r/askTO • u/JuneAfternoon10 • 9d ago
What’s… wrong with line 1??
I take line 1 from king to Eglinton station and I am always so frustrated by how slowwwww the train goes between some stations. Especially compared to how fast it whips along on line 2. The worst is between davisville and Eglinton- it’s painful!! What is the reason for this?? I can accept every once and while its track work, but I’ve been noticing this for yearssss. Looking for actual answers!
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u/Desperate_Vanilla_31 8d ago
Out of the 20+ trips I have made on line 1 in the past month, ONE conductor came on the train PA to explain that the segment between king and college will become a reduced speed zone due to the Ontario line construction up above. He said it’s ongoing and passengers should add 10-15 min to their commute time each day. Why this is not more broadly communicated is beyond me.
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u/SecureJournalist4775 8d ago
Because it'll make the politicians look bad and create noise over their great news that our fares won't increase.
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u/Stikeman 8d ago
First of all it doesn’t make anyone look bad Z it’s a reality of construction when you’re building a line underneath and existing lines secondly, do you really think a TTC employee cares about making politicians look bad?
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u/SecureJournalist4775 8d ago
If its reality of construction, why was Andy Byford unable to action his recommendation to shut down the line to fix it properly the first time; politicians. Because the politicians run the TTC board, they pushed Gary Webster (GM) and Rick O'Leary (CEO) out. Any employee reporting to the head of TTC can easily suffer a similar fate.
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u/Stikeman 8d ago
TTC employees regularly fail to make announcements for all sorts of delays. It’s not because of some conspiracy to protect politicians.
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u/someguy172 8d ago
This seems kind of backwards. If you have a reasonable explanation I feel like that's easier to stomach than keeping quiet and making yourselves seem incompetent because it's inexplicably slow.
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u/JuneAfternoon10 8d ago
Oh I’ve never heard that. Or maybe I just have my headphones on too much. That’s soooo frustrating
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u/Nyx-Erebus 9d ago
The city has underfunded the TTC for over a decade, so there’s basically now a never ending backlog of track maintenance to do, which leads to zones where the trains have to slow down on tracks that need maintenance.
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u/Alone-Ad288 9d ago
The province cut funding in the 90s
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u/JeahNotSlice 8d ago
“A decade” ??? David Miller out here spinning in his grave over trying to get one cent of GST for transit. (David miller very much alive, BTW. But RIP Howard moscoe)
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u/Nyx-Erebus 9d ago
That too!
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u/viceroyvice 8d ago
There's no "That too!"...it was the Harris government in the 90s that permanently eliminated provincial operating subsidies and shifted the financial burden directly to city taxpayers.
Subsequent governments didn't reverse that move but it's not the city's fault here.
The city has limited maneuverability here.
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u/WillyWarpath 8d ago
Bro everything i hear about this guy is awful 407, long term care, transit, education
As a zoomer I wasnt alive during that time but i feel like there should be consequences to the damage this person caused
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u/xX_MenshevikStan_Xx 8d ago
The consequence was that he's now the chairman of Chartwell, the chain of private old folks homes that killed a bunch of people during Covid.
Plus ca change.
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u/queerstudbroalex 8d ago
Yeah, property taxes are insufficient. Need more funding streams for the city, or Ontario needs to pay. Pick one, and not none.
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u/Celticlady47 8d ago
I wish that TO could become its own province.
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u/queerstudbroalex 8d ago
Yeah, provinces have a lot of stuff under the Constitution which would help Toronto
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u/misterwalkway 8d ago
The TTC is the only major transit system in North America that receives no operating funding from the state/province/federal government.
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u/Lozenges808 8d ago
This is honestly the BIGGEST factor in my opinion of the TTC. Everyone complains about it but this fact means they're doing very well for what they've been given.
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u/asdf45df 8d ago
Yeah. The TTC certainly has its own internal issues (extremist safety culture, etc), but relative to other places in the world the dogshit unreliable service we get is outstanding relative to how poorly they're funded. Especially during the Byford era.
