Updated November 24, 2025 at 3:30pm:
The TTC has confirmed that Line 6 Finch West will open on December 7, 2025.
See:
The initial service is described as a “soft opening”:
Following the recommendations of the Ottawa LRT public inquiry, Line 6 Finch West will operate under “soft opening” conditions with trains running from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. until Spring 2026. The temporary early closing will provide the line’s maintainers, Mosaic Transit Group, with an extended maintenance window, allowing staff to become more familiar with the line and monitor it for any issues while in full revenue service.
The service level of 15 trains on a 6’30” headway implies a round trip time of 97’30”.
Fifteen fully accessible trains will operate during weekday morning and afternoon rush hours, with service every six and a half minutes. At all other times, including weekends, trains will arrive approximately every 10 to 12 minutes. [TTC media release]
By comparison, the 36C Finch West bus has an AM peak round trip time from Finch West Station to Humberwood Loop of 116 minutes, and a PM peak RTT of 138 minutes. These times include recovery time at terminals. The peak period scheduled time between Humberwood Loop and Humber College Station for buses is 8 minutes, and so for comparative purposes, 16 minutes should be deducted from the bus running times to compare with the LRT. TTC has not yet published off-peak travel times or train counts.
This adjustment reduces the AM peak round trip time for the 36C bus to 100 minutes and the PM peak time to 122 minutes, as against 97.5 minutes for the LRT. The greater saving comes when the exclusive lanes on Finch give an advantage over bus speeds, although one might have hoped for better in the AM peak. The wider headway (interval) between trains will add waiting time, and it remains to be seen if the TTC can avoid its usual bunching and gaps that plague every major route in the city.
36 Finch West bus service design effective November 16, 2025:
As more information emerges, I will update this post.
Original article:
The opening date for the 6 Finch LRT has been confirmed as December 7, 2025, in reports on the Metrolinx Board meeting agenda for November 27.
Also, in the Operations — Rapid Transit Quarterly Report:
Finch West LRT
Major readiness milestones in relation to the opening of the line have been achieved. Following the successful completion of the final 30-day revenue service demonstration, which enabled Metrolinx to assess and validate the line’s performance and reliability, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) assumed full operational control on Wednesday, November 12. Metrolinx is working with the TTC to prepare for the start of revenue service on December 7, 2025.
Thanks to Steve Wickens for spotting this.
Steve Munro 
So, Pearl Harbor day. Let’s hope it’s not an omen.
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Is there ever any discussi
Steve: Your comment was cut off. Please try again. There is a known problem between WP comment processing and iPhone email that might have done this.
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So not long after the source was public, it was quickly taken down and many are saying that they opened it by accident even though it was public again not too long after, I highly doubt that this is true or if you even know this but I’m just wondering.
Steve: As I showed in my post, the date is in not just one but two docs. This may have been an “oops”, but there’s no point in hiding it if people have already downloaded or screenshot the pages.
The Dec 7 date has been rumoured for weeks, but I have not cited it because it was not confirmed.
Also what do you think of my route proposal?
146 Westview
146A Westview – Starts at Don Valley Station, goes onto Eglinton Avenue East, Bermondsey Road, Yardley Avenue, Westview Boulevard, St. Clair Avenue East, Victoria Park Avenue and Ends at Victoria Park Station
146B Westview – Same thing except it goes to Warden Station via St. Clair.
And one more thing, just wanted to thank you for all of your hard work of keeping me and many others updated of what’s going on with the TTC, I hope life treats you well!
Steve: You’re welcome.
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Surprising they aren’t doing on a new board period day, but I guess they will keep the parallel bus service running for a couple weeks.
Any word on real time vehicle locations and predictions?
Steve: Nope. The service change memo is quite clear on this:
Don’t know about real time info. As you know, Line 6 was not included in the November GTFS files, and the December 21 versions are not out yet.
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So … not a TTC-built line but it will be TTC-operated. Are these cars and the Flexitys (Flexities?) interoperable?
Like, does Metrolinx know the TTC network is Toronto Gauge and not Standard Gauge?
