a-lifetime” investment, noting that Line 2 moves three times the number of people who use the Gardiner Expressway on a daily basis.

“You know, a lot of the riders have been saying, ‘Gee, the [Line 2] subway cars are old, sometimes not the most reliable. Sometimes it's [a] slow down. Sometimes all the signals may not be working perfectly,’” Chow said of the aging trains.

"This historic investment in transit will provide needed subway cars on Line 2, moving people affordably today and preparing for future population and economic growth," she said in a supplementary statement.

It’s unclear when exactly the new trains will arrive, but TTC staff said previously that they likely won’t be delivered until 2030.

Transit advocacy group TTCriders welcomed the announcement, saying in a statement that it was thrilled about the funding.

“Transit riders are hopeful that federal funding will help tackle subway ‘slow zones.’ Subways should be fast, but there are dozens of Reduced Speed Zones in the subway network because the TTC is behind on repairs and ordering new equipment. If the Canada Public Transit Fund is made flexible and available for transit operating budgets, the TTC could spend some of the fund on preventative maintenance and get Toronto moving faster,” TTCriders spokesperson Nigel Morton said.

“Ordering new subway trains now is cheaper in the long run. The alternative was for the TTC to spend an extra $1.6 billion to overhaul the trains for only 5 or 6 additional years of use.”