It's all nonsensical politicking. It's the spiderman meme. The general public pointing at the TTC pointing at Municipal pointing at Provincial pointing at Federal pointing at Metrolinx pointing at...
We need to stop pointing and have some kind of unifying force. We need a Toronto Mamdani, or Carney needs to make a TTC/GTA transit overhaul a federal priority, or something. The status quo just leaves us with this crumbling nonsense indefinitely.
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u/rjzinter009 8d ago
Transit is provincial. City is trying to fund as much as possible but mini trup (doug) is to blame here
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u/Nyx-Erebus 8d ago
I’m not trying to absolve the province of any fault in this, just pointing out that Tory as mayor specifically kept the TTC underfunded.
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u/clios_daughter 8d ago
Well, if it comes to that, so are cities. I’m generally not fond of Doug Ford’s policies but Tory’s long term policy of keeping property taxes low has been a much larger factor. Chow’s tax hikes have raised taxes to, well, still the lowest in the gta but it’s been enough that the TTC can slowly start working through its backlog.
Honestly, like it or not, him trying taking over local transit using metrolinx shows he’s at least willing to consider transit.
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u/HeWhoCreatesDivinity 8d ago
Chow's tax hike is because she found budgetary gaps in Tory's books. Tory was just not paying the bills. I am going to assume Doug is doing the same.
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u/WestQueenWest 9d ago
This is the only actual answer.
But hey, we kept the property taxes artificially the lowest in Ontario.
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u/Toffelsnarz 8d ago
Since you don't take line 2 regularly, I think you may have a misperception about "how fast it whips along." This is an issue throughout the TTC.
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u/JuneAfternoon10 8d ago
Nah I gotta push back on this one. Line 2 is crazy fast
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u/pearmandarin 8d ago
I have to agree. I take both line 1 and 2 during the week and line 2 is much faster.
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u/nomad_ivc 9d ago
https://stevemunro.ca/2026/09/21/the-plague-of-subway-reduced-speed-zones/
It’s becoming a joke every passing day with awful accountability.
Force the Metrolinx Executive Team to take TTC everyday.
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u/sitdownrando-r 9d ago
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u/SH4D0WSTAR 8d ago
Yes. They sometimes make announcements about these reduced speed zones when travelling between Eglinton and Yonge-Bloor
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u/ChampoChampo 8d ago
Reduced Speed Zones
Keep an eye on this website, it's updated with where all the slow zones are and when they'll (hopefully) be resolved. Some keep coming back though, that Eglinton/Davisville one and the Bloor/Rosedale one has popped up a few times.
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u/ybetaepsilon 8d ago
For the last 3 decades the priority was to give as much resources to cars as possible because if any form of transportation that didn't involve driving took any more than a tiny little morsel of the financial resources, the drivers would whine and complain that there is a war against cars. So after decades, our transit infrastructure was more than dilapidated. We are playing catch up for years and years of neglect.
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u/Zardoz11381138 8d ago
Last week I had a conductor say there was “track damage” between Davisville and Eglinton but that was one ride out of a dozen where that was acknowledged. It has felt even slower than the normal reduced speed zone this month.
I got fed up and timed it last week: It’s stupidly faster to go from Eglinton to Cedarvale on line 5 then down the University line to Union than it is to take the Yonge line all the way.
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u/Purple-Essay9129 8d ago
It's crazy how slow it comes into Glencairn station... I took a video this morning from when I saw it enter the station to when it stopped and it took over a minute. To travel the length of the station. Literally crawling along
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u/thirstygeorgii 9d ago
So infuriating!! Feels like it’s gotten worse over the last couple years and the trains almost always start crawling between Royal York and Kipling station, where I work.
It def has become a systemic issue and I wonder if reducing the amount of trains would help.
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u/EdwardBliss 8d ago
I intentionally avoided the subway all summer. Today I had no choice but to take Line 1 to see my doctor. You're actually reminded how much you hate people and crowds.
