Passengers in northwest Toronto have been riding the Line 6 Finch West LRT for nearly eight-and-a-half months now, but after extensive construction to get the corridor ready for trains, crews are once again digging up infrastructure along parts of the corridor.
CityNews recently travelled between Finch West and Humber College stations, the eastern and western ends, respectively, of the 11-kilometre and 18-stop line, and came across several areas where construction crews were ripping out sidewalks rebuilt in recent years specifically for the LRT line.
At the southeast corner of Driftwood Avenue and Finch Avenue West, a construction crew could be seen digging up large sidewalk segments and putting large chunks of rubble on the nearby bike lane. CityNews visited the same location in 2023 after construction appeared to be largely finished and in 2025 pylons and stacked fencing were sitting in the same area. Across the street, a large ramp structure with a set of stairs appears to have been largely untouched compared to a year ago.
“It’s a bit tiring and unsafe,” North York resident Alex Thomas told CityNews while walking by the intersection, and pointing out malfunctioning crosswalk buttons at the location and at Tobermory Drive.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” he added.
Outside Pearldale station east of Islington Avenue, there is an active construction zone with multiple sidewalk segments being replaced. Like other areas, it too was only rebuilt within the past several years.
While many areas appear to be working as designed and some deficiencies can sometimes be identified on public projects, issues along the entire corridor can be found when looking closer. For example, newly formed concrete can be seen at different spots. In other stretches, bike and vehicle lanes are blocked off with cones — sometimes without an visibly evident purpose. Near Sentinel Road and Finch Avenue West, a crew could be seen watering a long, yellow segment of dried up grass.
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CityNews contacted Metrolinx to ask for an on-camera interview about the current site conditions seen across the Finch West corridor, but similar to other requests in recent months for updates on other major projects overseen by the provincial transportation agency, a spokesperson said no one was available and a statement was issued.
“Final completion activities to surrounding infrastructure is currently underway in several areas along Line 6. This is work that could not have been accomplished in the winter months,” the brief response said.
Construction on the Finch West LRT project began in 2018 at the end of the previous Liberal government under Mosaic Transit Group, the private-sector consortium charged with building and maintaining the line. The TTC-operated Line 6 opened to riders on Dec. 7, 2025.
Metrolinx staff said the system was expected to cost $2.5 billion, which included construction costs plus maintaining the line and its infrastructure for 30 years. A report at the provincial agency’s board in late 2025 showed that as of Sept. 30 of that year, $2.45 billion in costs have been incurred to date and the current baseline cost after “exclusions” sits at $3.75 billion.
Tom Rakocevic, the MPP for Humber River–Black Creek (the area where a majority of the LRT corridor is located) and the Ontario NDP shadow minister for transit, said he is frustrated with the ongoing work.
“I can’t believe that nine months after the community waited so many long years for this project to finally finish that we still continue to see construction,” he told CityNews.
“We still, without warning, see pylons coming up, reducing traffic to a single lane, and the community deserves better. We want to see this project finally finished. We want to actually see the construction finally come to an end. It’s nine months after the opening.”
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Rakocevic also took aim at the Ford government and Metrolinx.
“We’re almost a decade of this Ford government, and we still see issues like we’re seeing here along Finch. We still see cost overruns on every single project. We still see delays. So enough is enough, let’s do a public inquiry; the taxpayers deserve to know,” he said.
“The government is supposed to provide oversight over Metrolinx. Metrolinx is supposed to provide the proper oversight of these contractors; they’re in charge. They have more vice presidents than there are MPPs in the province of Ontario.”
Noah Jarvis, the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, echoed Rakocevic’s sentiments.
“I think taxpayers are really disappointed seeing their money being spent on new infrastructure just for it to be ripped up to support some other infrastructure that is coming in, and then having to replace that once again, it is just another waste of taxpayer money,” he said.
“It seems like, once again, Metrolinx is making poor planning decisions with and really wasting taxpayer money, so I think Metrolinx needs to do a better job at spending taxpayer money efficiently, making sure that they’re not doing double (or) triple work, ripping up work that they had just completed.
“There needs to be a a complete top-down look at how Metrolinx is going about its operations. They need to probably cut down a lot of the senior leadership that they have, the VPs and the execs who are making lavish salaries, while still repeatedly failing to deliver these public infrastructure projects on budget and on time for taxpayers.”
The comments about Metrolinx came just weeks after the Ford government ordered a review of the agency, along with more than a dozen other entities.
Since Line 6 Finch West opened to the public, CityNews has conducted informal and periodic tests of trip times amid promises by officials to speed things up after a small wave of complaints as trains began operating.
During a mid-day test on Thursday, CityNews went on a train westbound along the entire corridor in less than 44 minutes. It took just over 41 minutes to make the eastbound return trip.
In mid-March, it took almost 46 minutes to go westbound to Humber College station from Finch West station — roughly a minute quicker compared to a trip CityNews took in December shortly after opening. A return eastbound trip on a different train took more than 43 minutes and 40 seconds. According to a Metrolinx website on the Finch West LRT project, light rail vehicles were initially projected to take approximately 33 to 34 minutes to travel end-to-end.
After being directed by Toronto city council to make several changes to speed up LRT trip times following complaints, work was split up into a few phases.
Under the first phase of the changes, left-turning vehicles now proceed through an intersection at the end of a traffic-light cycle versus at the beginning (dubbed “lagging left turns”), allowing LRT trains to move through an intersection seconds sooner after a light turns green from red. Phase two involved traffic lights changing to green in real time as trains approach if necessary in a process called “rotational phasing / phase insertion.” The third phase involved “other measures, including signal re-timings.”
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As of latter part of May, officials said enhanced transit signal priority measures have been installed at all street-level intersections on Line 6. Ashley Curtis, the City’s transportation services general manager, said in a statement at the time six “major” intersections have rotational phasing while all of the remaining intersections have lagging left turns. The remaining intersections were supposed to be revisited for enhanced rotational phasing / phase insertion with completion expected by the end of 2026.
CityNews asked officials for an update on all of these efforts.
“We continue to monitor conditions along the LRT corridor to identify and implement additional ways to improve LRT operations,” Curtis wrote while reiterating previous actions taken.
“Line 6 Finch (West) has continued to deliver operational gains since launch. Round-trip travel times have improved by approximately 15 minutes since the opening of the line, reflecting improved operational efficiency and the benefits of transit signal priority enhancements. Ongoing improvements will continue to support a more reliable and consistent customer experience,” the Metrolinx statement added.
TTC spokesperson Stuart Green emphasized many of the same observations, adding driver familiarity and real-time line management in conjunction with revised traffic lights improved the situation. He said reviews into speed restrictions through intersections and above-ground segments are ongoing along with further light changes.
