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As construction progresses on Toronto's first downtown subway in over 50 years, updated renderings have been released for Ontario Line 3’s western terminus at a dramatically expanded Exhibition station. (Several more new renderings of the station can be found in our Database File for Exhibition station.)
Located between the increasingly dense neighbourhood of Liberty Village and Exhibition Place, as well as serving its immediate surroundings, the expanded station will serve as a major interchange for rapid and regional transit in the GTA once complete. It is intended to function as a 'shoulder station' to the perennially overcrowded Union Station, while also providing improved transit service to the provincially led re-development of Ontario Place.
Exhibition Station has long been a key hub of public transportation in Toronto, with trains and streetcars first serving the Exhibition grounds as early as 1879. Train service was initially operated by the Great Western Railway, which was soon acquired by the Grand Trunk Railway. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the station was repeatedly rebuilt and relocated, though always in the vicinity of Dufferin Street’s crossing over the rail corridor.
The station is once again undergoing a major transformation, this time to accommodate a comprehensive redesign of service along the Lakeshore West GO line and the introduction of rapid transit via Ontario Line 3. Since construction began in March 2022, crews have completed excavation of a roughly 500m-long trench to enable the launching of two tunnel boring machines bound for Downtown Toronto and beyond. Inch by inch, these machines will be carving out twin tunnels beneath the dense urban neighbourhoods of Niagara, the Fashion District, Queen West, the Financial District, Moss Park, and Corktown. After completing their journeys, at times reaching depths of up to 40 metres below street level, they will surface at a portal beside the Don Yard, a GO Transit rail yard located north of the Port Lands.
The comprehensive rebuilding of Exhibition station will deliver a new era of transit service to the rapidly growing west end, however, it is not exclusively a rail transportation project. As a part of the Ontario Line 3's construction, various sites have been acquired by Infrastructure Ontario next to, or on top of, future stations in order to redevelop them with higher residential and commercial densities. Exhibition station is no exception to this policy, and as such the traditionally industrial and commercial lands along Jefferson and Atlantic Avenues have been acquired by Infrastructure Ontario. The most recent of the provincial agency's proposals saw significant hikes in height from earlier concepts, with towers now set to soar up to 54 storeys.
To facilitate this planned influx of population, and better serve the thousands of residents who already call Liberty Village home, a new street is planned. Hugging the northern edge of the rail corridor, and running from Dufferin Street in the west, to Strachan Avenue in the east, this yet to be named street will mark only the second east-west through street in all of Liberty Village, a historic oversight often cited as the cause of the neighbourhood's infamous traffic congestion. The new corridor may also be served by an extension of the 29/929 Dufferin bus, though news of official service adjustments will only become public once included within a TTC annual service plan, likely in the run up to the opening of Ontario Line 3.
With tunnel boring machines set to launch from Exhibition station later this year, the long-awaited Ontario Line will soon reach another major milestone, bringing Toronto’s century-old vision of a Queen Street subway one step closer to reality. Yet with no opening date, or even year, listed on Metrolinx’s project page, it's difficult to predict when Torontonians will actually be able to ride the line’s automated trains. Still, work on the subway continues to advance and intensify across the city, with major intersections like Queen and Spadina, Pape and Danforth, and Yonge and Queen now overtaken by construction activity.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, linked below. If you'd like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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UrbanToronto has a research service, UTPro, that provides comprehensive data on development projects in the Greater Golden Horseshoe — from proposal through to completion. We also offer Instant Reports, downloadable snapshots based on location, and a daily subscription newsletter, New Development Insider, that tracks projects from initial application.
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