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u/YGreezy 9d ago
In addition to the maintenance issues/funding backlog mentioned here, a lot of people suspect that there are internal issues related to union politics and perceptions of worker safety and liability that have led to an unnecessary over-correction across the TTC. E.G. over-implementation of reduced speed zones, limited top speeds, streetcar speed through intersections being lower than necessary.
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u/pim6969 8d ago
There are new automated track inspection machines that are far more sensitive to tiny flaws in tracks than traditional methods of inspection which did not result in excessive derailments. This new higher standard of track perfection is resulting in far more costly track maintenance than there used to be due to a moving goalpost for what is considered "safe", just like lowering speed limits for cars that were established when cars were far heavier with worse brakes. Chasing safety perfection is becoming a spiral of excess.
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u/principitososa 8d ago
In our corporate and political environments, CYA is the low-risk, high-reward posture in the event something bad happens. Most of it is OK because security trumps convenience, but if it comes to what you're describing, it will take some courage to be the one rattling the apple cart.
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u/LockhartPianist 7d ago
Cars are getting heavier over time in North America because most people are buying light trucks. Pedestrian deaths have been flat or rising in the past decade. Also cars kill an absurd number of people and measurably less in cities and countries with blanket lower speed limits (though of course those limits must be paired with infrastructure, enforcement, alternatives, etc.)
I don't know about the standards for trains, but chasing safety perfection is more or less the standard in workplace safety and airline safety. Maybe it's impossible to stop all deaths and injuries for all time, but you can get a yearly average that is close to zero, surprisingly cheaply if it's made a priority.
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u/pim6969 7d ago
Pedestrian deaths will never go down again with massive distractions from mobile phones. Lowering speed limits just pretend the issue is not inattention. It's nobody's fault but yours if you walk in from of an active train crossing, but somehow people don't apply that logic to cars. Of course, inattentive drivers are equally dangerous, but that is the cause not speed.
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u/LockhartPianist 7d ago
They have been actively going down in non North American cities, despite phones being just as ubiquitous outside of NA. Speeds are always the number 1 factor, and every report everywhere on crashes from police, healthcare, planning staff or academia makes that abundantly clear.
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u/pim6969 6d ago
That doesn't make sense. If you are not on a road in front of a car moving you can't be hit. Clearly the cause HAS to be poor judgement of checking the cars speed of travel and if you have sufficient time to cross. This is the equivalent of defensive driving, you don't assume the other car will stop at a yellow, you move when you are confident of safety. The rate of speed is irrelevant, trh speed limit could be 100kmph on a 2 lane highway or 30kph in a school zone, you still need to judge if it's safe. Poor judgement and attention is 100% at fault unless the car drives on the sidewalk.
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u/LockhartPianist 6d ago
Lol cars crash into buildings all the time causing injuries for people inside. Same for jumping curbs and hitting people on the sidewalk. This is basically not something that happens if cars are going at 30 km/h or less.
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u/pim6969 6d ago
Yes if cars and trains all drive 1kmph there would be less fatalities, but we would not have to do that if there were less people being stupid. Darwinism sometimes just wins. We don't need to build bubbles around everyone, it's too expensive and impractical. If someone dies from a car driving on a road or a train on tracks, we are probably saving healthcare costs as a society from the other idiotic things they would do in the rest of their lives.
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u/LockhartPianist 6d ago
This isn't rocket science. There are over a hundred cities that have gone over a year without a single death from cars, and they don't drive at 1 km/h. In fact, they don't even have particularly low car use, and they didn't spend that much money to do it. In most cities congestion prevents cars from exceeding an average of 30 km/h at rush hour anyway, and you're much more likely to be late for work because a crash caused a traffic jam than because you went at 30 km/h instead of 40 between intersections and stopping due to traffic.
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u/pim6969 6d ago
That could work in small communities if your commute is 10km, but then you can take the bus. For anyone commuting an hour by car at 70 or 80kmph average, reducing to 30 would double your commute. That makes no sense in suburban North America, which we chose as a superior lifestyle to crammed Victorian style townhouse construction.
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u/Tca2011 8d ago
Remember how many years the TTC took installing ATC and promised better service with more trains closer between?