Steve: Of course the cars are standard gauge. They’ve been on property and running for years. Metrolinx forced the “Transit City” lines and cars to be standard gauge because other builders thought Bombardier (as it then was) had an unfair advantage already building to TTC gauge. We will ignore the fact that there are no-standard gauge cars in many systems, and builders don’t seem t have problems with that.
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To your comment plaws0, the Finch West LRT will run with the Alstom Citadis Spirit, which is the same vehicle that Ottawa’s O-Train Line 1 uses, and the Hurontario Line will also use. Metrolinx originally planned to use the Flexity series on Finch as well, but Bombardier’s inability to deliver vehicles on time basically forced Metrolinx to hedge their bets with Alstom. If Bombardier hadn’t delivered the Flexity vehicles in time for Eglinton, we would have those vehicles there as well. (The early 2010s were not great for Bombardier in Ontario, nor were they for the three transit agencies with orders.)
Metrolinx decided on standard gauge, but at this point, the only thing it precludes is a connection between a previously planned Jane LRT and the St. Clair/Dundas streetcars. Otherwise, the legacy TTC Flexity fleet and the mixed Citadis/Flexity fleet will never touch.
I am curious myself if any of the operators from Mount Dennis’ rail division (once they are trained) can post for transfers to Leslie Barns or Finch West’s yard and vice versa without major retraining.
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Hey Steve,
It’s probably a stuipd question to ask but why hasn’t the TTC confirmed the date yet? It’s still great to see a date. Just don’t wanna get my hopes so high for something that might end up being a false hearing.
Steve: The Dec 7 date has been around for a while. The 36 Finch schedule was redesigned recently so that the bus service could be easily replaced by the LRT without disrupting what used the be integrated branches of the service.
Two explicit mentions in Metrolinx reports don’t get there by accident. If they were in error both TTC and Metrolinx should have issued a correction by now. They have not.
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So unlike streetcars, no onboard PRESTO machines. Will there be videos and commercials that explain that for us mere mortals? Unless I got that wrong.
Steve: It will be even funnier because buses running in the same corridor will use tap on the vehicle. At least if someone taps in both places, it will look like a free transfer.
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Ahhh..
The off-peak headways are disappointing, and I recall Metrolinx claimed the end to end travel time would be around 34 minutes. 97 minutes is better, but not by much.
The off-peak and weekend headways are disappointing. The TTC needs to do better than 10-12 minutes on a weekend. The point of this line was to provide better service and more capacity.
Steve: Yes, this is what you get with much larger vehicles/trains. Welcome to the planning that has afflicted the streetcar system since the introduction of ALRVs and Flexitys. If you compare to the bus service, the capacity is higher, but the waits are longer.
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In this Metrolinx doc it says under question 45 that 15 vehicles will be able to operate a 5min headway in the peak. I wonder why we’re only getting 6.5mins now with the same number of vehicles.
Steve: Likely because of unduly conservative operating practices and less-than-full-priority signalling.
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Hi Steve,
What time does the first Finch west LRT train leave finch west LRT Station on Sunday December 7th 2025?
Steve: The operating plan has not been announced yet. It’s also not clear whether there will be a celebratory opening on the 7th that will delay revenue service, or if they will do that sooner.
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Hi Steve,
Do you think Line 1 will improve their headways at Finch West to correspond with the opening of Line 6? I commute southbound from here in the evenings and regularly have 10+ min headways between trains right at 5 PM, and when a train eventually arrives it’s almost completely full. I don’t understand why this is the case when there are northbound trains on the other side passing by every 3 mins. I can imagine Line 6 will concentrate more people on the platform at one time so crowding will only get worse I imagine.
Steve: There is no change planned on Line 1 beyond what is already in place.
The situation you describe is actually built into the schedule. Between 4pm and 6pm, trains are inserted southbound from Wilson Station to handle the peak demand downtown. In order to do this, the dispatch times from Vaughan are sometimes every 5 minutes apart instead of 2’30” to leave a gap where a train will be added. The usual pattern from Vaughan is to alternate headways of 2’30” and 5’00”, but occasionally there are two 5′ gaps in a row. These hit Finch West southbound at 3:57, 4:32, 5:00, and 5:19. It would not surprise me if some of those get stretched out thanks to loading producing the wide gaps you experience.
