Construction on long-promised UP Express-TTC pedestrian tunnel 'well underway,' Metrolinx says

Tyler Cheese · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 19, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 4 minutes ago

Metrolinx has begun operation connected a pedestrian passageway linking UP Express Bloor Station to the adjacent Dundas West subway station, astir a decennary aft it was announced.

The task was primitively announced soon aft the UP Express – the bid linking Union Station and Pearson Airport – archetypal opened successful 2015. 

Cameron MacLeod, enforcement manager of transit advocacy enactment CodeRedTO, told CBC Toronto 10 years is not a tenable clip framework to physique a comparatively abbreviated tunnel. 

"Years ago, Metrolinx said that the passageway transportation was moving forward," helium said. "They were going to get started. It's lone astir 50 metres of tunnel, truthful that's astir apt the slowest tunneling velocity we've ever had successful Toronto."

Currently, the fastest mode for UP Express riders to transportation to the TTC is to exit the presumption and locomotion on Bloor and Dundas streets to Dundas West Station. On its website, Metrolinx says that locomotion takes astir 5 to 8 minutes, depending connected thoroughfare postulation and upwind conditions. Add to that, galore travellers coming from Pearson Airport are caller to the metropolis and carrying luggage. 

In an email to CBC Toronto, Metrolinx said it doesn't person a acceptable opening day for the passageway yet, but "construction continues to determination forward, with specified enactment arsenic elevator shafts and staircases good underway, and large excavation to statesman successful the coming months." The caller tunnel will let travellers to marque the transportation successful astir 2 minutes, it added.

Transfer signage is unclear, travellers say

On Monday, respective travellers astatine UP Express Bloor Station told CBC Toronto that transportation signage was unclear.

"It's benignant of confusing getting out," said Joshua Jose, a Brampton nonmigratory utilizing the presumption for the archetypal time. "So I mean, if there's an underground tunnel? Yeah, that'll beryllium ace convenient. You don't [have] to interest astir the postulation oregon whatever. And successful the winter, it would beryllium truly bully excessively due to the fact that you tin enactment warm."

That consciousness of disorder is simply a communal ailment astir the existent set-up, MacLeod said.

"It's precise challenging. It's not wide if you're unfamiliar with the neighborhood," helium said. "You're competing with each sorts of roadworthy postulation and different sidewalk users, and you're not truly definite wherever you're going if you haven't done it before."

But the wide timing of the task is his biggest concern. 

"It's truly unfortunate due to the fact that it should beryllium thing that we are capable to propulsion disconnected successful a small little than 10 years," MacLeod said. 

Part of the hold is owed to ongoing negotiations with the Crossways retail and residential analyzable that sits betwixt the 2 stations, helium said. 

UP Express ridership accrued by millions in archetypal 10 years

Now that those negotiations are settled, MacLeod said the past helium heard astir the passageway is that it was acceptable to beryllium completed successful outpouring oregon summertime of 2026, but nary authoritative announcements person been made.

Meanwhile, Metrolinx provided CBC Toronto with ridership figures to people 10 years since the UP Express officially opened. 

The provincial transit bureau said implicit 27 cardinal trips person been recorded since the enactment was launched. 

That includes 4,303,797 riders betwixt June 2024 and May 2025. That's up from 1,115,989 from June 2015 to May 2016, Metrolinx said.