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As controversy and rumours swirl around the completion of Toronto's two inaugural LRTs, work has continued on Mississauga's premier higher-order local transit line as well, the Line 10 Hurontario–Main LRT, to be named for the late Mississauga Mayor, Hazel McCallion. Running the breadth of the Greater Toronto Area’s largest suburban city, this long-anticipated project promises to deliver faster, more reliable transit along Mississauga’s arterial spine, Hurontario Street, and on into Brampton as far — initially — as Steeles Avenue.
A product of Toronto's explosive growth over the past half century, Mississauga is now firmly part of the inner ring of the Greater Toronto Area. Yet, just a few short decades ago, it remained largely farmland, with suburban tracts sprouting across its rolling fields. Mississauga City Centre, anchored by the gargantuan shopping mall known as Square One, is today surrounded by high-rises, highways, and a sea of subdivisions. Upon the mall’s opening in 1973, however, it stood in a far more bucolic setting, with woodlots and agricultural plots stretching in all directions. Hurontario Street itself was then still a rural highway, known as Highway 10—a name older residents of the west end may still use, to the continued confusion of those familiar only with the 905 of the 21st century.
It was in this context of rapid growth and urbanization that initial proposals for a light rail line in Mississauga emerged in the early 2000s. Seeking both to mature into a distinct urban centre and to address the growing congestion on Hurontario Street, the City launched a study on the potential for higher-order transit along the corridor in 2006.
After a decade of funding difficulties, debate over potential alignments, and prolonged political negotiations, the procurement process for the line’s design and construction finally got underway in 2016. Set to stretch 22 kilometres between Port Credit GO Station in the south and Gateway Terminal on Steeles Avenue in the north, the Hurontario–Main Line 10 was planned to include 22 stations. Three of these—Duke of York, Main, and Rathburn—were to be located on what was known as the City Centre Loop. This extension of track along Rathburn Road, Duke of York Boulevard, and Burnhamthorpe Road was intended to provide greater coverage through the area’s dense retail, cultural, and residential core, much of which lies more than a kilometre from Hurontario Street.
To the dismay of Mississauga residents, planners, and politicians, the three-station loop was removed from plans for the line in 2019 by the Province of Ontario, citing cost concerns. In its place, a shorter jog of track was proposed, stretching west from Hurontario Street to directly serve the existing MiWay Transit Terminal at Rathburn Road West and Station Gate Road. During the same period, a planned northern extension into downtown Brampton and its respective GO Station on the Kitchener Line was shelved due to opposition to street-running LRT through Brampton's “historic” core. Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, backed by several city councillors, demanded that the LRT be buried through this section, at a cost initially projected to be more than 300% higher than the at-grade option, a figure that would soon be subject to even greater cost inflation.
With both the City Centre Loop and Brampton extension cancelled, construction began shortly thereafter on March 13, 2020, with the line’s completion projected for 2024. In yet another stroke of bad luck for the much-anticipated transit line, March 13, 2020, also marked the formal start of the COVID-19 lockdowns and the sweeping social and economic disruptions that followed. Transit project delays, already all too common in the Greater Toronto Area, were further exacerbated, and the initial 2024 completion date came and went with work nowhere near finished along the line.
In March 2024, with construction entering its fourth year, Premier Ford announced advance funding for a study to revive both the City Centre Loop and the extension into downtown Brampton, now planned to be tunnelled. While work is still underway on the final designs for both projects, the latter representing a relatively straightforward alignment, the ultimate routing of the LRT through Mississauga City Centre remains uncertain.
A revival of the former routing was brought into question following then–Mayor of Mississauga Bonnie Crombie’s comments suggesting a further westward extension of the loop, which would see it turn along Confederation Parkway rather than the previously planned Duke of York Boulevard alignment. Concerns over higher costs and longer travel times emerged; however, Crombie defended the proposal by citing the extensive redevelopment planned for the area, with expectations of “116 new towers in the next 20 years.” The role of the spur currently under construction to the MiWay Transit Terminal in a future extension also remains unclear, with more details expected following the conclusion of preliminary planning work.
As the end of 2025 and the LRT's fifth year of construction approaches, the exact opening date of the long-awaited line remains a mystery to the public. Following the 2019 announcement and the subsequent failure to meet the initial 2024 opening date, no new completion date has been provided, nor have Metrolinx, Infrastructure Ontario, nor the Ministry of Transportation offered an explanation for the delays. This lack of transparency and repeated failure to deliver projects on time has generated significant political controversy, with leaders of the provincial NDP and Green Party, as well as former Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, criticizing the Ford government for its handling of the project.
When passengers finally begin riding what has been billed as Mississauga’s first rapid transit line, they may find the service to be less than rapid, even free of Hurontario Street’s infamous congestion. As work on similar LRT lines along Finch West Avenue and Eglinton Avenue in Toronto has entered operational testing, observers have noted that vehicle speeds appear sluggish, with buses in mixed traffic often overtaking light rail vehicles during demonstration runs that are intended to simulate passenger service. The causes of these slow operations are complex, including the province’s refusal to implement genuine transit signal priority and the rumoured introduction of slow zones by the TTC once it assumed operations of Toronto’s LRT lines. Whether the Hurontario–Main Line 10 will face similar issues remains to be seen, as extensive construction work is still ongoing.
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 conversations in the associated Project Forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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