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There is an east-west divide here. It appears to me that Asian countries tend to build subways and high speed railways while western countries have a preference for streetcars. As to which model will prove more effective, only time will tell but the differences between the two sides couldn’t be more stark.
Steve: It is self-evident that high-speed railways do not have an urban application such as a streetcar route. Also, there is an extensive HSR network in Europe which was “western” the last time I looked.
You have completely missed the role of urban rail systems like GO Transit which look like railways, but function as local (or at least regional) spines in the transit network. That doesn’t happen in Toronto because GO never saw itself as a local carrier and designed service around downtown commuters. This is finally changing, but the mold is hard to break.
If by “eastern” you mean China, yes they are building a lot as a matter of government policy, but they also have very high passenger volumes and distances to cover. Not every line is HSR, and the same is true in Japan.
Many “streetcars” in the west are holdovers from street railway systems built when road conditions were different. New lines are generally built with reserved lanes and true transit priority. This is not an east-vs-west issue, but rather a question of the circumstances in each region.
Finally, the USA as a rabidly car-oriented country, is no example to use of which technology might be preferable. It’s “western”, but not a model to be emulated especially with the crew of idiots now in charge.
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So no onboard Presto tapping…oof. I can tell you that as someone who lived along the route and used to take the 36 daily that unless fare enforcement officers are placed on virtually every train the fare evasion on that route will be off the charts, probably far worse than some of the legacy streetcar lines downtown. When I attended James Cardinal McGuigan (the high school right at the portal to Finch West station) fare evasion amongst students was so bad that TTC almost removed the stop at that school entirely because no one was paying, and once or twice a year the police would force students to stand in a queue and pay their fares one-by-one until they got the message. This was in the 1990s, I can’t even imagine how much worse it is now. I suspect the TTC will realize very quickly that no one will pay on that route if they aren’t forced to and act accordingly.
Steve: That decision about onboard fare collection is down to Metrolinx, but TTC will lose the revenue. Mind you, the province is paying the operating costs, and it will be interesting if they go after TTC based on presumed revenue that is not actually achieved due to evasion.
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34 minutes 1 way would be a round trip time of 68 minutes. Even if you add layover time, let’s say the same as the buses at 16 minutes, that only gets us to 84 minutes RTT. So how slow will these trains be moving at 97 minutes?
Steve: Long terminal recovery times are impossible give the limited capacity for trains at Finch West and Humber College Stations. (The subway lines have the same issue.) I am waiting to see the GTFS schedules when the TTC releases them. This will show the stop-by-stop times, and hence allow a calculation of the scheduled speed.
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Steve: Finally, the USA as a rabidly car-oriented country, is no example to use of which technology might be preferable. It’s “western”, but not a model to be emulated especially with the crew of idiots now in charge.
I am a dual American-Canadian citizen. I am a lifelong Democrat / New Democrat. Your comment is a jab at Donald Trump but as bad as Donald Trump is, he is not half as bad as Rob Ford / Doug Ford. I think that no one will agree with me more than you that the Ford brothers are absolutely the worst politicians that this world has ever seen and we will show Doug Ford the door come the next election.
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There is ZERO high speed rail in the USA, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand. And European “high speed” trains are only medium speed by Asian standards. Asian countries have a competitive advantage when it comes to infrastructure, modern transportation systems, and high tech sectors such as electronics. It is what it is whether we like it or not.
Steve: There is a point where speed for speed’s sake can be counterproductive. Major European centres are fairly close together and extremely high speed does not buy as much. Also, as I said before, none of this has anything to do with the streetcar system.
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And these streetcars no longer provide good transit for 21st century road conditions and in the 21st century, we have better alternatives available. We are spending tens of billions of dollars and decades building new streetcar lines and these will fail to attract new riders. Toronto’s insistence on streetcars is making Canada less competitive as people regularly arrive late for school/work thanks to these slow moving streetcars.
Steve: We are not spending tens of billions on new streetcars in the traditional sense, but many other cities have systems run with what you would likely call “streetcars”. The Eglinton line is a cocked up project, and much of the problems came with the underground construction. Should we stop building subways? Your bias is obvious, and this is the end of this conversation.
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