There’s been no shortage of progress and milestones reached across our various subway projects this year, including the Ontario Line, Yonge North Subway Extension, Scarborough Subway Extension and the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension.  

From Libby and Corkie’s introduction to the city to breaking ground on the first new subway station in Scarborough, 2025 has been a tremendous year. Here are just some of the highlights. 

Can you dig it? 

Like our old friends Rexy and Renny, the tunnel boring machines (TBMs) that dug the twin tunnels that will make up the western 6.3 kilometres of the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension, our newest duo is just as sweet.  

Dubbed Libby and Corkie after the Liberty Village and Corktown communities in Toronto, these new TBMs arrived on Canadian soil and will start chewing through earth to build the Ontario Line’s first set of twin tunnels next year. But in the meantime, our rockstar Diggy Scardust has advanced more than three kilometres of tunnelling for the Scarborough Subway Extension. The tunnel Diggy is creating will be wide enough to accommodate both sets of tracks for the line’s trains to travel in both directions. 

This year, the Ontario Line made some significant progress with excavation underway at all downtown station sites. Several milestones were hit, like completing excavation at Moss Park Station and the Exhibition Station tunnel launch shaft. We also broke ground on the Ontario Line’s second launch shaft at Gerrard Street and Carlaw Avenue. And even more digging is happening across the project’s span, like this breakthrough beneath Front Street at the future station site in Corktown. 

We also kicked off construction on the Ontario Line’s operations, maintenance and storage facility in Thorncliffe Park — the future nerve centre of the line where trains will be cleaned, maintained and stored for daily service. 

Elsewhere in the region, progress continues on the 9.2-kilometre Eglinton Crosstown West Extension. Earlier this year, tunnelling started on the 500-metre tunnels on the east end of the route and the 1.5-kilometre elevated guideway that will take trains over the Humber River. Meanwhile, a construction partner was appointed to design and build the extension’s stations, rails and more. 

We also broke ground on Scarborough’s first new subway station and awarded a tunneling contract for the Yonge North Subway Extension. 

Bringing vision to life 

Transit is more than a means of getting you where you need to go - it’s also a reflection of the community, culture and environment where we work and live. Take the Scarborough Subway Extension. The transformative project will reshape the city’s landscape while honouring the features that help contribute to its rich character. For instance, we partnered with another Scarborough icon, the Toronto Zoo, to that had to be demolished and removed at Scarborough Centre Station.  

We also consulted the community on the design of Scarborough’s future subway stations, particularly the station feature walls. Inspirational elements submitted by community members celebrated Scarborough’s bustling urban and natural landscapes, and the diversity of culture, food and dance. 

Heading north, this year we also shared some concept art showcasing the vision for stations along the Yonge North Subway Extension. The goal is for the stations to feel modern, bright and welcoming. The designs shown in the illustrated images serve as the starting point for the future project partners who will eventually make these concepts into a refined reality. In 2025, the project also took a major step toward tunnelling by bringing a construction partner on board and starting work on the launch shaft, where the future TBMs will start their underground journey. 

Tools of the trade 

Building a subway requires some serious hardware, and this year, we’ve been using some of the biggest and best in the business. Did you know - the aforementioned TBM Diggy Scardust is the largest tunnel boring machine ever used on a project in the entire country?  

But our underground work isn’t just done with TBMs. We also use Brachiosaurus-sized machines called roadheaders for tunnelling. 

Above ground, the heavy lifting doesn’t stop. This year we’ve used some specialized cranes to move construction forward on the Ontario Line.  

The region’s transit system isn’t expanding in the future, it’s expanding now. The scale of progress is massive and can be seen across the region. In fact, these subway projects will collectively add more than 40 kilometres of new track to the region’s existing network, helping unlock access to parks, restaurants, workplaces, sports venues and more for hundreds of thousands of people.