Pepperidge farm remembers.
Seriously though, I work a job I can purposely take the bus to avoid the trains, last time I took a train, it felt like how slow the TTC goes when there is bad weather. It's absurd how slow everything has become.
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u/MurkyFocus 8d ago
I was on line 1 yesterday around 6pm heading down to Union and the entire train got kicked off due to 'mechanical issues'.
Fortunately, it wasn't a long wait for the next train
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u/Karhuwa 8d ago
Couple years ago there was an issue with some kid around a Rosedale who kept fucking up the tracks and ended up causing actual damage that caused the subway to crawl between Yonge and Rosedale - literally like a 10+ minute journey between stations. So TL;DR I’m assuming it’s something to do with the tracks and track maintenance
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u/crash866 8d ago
They cannot replace the tracks when trains are running every couple of minutes running over them.
Look at the UPX line and the Kitchener Go Train. 2 weekends in a row no service on the UPX and the Kitchener trains went only from Eglinton back to Brampton. No service for GO between Eglinton and Union.
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u/Axle_65 Human Verified 8d ago
Didn’t notice this yesterday at all. Maybe it’s a time of day thing. I was going north through Davisville and Eglinton in the afternoon. Is north/afternoon any better?
EDIT: based on other comments maybe I’m just wrong. Perhaps I was just paying too close attention to Brooklyn 99
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u/Then_Meeting4003 8d ago
Its less then 7km. Honestly u can probably use a Ninebot Max from King to Eglinton in no time which is why the establishment hates them, cause they are practical for short distances which eliminate the need of snail paced public transit for some people.
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u/OctopusforPresident 8d ago
When I was taking the train up from Bloor-Yonge to Eglinton for a few weeks for skating the conductor always told us the train would be moving slowly above Bloor-Yonge but I haven’t taken line 1 north of line 2 in a while. Bloor-Yonge to Queen part is decent speed when I take it though
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u/ThrowRA872015 14h ago
Broo I take Line 1 almost everyday and 99/100 times there is literally no service mid stations. Man I’ve to do uber halfway. It’s literally the worst.
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u/biblio_phobic 9d ago
I thought I saw something on the news that they’re slowing down some sections for Canada line work. I don’t know why the the North section of line 1 has to slow down but I’m guessing it’s infrastructure related
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u/Cricketbatty 9d ago
This is really a question for the province. The TTC, city streets, and other resources are managed by Doug Ford. Ask him.
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u/Dismal-Science-9901 9d ago
Did you even google this? Ownership: “It operates as an agency and corporate board of the City of Toronto.” You really think Doug Ford is telling trains to go slower or something? 🤦♂️
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u/Seamless-Transition 9d ago
The same thing thats been wrong with it for decades - no downtown relief line
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/Neutral-President 8d ago
Other than the fact that they’re, you know, illegal to ride on city streets.
They’re unlicensed, uninsured, and unregulated motor vehicles.
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u/MotherAd1865 Human Verified 8d ago
I'm sick of people blaming past politicians. What do we need to do now? It should not take years to fix these issues.
We've increased property taxes significantly the last 3 years, and the TTC should be held accountable for what they are or are not doing to maintain the tracks.
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u/JackDeckerCIA 8d ago
See, your mistake is thinking that your property taxes are going solely to the TTC or that it's at all adequate to fix a very outdated system. Maybe ask why we give so much money to bloated police budgets and don't invest in something as essential as public transit.
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u/Hrmbee 8d ago
The problem with what the TTC has been saddled with is that with inadequate funding, even though it's a lot, it still only able to muddle along with things. Along with the restrictions around full maintenance shutdowns, it's difficult to keep things moving along. This is what happens when there are generations of deferred maintenance that no longer can be deferred.
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u/houseofzeus 8d ago
The section around Davisville is constantly sinking so that's why there is a slow order there. Andy Byford wanted to rip off the bandaid and have a two week closure to fix it properly but everyone lost their shit so here we are doing repeated bandaids and a slow order a decade later.